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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17507-h.zip b/17507-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cbef356 --- /dev/null +++ b/17507-h.zip diff --git a/17507-h/17507-h.htm b/17507-h/17507-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..edd5995 --- /dev/null +++ b/17507-h/17507-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3055 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Everybody's Lonesome, by Clara E. Laughlin +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; background: White; margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%; font-size: medium; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; margin-left: 10%; font-size: small } + +P.letter {font-size: small } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Everybody's Lonesome, by Clara E. Laughlin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Everybody's Lonesome + A True Fairy Story + +Author: Clara E. Laughlin + +Illustrator: A. I. Keller + +Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #17507] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERYBODY'S LONESOME *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<A NAME="img-front"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT=""Both wanted to toast, and they took turns."" BORDER="2" WIDTH="325" HEIGHT="596"> +<H4> +[Frontispiece: "Both wanted to toast, and they took turns."] +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +Everybody's Lonesome +</H1> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +A True Fairy Story +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +By +</H4> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CLARA E. LAUGHLIN +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Author of "Evolution of a Girl's Ideal," "The Lady in Gray," etc. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +Illustrated by +<BR><BR> +A. I. KELLER. +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +New York Chicago Toronto +<BR><BR> +Fleming H. Revell Company +<BR><BR> +London and Edinburgh +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +Copyright, 1910, by +<BR><BR> +FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +To +<BR><BR> +Mabel Tallaferro, +<BR><BR> +The Faery Child +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<BR> + +<CENTER> + +<TABLE WIDTH="80%"> +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">YOUR OWN IS WAITING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">FINDING THE FIRST FAIRY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">GOING TO THE PARTY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">THE "LION" OF THE EVENING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap07">AT CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap08">LEARNING TO BE BRAVE AND SWEET</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap09">TELLING THE SECRET TO MOTHER</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap10">THE OLD WORLD AND THE KING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap11">A MEETING AND A PARTING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII. </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap12">AT OCEAN'S EDGE</A></TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +ILLUSTRATIONS +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3> +<A HREF="#img-front"> +"BOTH WANTED TO TOAST, AND THEY TOOK +TURNS" . . . . . . <I>Title</I> +</A> +</H3> + +<H3> +<A HREF="#img-102"> +"…FOUND HERSELF LOOKING INTO EYES +THAT SMILED AS WITH AN OLD FRIENDLINESS" +</A> +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +Everybody's Lonesome +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE +</H3> + +<P> +Mary Alice came home quietly from the party. Most of the doors in the +house were closed, because it was cold, and the halls were hard to +heat. Mary Alice knew exactly what she should see and hear if she +opened that door at her right as she entered the house, and went into +the sitting-room. There was a soft-coal fire in the small, +old-fashioned grate under the old, old-fashioned white marble mantel. +Dozing—always dozing—on the hearth-rug, at a comfortable distance +from the fire, was Herod, the big yellow cat. In the centre of the +room, under the chandelier, was a table, with a cover of her mother's +fancy working, and a drop-light with a green shade. By the unbecoming +light of this, her mother was sewing. What day was this? Tuesday! +She was mending stockings. Mary Alice could see it all. She had been +seeing it for twenty years during which nothing—it seemed to her—had +changed, except herself. If she went in there now, her mother would +ask her the same questions she always asked: "Did you have a nice +time?" "Who was there?" "Anybody have on anything new?" "What +refreshments did they serve?" +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice was tired of it all—heartsick with weariness of it—and she +stole softly past that closed sitting-room door and up, through the +chilly halls where she could see her own breath, to her room. +</P> + +<P> +She did not light the gas, but took off in the dark her "good" hat and +her "best" gloves and her long black cloth coat of an ugly +"store-bought" cut, which was her best and worst. Then, in an abandon +of grief which bespoke real desperation in a careful girl like Mary +Alice, she threw herself on her bed—without taking off her "good" +dress—and buried her head in a pillow, and <I>hated everything</I>. +</P> + +<P> +It is hard to be disappointed in love, but after all it is a rather +splendid misery in which one may have a sense of kinship with earth's +greatest and best; and it has its hopes, its consolations. There is +often the hope that this love may return; and, though we never admit +it, there is always—deep down—the consolation of believing that +another and a better may come. +</P> + +<P> +But to be disappointed in the love of life is not a splendid misery. +And Mary Alice was disappointed in her love of life. To be twenty, and +not to believe in the fairies of Romance; to be twenty and, instead of +the rosy dreams you've had, to see life stretching on and on before +you, an endless, uninspired humdrum like mother's, darning stockings by +the sitting-room fire—that is bitterness indeed. +</P> + +<P> +Hardship isn't anything—while you believe in life. Stiff toil and +scant fare are nothing—while you expect to meet at any turning the +Enchanter with your fortune in his hands. But to be twenty and not to +believe——! +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice had never had much, except the wonderful heart of youth, to +feed her faith with. She wasn't pretty and she wasn't clever and she +had no accomplishments. Her people were "plain" and perpetually +"pinched" in circumstance. And her life, in this small town where she +lived, was very narrow. +</P> + +<P> +In the mornings, Mary Alice helped her mother with the housework. In +the afternoons, after the midday dinner was cleared away, Mary Alice +had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed—made new +clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while she +took some fancy work and went to see a girl friend, or a girl friend +brought some fancy work and came to see her. Occasionally she and +another girl went for a walk. Semi-occasionally there was a church +social or a sewing circle luncheon, or somebody gave a party. +</P> + +<P> +Somebody had given a party to-day, and Mary Alice had gone to it with +high hope of finding it "interesting" and had come away from it with a +deep despair of ever finding in life that which would make the monotony +of it worth while. +</P> + +<P> +Many another girl, feeling as Mary Alice did, would have gone away from +home seeking "life" in a big city. But Mary Alice, besides having no +qualifications for earning her way in a big city, had a most unhappy +shyness. She was literally afraid of strangers, and never got very +well acquainted even with persons she had associated with for a long +time. +</P> + +<P> +At the party to-day—it was an afternoon tea—Mary Alice had been more +bitterly conscious than ever before of her lack of charms and the bleak +prospect that lack entailed upon her. For the tea was given for a girl +who was visiting in town, a girl of a sort Mary Alice had never seen +before. She was pretty, that visiting girl, and she was sweet; she had +a charm that was irresistible; she seemed to like everybody, and there +was no mistake about everybody liking her. Even the town girls liked +her and were not jealous. Even Mary Alice liked her, and was not +afraid of her. But there she was—that girl!—vital, radiant, an +example of what life might be, at twenty. And Mary Alice came away +hating as she had never done before, life as it was for her and as it +promised to continue. +</P> + +<P> +Presently she withdrew her head from the pillow and lay looking into +the dark where, as we all know, the things that might be, that should +have been, shape themselves so much more readily than in any light. +And, lying there, Mary Alice wondered if there were any fairy power on +earth that could make of her a being half so sweet as that girl she had +seen this afternoon. +</P> + +<P> +Then she heard her mother open the sitting-room door and call her. It +was time to get their simple supper ready. +</P> + +<P> +"In a minute!" she called back. "I'm changing my dress." And she +jerked at the hooks of her blue taffeta "jumper dress" with uncareful +haste; bathed her face in cold water; put on her dark red serge which +had been "good" last year; and went down-stairs to help her mother. +</P> + +<P> +She could see it all as she went—all she was to do. There was the +threadbare blanket they used for a silence cloth, and the table-cloth +with the red stain by Johnny's place where he had spilled cranberry +jelly the night before last, when the cloth was "span clean." There +were the places to set, as always, with the same old dishes and the +same old knives and forks; and with the mechanical precision born of +long practice she would rightly place, without half looking at them, +the various napkins each in its slightly different wooden ring. The +utmost variety that she could hope for would be hot gingerbread instead +of the last of Sunday's layer-cake, and maybe frizzled beef, since they +had finished Sunday's roast in a meat pie this noon. +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't hear you come in," said her mother as Mary Alice opened the +sitting-room door, "and I was listening for you." +</P> + +<P> +"I went right up-stairs to change my things," said Mary Alice, hoping +that would end the matter. +</P> + +<P> +"That's what I knew you must have done when it got to be six o'clock +and I didn't hear you. I could hardly wait for you to come. I've such +a surprise for you." +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice could hardly believe her ears. "A surprise?" she echoed, +incredulously. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. I got a letter this afternoon from your dear godmother." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" Mary Alice's tone said plainly: Is that all? She had her own +opinion of her godmother, whom she had not seen since she was a small +child, and it was not an enthusiastic one. Her name—which she +hated—was her godmother's name. And aside from that, all she had ever +got from her godmother was an occasional letter and, on Christmas and +birthdays, a handkerchief or turnover collar or some other such trifle +as could come in an envelope from Europe where her godmother lived. +</P> + +<P> +Even in the matter of a godmother, it seemed, it was Mary Alice's luck +to have one without any of the fairy powers. For although Mary Alice's +mother had dearly loved, in her girlhood, that friend for whom she had +called her first baby, she had always to admit, to Mary Alice's eager +questioning, that the friend was neither beautiful nor rich nor gifted. +She was a "spinster person" and years ago some well-to-do friend had +taken her abroad for company. And there she had stayed; while the +friend of her girlhood, whose baby was called for her, heard from her +but desultorily. +</P> + +<P> +"Your godmother has come back," said Mary Alice's mother, her voice +trembling with excitement; "she's in New York. And she wants you to +come and see her." +</P> + +<P> +For a moment, visions swam before Mary Alice's eyes. Then, "How kind +of her!" she said, bitterly; and turned away. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother understood. "She's sent a check!" she cried, waving it. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +After that, until Mary Alice went, it was nothing but talk of clothes +and other ways and means. Just what the present circumstances of +Godmother were, they could not even conjecture; but they were probably +not very different than before, or she would have said something about +them. And the check she sent covered travelling expenses only. Nor +did she write: Never mind about clothes; we will take care of those +when she gets here. +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't the least idea what kind of a time you'll have," Mary +Alice's mother said, "but you mustn't expect many parties or much young +society. Your godmother has been abroad so long, she can't have many +acquaintances in this country now. But you'll see New York—the crowds +and the shops and the great hotels and the places of historic interest. +And even if you don't meet many people, you'll probably have a very +interesting time." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't care about people, anyway," returned Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +Her mother looked distressed. "I wouldn't say that, if I were you," +she advised. "Because you <I>want</I> to care about people—you <I>must</I>! +Sights are beguiling, but they're never satisfying. We all have to +depend on people for our happiness—for love." +</P> + +<P> +"Then I'll never be happy, I guess," said Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid, sometimes, that you've started out not to be," her mother +answered, gravely, "but we'll hope for the best." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +II +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +YOUR OWN IS WAITING +</H3> + + +<P> +Mary Alice dreaded to meet her godmother. The excitement of getting +away was all very well. But once she was alone in the Pullman, and the +friendly faces on the station platform were left behind, she began to +think apprehensively of what she was going to. She was sure to feel +"strange" with her godmother, and there was at least a pretty good +chance that she might actually dislike her. Also, there was every +reason to doubt if her godmother would like Mary Alice. Mary Alice had +several times met persons who had "been to Europe," and she had never +liked them; their conversation was all about things she did not know, +and larded with phrases she could not understand. Those years in +Europe made her doubly dread her godmother. +</P> + +<P> +But the minute she saw her godmother at the Grand Central Station, she +liked her; and before they had got home, in the Fourth Avenue car, she +liked her very much; and when she lay dozing off to sleep, that first +night in New York, she was blissfully conscious that she loved her +godmother. +</P> + +<P> +Godmother lived in an apartment in Gramercy Park. It was an +old-fashioned apartment, occupying one floor of what had once been a +handsome dwelling of the tall "chimney" type common in New York. All +around the Square were the homes of notable persons, and clubs +frequented by famous men. Godmother was to point these out in the +morning; but this evening, before dinner was served, while she and Mary +Alice were standing in the window of her charming drawing-room, she +showed which was The Players, and indicated the windows of the room +where Edwin Booth died. It seemed that she had known Edwin Booth quite +well when she was a girl, and had some beautiful stories of his +kindness and his shyness to tell. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice was surprised and delighted, and she looked over at the +windows with eager, shining eyes. "He must have been wonderful to +know," she said. "Do you suppose there are many other great people +like that?" +</P> + +<P> +"A good many, I should say," her godmother replied. And as they sat at +dinner, served by Godmother's neat maid-of-all-work, it "kind o' came +out," as Mary Alice would have said, how many delightful people +Godmother had counted among her friends. +</P> + +<P> +"You've had a beautiful time, all your life, haven't you?" Mary Alice +commented admiringly, when they were back in the cozy drawing-room and +Godmother was serving coffee from the copper percolator. +</P> + +<P> +"Not all my life, but most of it—yes," said Godmother. "It took me +some time to find the talisman, the charm, the secret—or whatever you +want to call it—of having a happy time." +</P> + +<P> +"But you found it?" +</P> + +<P> +Godmother flushed as if she were a little bit embarrassed. "Well," she +said, "I found one—at last—that worked, for me." +</P> + +<P> +"I wish I could find one," sighed Mary Alice, wistfully. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to try to give you mine," said Godmother, "or at least to +share it with you. And all I ask of you is, that if it 'works' for +you, you'll pass it on to some one else." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I will!" cried Mary Alice. "What is it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Wait a minute! I have to tell you about me, first—so you'll +understand." +</P> + +<P> +"Please do!" urged Mary Alice. "I'd love to hear." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you see, when the invitations to my christening were sent out, +my folks forgot the fairies, I guess. And as I grew up, I found that I +hadn't been gifted with wealth or beauty or talents or charm——" +</P> + +<P> +"I know," Mary Alice broke in. +</P> + +<P> +Godmother looked surprised. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean, I know how that feels," Mary Alice explained. +</P> + +<P> +"Then you know I was pretty unhappy until—something happened. I met a +charming woman, once, who was so sweet and sympathetic that my heart +just opened to her as flowers to sunshine; and I told her how I felt. +'Well, that <I>was</I> an oversight!' she said, 'but you know what to do +about it, don't you?' I said I didn't. 'Why!' she said, 'the fairies +had their gifts all ready to bring, and when they were not invited to +the party, what would they naturally do?' 'Give them to some one +else!' I cried. I shall never forget how reproachfully she looked at +me. 'That is a purely human trick!' she said; 'fairies are never +guilty of it. When they have something for you, they keep it for you +till you get it. If they were not asked to your party, it's your +business to hunt them out and get your gifts. Somewhere in the world +your own is waiting for you.' That was a magic thought: Somewhere in +the world your own is waiting for you. I couldn't get away from it; it +filled my mind, waking and asleep. And I set out to find if it was +true." +</P> + +<P> +"And <I>was</I> it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it must have been. For I've found some of my own, surely, and I +believe I shall find more. And oh! the joy it is to look and look, +believing that you will surely find. I haven't found wealth, nor +beauty, nor accomplishments—perhaps I didn't look in the right places +for any of those—but I've found something I wouldn't trade for all the +others. It is all I have to bequeath you, dear. But the beautiful +part of this bequest is, I don't have to die to enrich you with it, nor +do I have to impoverish myself to give it away. I just whisper +something in your ear—and then you go and see if it isn't so." +</P> + +<P> +"Whisper it now, please," begged Mary Alice, going over to her +godmother and putting her ear close. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no," said Godmother, kissing Mary Alice's ear, "this isn't the +time at all. And it's <I>fatal</I> to tell till the right time comes." +</P> + +<P> +And no teasing would avail to make her change her mind. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +III +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FINDING THE FIRST FAIRY +</H3> + + +<P> +The next few days were spent in sightseeing; and Mary Alice would never +have believed there could be any one so enchanting to see sights with +as Godmother. They looked in all the wonderful shop-windows and +"chose" what they would take from each if a fairy suddenly invited them +to take their choice. No fairy did; but they hardly noticed that. +</P> + +<P> +Then they'd go and "poke" in remnant boxes on the ends of counters in +the big department stores, and unearth bits of trimming and of lace +with which Godmother, who was clever with her needle and "full of +ideas," showed Mary Alice how to put quite transforming touches on her +clothes. +</P> + +<P> +They visited art galleries, and Godmother knew things about the +pictures that made them all fascinating. Instead of saying, +"Interesting composition, that!" or "This man was celebrated for his +chiaroscuro," Godmother was full of human stories of the struggles of +the painters and their faithfulness to ideals; and she could stand in +front of a canvas by almost any master, and talk to Mary Alice about +the painter and the conditions of his life and love and longing when he +painted this picture, in a way that made Mary Alice feel as if she'd +like to <I>shake</I> the people who walked by with only an uninterested +glance; as if she'd like to bring them back and prod them into life, +and cry, "Don't you see? How <I>can</I> you pass so carelessly what cost so +much in toil and tears?" +</P> + +<P> +Godmother had that kind of a viewpoint about everything, it seemed. +When they went to the theatre, she could tell Mary Alice—before the +curtain went up, and between the acts—such things about the actors and +the playwright and the manager, as made the play trebly interesting. +</P> + +<P> +On the East Side they visited some of the Settlements and "prowled" (as +Godmother loved to call it) around the teeming slums; and Godmother +knew such touching stories of the Old World conditions from which these +myriads of foreign folk had escaped, and of the pathos of their trust +in the New World, as kept Mary Alice's eyes bright and wet almost every +minute. +</P> + +<P> +One beautiful sunny afternoon they rode up on top of a Fifth Avenue +motor 'bus to 90th Street, and Godmother pointed out the houses of many +multi-millionaires. She knew things about many of them, too—sweet, +human, heart-touching things about their disappointments and +unsatisfied yearnings—which made one feel rather sorry for them than +envious of their splendours. +</P> + +<P> +Thus the days passed, and Mary Alice was so happy that—learning from +Godmother some of her pretty ways—she would go closer to that dear +lady, every once in a while, and say: "Pinch me, please—and see if I'm +awake; if it's really true." And Godmother always pinched her, +gravely, and appeared to be much relieved when Mary Alice cried "Ouch! +I <I>am</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +They didn't see anybody, except "from a distance" as they said, for +fully a week; they were so busy seeing sights and getting acquainted. +Every night when Godmother came to tuck Mary Alice in, they had the +dearest talks of all. And every night Mary Alice begged to be told the +Secret. But, "Oh, dear no! not yet!" Godmother would always say. +</P> + +<P> +One night, however, she said: "Well, if I'm not almost forgetting to +tell you!" +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice jumped; that sounded like the Secret. But it +wasn't—although it was "leading up to it." +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me what?" she cried, excitedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, to-day I saw one of your fairies." +</P> + +<P> +"My what?" +</P> + +<P> +"Your fairies that you said were left out of your christening party." +</P> + +<P> +"You did! Where?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll tell you that presently. But it seems, from what this fairy +said, that there are a great number of your fairies with gifts for you, +all waiting quite impatiently to be found. She says that it is +considered quite 'ordinary' now, to send all of a great gift by one +fairy—yes, and not at all safe. For if that one fairy should miss you +and you should not find her, you'd be left terribly unprovided for, you +see. So the gift is usually divided into many parts, and a different +fairy has each part. Now, the gift of beauty, for instance; she is one +of the fairies who has that gift for you." +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice's eyes opened wide. Her belief in this wonderful Godmother +was such that she was almost prepared to see Godmother wave a wand and +command her to become beautiful—and then, on looking into a mirror, to +find that she was so. "What did she say?" she managed at last to gasp. +</P> + +<P> +"She said: 'Has she pretty hair?' And I answered, 'Yes.' 'Then,' the +fairy went on, 'the one who had that gift must have got to the +christening, somehow. Maybe the mother wished for her—and that is as +good as an invitation.'" +</P> + +<P> +"She did!" cried Mary Alice. "She's always said she watched me so +anxiously when I was a wee baby, hoping I'd have pretty hair." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's evidently how that fairy got to you. But it seems there +were two. This one I saw to-day says there are two beauties in 'most +everything—but especially in hair—one is in the thing itself and the +other is in knowing what to do with it. It seems she is the 'what to +do' fairy." +</P> + +<P> +And so she proved to be. For, when she came to luncheon next day, she +told Mary Alice how she had always been "a bit daft about hair." "When +I played with my dolls," she said, "I always cared much more for +combing their hair and doing it up with mother's 'invisible' pins, than +for dressing them. And it used to be the supreme reward for goodness +when I could take down my mother's beautiful hair and play with it for +half an hour. I'm always wanting to play with lovely hair. And when I +saw yours at the theatre the other evening, I couldn't rest until I'd +asked your godmother if she thought you'd let me play with it." +</P> + +<P> +So after luncheon they went into Mary Alice's room and wouldn't let +Godmother go with them. "Not at all!" said the "what to do fairy," +"you are the select audience. You go into the drawing-room and +'compose yourself.' When we're ready for you, we'll come out." +</P> + +<P> +Then, behind locked doors, with much delightful nonsense and +excitement, she divested Mary Alice's head of sundry awful rats and +puffs, combed out the bunches which Mary Alice wore in her really +lovely hair, brushed smooth the traces of the curling iron, and then +made Mary Alice shut her eyes and "hope to die" if she "peeked once." +</P> + +<P> +When permission to "peek" was given, Mary Alice didn't know herself. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" said the fairy, when the excitement of Godmother's delight had +subsided, "I've always said that the three most important beauty +fairies for a girl to find are the how-to-stand fairy, the how-to-dress +fairy, and the what-to-do-with-your-hair fairy. Anybody can find them +all; and nobody who has found them all needs to feel very bad if she +can't find some of the others who have her christening gifts." +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice began looking for the others, right away. But even one +fairy had transformed her, outside, from an ordinary-looking girl into +a young woman with a look of remarkable distinction; just as Godmother +had transformed her, within, from a girl with a dreary outlook on life, +to one who found that +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"The world is so full of a number of things,<BR> +I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Is this the Secret?" she asked Godmother, that night. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, dear, no!" laughed Godmother, "only the first little step towards +realizing it." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN +</H3> + + +<P> +One day when Mary Alice had been in New York nearly two weeks—and had +found several fairies—Godmother was obliged to go out, in the +afternoon, to some sort of a committee meeting which would have been +quite uninteresting to an outsider. But Mary Alice had some sewing to +do—something like taking the ugly, ruffly sleeves of cheap white lace +out of her blue taffeta dress and substituting plain dark ones of net +dyed to match the silk; and she was glad to stay at home. +</P> + +<P> +"If an elderly gentleman comes in to call on me, late in the afternoon +but before I get back home," said Godmother, in departing, "ask him in +and be nice to him. He's a lonely body, and he'll probably be tired. +He works very hard." +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice promised, and went happily to work on the new sleeves which +were to give her arms and shoulders something of an exquisite outline, +in keeping with the fairy way of doing her hair, which Godmother had +taught her to admire in a beautiful marble in the Metropolitan Museum. +</P> + +<P> +About five o'clock, when Godmother's neat little maid had just lighted +the lamps in the pretty drawing-room and replenished the open fire +which was one of the great compensations for the many drawbacks of +living in an old-fashioned house, the gentleman Godmother had expected +called. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice went in to see him, and explained who she was. He said he +had heard about her and was glad to make her acquaintance. +</P> + +<P> +He seemed quite tired, and Mary Alice asked him if he had been working +hard that day. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said, "very hard." +</P> + +<P> +"Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?" she asked. And he said he would. +</P> + +<P> +When the tea came, he seemed to enjoy it so much that Mary Alice really +believed he was hungry. Indeed, he admitted that he was. "I haven't +had any luncheon," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice's heart was touched; she forgot that the man was strange, +and remembered only that he was tired and hungry. +</P> + +<P> +The little maid brought thin slices of bread and butter with the tea. +Mary Alice felt they must seem absurd to a hungry man. "I know what's +lots nicer with tea," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"What?" he asked, interestedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Toast and marmalade," she answered. "I'm going to get some." And she +went to the kitchen, cut a plateful of toasting slices and brought them +back with a long toasting fork and a jar of orange marmalade. +</P> + +<P> +"At home," she said, "we often make the toast for supper at the +sitting-room fire, and it's <I>much</I> nicer than 'gas range toast.'" +</P> + +<P> +"I know it is," he said; "let's do it." +</P> + +<P> +So they squatted on the rug in front of the open fire. Both wanted to +toast, and they took turns. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't get to do anything like this very often—only when I come +here," he said, apologizing for accepting his turn when it came. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you live at home?" asked Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, no," he answered, "I'd hardly call what I do 'living at home.'" +</P> + +<P> +There was something about the way he said it that made Mary Alice feel +sorry for him; but she didn't like to ask any more questions. +</P> + +<P> +They had a delightful time. Mary Alice had never met a man she enjoyed +so much. He liked to "play" as much as Godmother did, and they talked +most confidentially about their likes and dislikes, many of which +seemed to be mutual. Mary Alice admitted to him how she disliked to +meet strangers, and he admitted to her that he felt the very same way. +</P> + +<P> +Godmother tarried and tarried, and at six o'clock the gentleman said he +must go. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, dear!" sighed Mary Alice. "I'm sorry! I'm having such a nice +time." +</P> + +<P> +"So am I," he echoed gallantly, "but I'm hoping you will ask me again." +</P> + +<P> +"Indeed I will!" she cried. "We seem to—to get on together +beautifully." +</P> + +<P> +"We do," he agreed, "and if it's a rare experience for you, I don't +mind telling you it is for me too." +</P> + +<P> +He couldn't have been gone more than ten minutes when Godmother came in. +</P> + +<P> +"That gentleman called," Mary Alice told her. "He's just gone. We had +a lovely time." +</P> + +<P> +"I know," said Godmother, "I met him down-stairs and we've been +chatting. He says he doesn't know when he's spent a pleasanter hour." +</P> + +<P> +"Poor man!" murmured Mary Alice, "he seems to be a lonely body." +</P> + +<P> +"He is," said Godmother. "He likes to come in here, once in a while, +for a cup of tea and an hour's chat. And I'm always glad to have him." +</P> + +<P> +"I should think so!" agreed Mary Alice. "He ate nearly a whole plate +of toast." +</P> + +<P> +Godmother laughed so heartily that Mary Alice was a little mystified. +She didn't see the joke in being hungry. She didn't even see it when +Godmother told her who the man was. +</P> + +<P> +"Not really?" gasped Mary Alice. Godmother nodded. "Why, he told me +him<I>self</I>——!" Mary Alice began; and then stopped to put two and two +together. It was all very astounding, but there was no reason why what +he had told her and what Godmother said might not both be true. +</P> + +<P> +"If I had <I>known</I>!" she said, sinking down, weak in the knees, into the +nearest chair. +</P> + +<P> +"That was what gave him his happy hour," said Godmother. "You didn't +know! It is so hard for him to get away from people who know—to find +people who are able to forget. That's why he likes to come here; I try +to help him forget, for an hour, once in a while, at 'candle-lightin' +time.'" +</P> + +<P> +"I see," murmured Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +The man was one of those great world-powers of finance whose +transactions filled columns of the newspapers and were familiar to +almost every school child. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That night when Godmother was tucking Mary Alice in, they had a long, +long talk about the caller of the afternoon and about some other people +Godmother knew, and about how sad a thing it is to take for granted +about any person certain qualities we think must go with his estate. +</P> + +<P> +"And now," said Godmother, "I'm going to tell you the Secret." +</P> + +<P> +And she did. Then turned out the light, kissed Mary Alice one more +time, and left her to think about it. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +V +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +GOING TO THE PARTY +</H3> + + +<P> +"Now," said Godmother, the very next morning after she had told Mary +Alice the Secret, "to see how it <I>works</I>! This evening I am going to +take you to a most delightful place." +</P> + +<P> +"What kind of a place?" Mary Alice begged to know. Already, despite +the Secret, she was feeling fearful. +</P> + +<P> +Godmother squeezed Mary Alice's hand sympathetically; and then, because +that was not enough, she dropped a brief kiss on Mary Alice's anxious +young forehead. "I know how you feel, dear," she whispered. "All of +us, I guess, have fairy charms that we're afraid to use. Others have +used them, we know, and found them miraculous. But somehow, we're +afraid. I'm all undecided in my mind whether to tell you about this +place we're going to, or not to tell you about it. I want to do what +is easiest for you. Now, you think! It probably won't be a very large +assembly. These dear people, who have many friends, are at home on +Friday evenings. Sometimes a large number call, sometimes only a few. +And in New York, you know, people are not 'introduced round'; you just +meet such of your fellow guests as happen to 'come your way,' so to +speak. That is, if there are many. We'll go down and call this +evening—take our chance of few or many, and try out our Secret. And +I'll do just as you think you'd like best; I'll tell you about the +people we're going to see and try to guess as well as I can who else +may be there. Or I won't tell you anything at all—just leave you to +remember that 'folks is folks,' and to find out the rest for yourself. +You needn't decide now. Take all day to think about it, if you like." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, dear!" cried Mary Alice, "I'm all in a flutter. I don't believe +I'll ever be able to decide, but I'll think hard all day. And now tell +me what I am to wear." +</P> + +<P> +She went to her room and got her dark blue taffeta and showed the +progress of yesterday with the new dark net sleeves to replace the ugly +ruffly white lace ones. +</P> + +<P> +"That's going to be fine!" approved Godmother. "Now, this morning I am +going to help you make the new yoke and collar; and then"—she squinted +up her eyes and began looking as if she were studying a picture the way +so many picture-lovers like to do, through only a narrow slit of vision +which sharpens perspective and intensifies detail—"I think we'll go +shopping. Yesterday, when I was hurrying past and hadn't time to stop +for longer than a peek, I saw in a Broadway shop-window some short +strings of pink imitation coral of the most adorable colour, for—what +do you think? Twenty-five cents a string! I've a picture of you in my +mind, with your dark blue dress and one of those coral strings about +your throat." +</P> + +<P> +Godmother's picture looked very sweet indeed when she came out to +dinner that evening. It was astonishing how many of her fairies Mary +Alice had found in two short weeks! The lovely lines of her shoulders, +which she had never known were the chief of all the "lines of beauty," +were no longer disfigured by stiff, outstanding bretelles and +ruffled-lace sleeves, but revealed in all their delicate charm by the +close-fitting plain dark net. And above them rose the head of such +unsuspected loveliness of contour, which rats and puffs and pompadour +had once deformed grotesquely, but which the wonderful new +hair-dressing accentuated in a transfiguring degree. The poise of Mary +Alice's head, the carriage of her shoulders, were fine. But she had +never known, before, that those were big points of beauty. So she +<I>did</I> took lovely, with the tiny touch of coral at her throat, the pink +flush in her cheeks, and the sparkle of excitement in her eyes. It was +her first "party" in New York, and she and Godmother had had the most +delicious day getting ready for it. Mary Alice couldn't really believe +that all they did was to fix over her blue "jumper dress" and invest +twenty-five cents in pink beads. But it seemed that when you were with +a person like Godmother, what you actually did was magnified a +thousandfold by the enchanting way you did it. Mary Alice was +beginning to see that a fairy wand which can turn a pumpkin into a gold +coach is not exceeded in possibilities by a fairy mind which can turn +any ordinary, commonplace, matter-of-fact thing into a delightful +"experience." +</P> + +<P> +But something had happened during the afternoon which decided what to +do about the party. They were walking west in Thirty-Third Street, +past the Waldorf, when a lady came out to get into her auto. Godmother +greeted her delightedly and introduced Mary Alice. But the lady's name +overpowered Mary Alice and completely tied her tongue during the +moment's chat. +</P> + +<P> +"I used to see her a great deal, in Dresden," said Godmother when they +had gone on their way, "and she's a dear. We must go and see her as +she asked us to, and have her down to see us." Godmother spoke as if a +very celebrated prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera were no different +from any one else one might happen to know. Mary Alice couldn't get +used to it. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I guess I manage better when I don't know so much," she said, +smiling rather wofully and remembering the man of many millions to whom +she had been "nice" because she thought he was homeless and hungry. +</P> + +<P> +So to the "party" they went and never an inkling had Mary Alice where +it was to be or whether she was to see more captains of finance or more +nightingales of song, "or what." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE "LION" OF THE EVENING +</H3> + + +<P> +The house they entered was not at all pretentious. It was an +old-fashioned house in that older part of New York in which Godmother +herself lived—only further south. But it was a remodelled house; the +old, high "stoop" had been taken away, and one entered, from the street +level, what had once been a basement dining-room but was now a kind of +reception hall. Here they left their wraps in charge of a well-bred +maid whom Godmother called by name and seemed to know. And then they +went up-stairs. Mary Alice was "all panicky inside," but she kept +trying to remember the Secret. +</P> + +<P> +Their hostess was a middle-aged lady, very plain but motherly-looking. +She wore her hair combed in a way that would have been considered +"terribly old-fashioned" in Mary Alice's home town, and she had on +several large cameos very like some Mary Alice's mother had and scorned +to wear. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice was reasonably sure this lady was not "a millionairess or +anything like that," and she didn't think she was another prima donna. +The lady's name meant nothing to her. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," their hostess said as Godmother greeted her, "now the party +<I>can</I> begin—here's Mary Alice! <I>Two</I> Mary Alices!" she added as she +caught sight of the second one. "Who says this isn't going to be a +real party?" +</P> + +<P> +Evidently they liked Godmother in this house; and evidently they were +prepared to like Mary Alice. Then, before she had time to think any +more about it, three or four persons came up to greet Godmother, who +didn't try to introduce Mary Alice at all—just let her "tag along" +without any responsibility. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice found that she liked to hear these people talk. They had a +kind of eagerness about many things that made them all seem to have +much more to say than could possibly be said then and there. Mary +Alice felt just as she thought the lady must have felt who, after the +man standing beside Mary Alice had made one or two remarks, in a brief +turn the conversation took towards the Children's Theatre, cried: "Oh! +I want to talk to you about that." And they moved away somewhere and +sat down together. Then, somehow, from that the general talk glanced +off on to some actors and actresses who had come out of the foreign +quarter where the Children's Theatre was, and were astonishing up-town +folk with the fire and fervour of their art. Some one who seemed to +know a good deal about the speaking voice, commented on the curious +change of tone, from resonant throat sounds to nasal head sounds, which +generally marked the Slav's transition from his native tongue to +English; and gave several examples in such excellent imitation that +every one was amused, even Mary Alice, who knew nothing about the +persons imitated. +</P> + +<P> +Then, some one who had been recently to California and seen Madame +Modjeska and been privileged to hear some chapters of the memoirs she +was writing, told an incident or two from them about the experiences of +that great Polish artiste in learning English. A man asked this lady +if she knew what Modjeska was going to do with her Memoirs when they +were ready for publication; and they two moved away to talk more about +that. And so it went. Mary Alice didn't often know what the talk was +about; but she was so interested in it that she found herself wishing +they would talk more about each thing and wouldn't break up and drift +off the way they did. They had such a wide, wide world—these +people—and they seemed to see everything that went on around them, to +feel everything that can go on within. And they made no effort about +anything. They talked about the Red Cross campaign against +tuberculosis, or big game hunting in Africa, or the unerring accuracy +of steel-workers on the skeletons of skyscrapers, throwing red-hot +rivets across yawning spaces and striking the bucket, held to receive +them, every time. And their talk was as simple, as eager, as +unaffected, as hers had been as she talked with Godmother about her +blue silk dress. All those things were a part of their world, as the +blue dress was a part of hers. +</P> + +<P> +She was so interested that she forgot to be afraid. And by and by when +Godmother had drifted off with some one and Mary Alice found herself +alone with one man, she was feeling so "folksy" that she looked up at +him and laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Seems as if every one had found a 'burning theme'—all but us!" she +said. +</P> + +<P> +The young man—he <I>was</I> young, and very good-looking, in an unusual +sort of way—flushed. "I don't know any of them," he said; "I'm a +stranger." +</P> + +<P> +"So am I," said Mary Alice, "and I don't know any one either. But I'd +like to know some of these people better; wouldn't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," returned the young man. "I haven't seen much of +people, and I don't feel at home with them." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" cried Mary Alice, quite excitedly, "you need a fairy godmother to +tell you a Secret." +</P> + +<P> +The young man looked unpleasantly mystified. "What secret?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +She started to explain. He seemed amused, at first, in a supercilious +kind of way. But Mary Alice was so interested in her "burning theme" +that she did not notice how he looked. Gradually his superciliousness +faded. +</P> + +<P> +"Let us find a place where you can tell me the Secret," he said, +looking about the drawing-room. Every place seemed taken. +</P> + +<P> +"There's a settle in the hall," suggested Mary Alice. And they went +out and sat on that. "But I can't tell you the Secret," she said. +"Not yet, anyway." +</P> + +<P> +"Please!" he begged. "I may never see you again." +</P> + +<P> +She looked distressed. "Oh, do you think so?" she said. "But anyhow I +can't tell you. I can only tell you up to where the Secret comes in, +and then—if I never see you again, you can think about it; and any +time you write to me for the Secret, I'll send it to you to help you +when you need it most." +</P> + +<P> +"I need it now," he urged. +</P> + +<P> +"No, you don't," she answered. "I thought I needed it right away, but +I wouldn't have understood it or believed it if I'd heard it then." +And she told him how it was whispered to her, after she had been kind +to the man of many millions. +</P> + +<P> +"And does it work?" he asked, laughing at her story of the toast and +tea. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know, yet," she admitted, "I'm just trying it. That's another +reason I can't tell you now. I have to wait until I've tried it +thoroughly." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"You're a nice, modest young person from the backwoods," laughed +Godmother when they were going home, "selecting the largest, livest +lion of the evening and running off with him to the safe shelter of the +hall." +</P> + +<P> +"Lion?" said Mary Alice, wonderingly. "What lion?" +</P> + +<P> +"The young man you kept so shamelessly to yourself nearly all evening." +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know he was any kind of a lion," apologized Mary Alice, +humbly. "He just seemed to be——" She stopped, and her eyes danced +delightedly. "I was trying the Secret on him," she went on, "and I +believe it worked." +</P> + +<P> +"I think it must have," said Godmother, "for he came up to me, before I +left, and exhibited all the signs of a gentleman who wants to be asked +to call. So I invited him to come in to-morrow for a cup of tea." +</P> + +<P> +"Is he—is he coming?" asked Mary Alice, "and won't you please tell me +what kind of a lion he is, and what's his name?" +</P> + +<P> +"He is coming," said Godmother, smiling mischievously, "and I don't +know whether to tell you his name or not. Maybe he'd rather do that +himself." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't care if he doesn't," laughed Mary Alice; "he's a nice man, and +he seemed to be real——" And then she stopped again and looked +mysteriously knowing. And Godmother nodded approvingly. +</P> + +<P> +"I loved the party," murmured Mary Alice, happily, as Godmother bent +over to give her her last good-night kiss. "I never supposed a party +where one didn't know a soul could be so nice." +</P> + +<P> +"Knowing or not knowing people makes much less difference—when you +remember the Secret. Don't you find it so?" said Godmother. +</P> + +<P> +And Mary Alice assented. "Yes, oh, yes! It's a wonderful magic—the +dear Secret is," she said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AT CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME +</H3> + + +<P> +The next morning, Mary Alice wanted to know who everybody was; and +Godmother told her—every one but "the young man lion" as she called +him. The home they had been to was that of a celebrated editor and man +of letters who numbered among his friends the most delightful people of +many nations. The guests represented a variety of talents. The large, +dark, distinctly-foreign looking man was the great baritone of one of +the opera houses. The younger man, with the long, dark hair, was a +violinist about whom all New York was talking. The gray-haired man +with the goatee was an admiral. The gentle-spoken, shy man with the +silver hair was a famous Indian fighter of the old frontier days. The +man who spoke informedly of the Children's Theatre was one of the +best-known of American men of letters. The lady who was anxious to +interrogate him about it was one whose fame as an uplifter of humanity +has travelled 'round the globe. This one was a painter, and that one a +sculptor, and another was a poetic dramatist. +</P> + +<P> +"My!" sighed Mary Alice, "I'm glad you <I>didn't</I> tell me before we went. +As nearly as I can remember, I talked to the Admiral about the Fifth +Avenue shopwindows, and to the General about the Jumel Mansion—which +he said he had never seen but had always meant to see—and to the +painter—what <I>did</I> I talk to the painter about? Oh! my pink beads. +He admired the colour." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said Godmother, "and if you had known who they were you would +probably have tried to talk to the Admiral about ships and sea-fights, +and to the painter about the Metropolitan Museum, and would have bored +them terribly. Most real people, I think, like to be taken for what +they are rather than for what they may have done. That is one of the +things I learned in my long years in Europe where I was constantly +finding myself in conversation with some one I did not know. We always +began on a basis of common humanity, and we soon found our mutual +interests, and enjoyed talking about them. It taught me a great deal +about people and the folly of taking any of them on other people's +estimates." +</P> + +<P> +But all this was only mildly interesting, now, compared with "the young +man lion." +</P> + +<P> +Of course they had to tell him, first thing when he came, that Mary +Alice did not know who he was. He looked a little surprised at first; +then he seemed to relish the joke hugely. When Godmother added certain +explanations, he grew grave again. +</P> + +<P> +"I like that," he said. "I think it's a fine game, and I wish I might +play it. I can't, most of the time. But I can play it with you, if +you'll let me," he went on, turning to Mary Alice. She nodded assent. +"That's splendid!" he cried. "I haven't played a jolly game like this +since I was a boy. Now, you're not to think I'm a king in disguise or +anything like that. There's really nothing about me that's at all +interesting; only, on account of something that has happened to me, +people are talking about me—for nine days or so. I'll be going on, in +a day or two, and every one will forget. Now let's play the game. May +I make toast?" +</P> + +<P> +"You may," she said. +</P> + +<P> +In a little while, some one came to call on Godmother who took the +caller into the library; and the toast-making went on undisturbed. +</P> + +<P> +Whoever he was, he seemed to know something about camp-fires; and +squatting on the rug before the glowing grate, toasting bread, reminded +him of things he had heard strange men tell, as the intimacy of the +night fire in the wilderness brought their stories out. It was +fascinating talk, and Mary Alice listened enthralled. +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know I had that much talk in me," he laughed, a little +confusedly, as he rose to go. "It must be the surroundings that are +responsible—and the game." +</P> + +<P> +Godmother, whose caller was gone, asked him to stay to dinner. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish I could!" he said wistfully, noting in the distance the cozy +dinner table set for two. "If you could only know where I must dine +instead!" +</P> + +<P> +"You seem to dread it," said Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +"I do," he answered. +</P> + +<P> +She looked at Godmother. "I wish we could tell him the Secret," she +suggested shyly, "it might help." +</P> + +<P> +Godmother looked very thoughtful, as if gravely considering. "Not +yet," she decided, shaking her head; "it's too soon." +</P> + +<P> +"I think so too," he said. "I'm afraid you might lose interest in me +after you had told me. I'd rather wait." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The next day was Sunday. He had engagements for lunch and dinner, but +he asked if he might slip in again for tea; he was leaving town Monday. +</P> + +<P> +So they had another beautiful hour, at what Godmother loved to speak of +as "candle-lightin' time," and while Mary Alice was in the kitchen +cutting bread to toast, Godmother and her guest made notes in tiny +note-books. +</P> + +<P> +"There!" she said, when she had written the Gramercy Park address in +his book. "Anything you send here will always reach her, wherever she +is." +</P> + +<P> +"And any answer she may care to make to me, if you'll address it to me +there," handing back her book to her, "will always reach me, wherever I +may be." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"It is a splendid game," he said when he was going, "and I'm glad you +let me play. If more people played this game, I'd find the world a lot +pleasanter place to live in." +</P> + +<P> +"When you know the Secret you can show other people how to play," Mary +Alice suggested. +</P> + +<P> +"That's so," he said. "Well, I shan't let you forget you are to tell +it to me." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LEARNING TO BE BRAVE AND SWEET +</H3> + + +<P> +Godmother's charming drawing-room seemed intolerably empty when he had +gone and they two stood by the fire and looked into it trying to see +again the jungle scene he had pointed out to them in the bed of coals. +But the jungle was gone; the vision had faded with the seer. And +Godmother and Mary Alice began picking up the teacups and the toast +plate, almost as if there had been a funeral. +</P> + +<P> +Then Godmother laughed. "How solemn we are!" she said, pretending to +think it all very funny. +</P> + +<P> +But Mary Alice couldn't pretend. She set down his teacup which she had +just lifted with gentle reverence off the mantel, where he left it, and +went closer to Godmother. Her lips were trembling, but she did not +have to speak. +</P> + +<P> +"I know, Precious—I know," whispered Godmother. She sat down in a big +chair close to the fire—the chair he had just left—and Mary Alice sat +on the hearth-rug and nestled her head against Godmother's knees. +Neither of them said anything for what seemed a long time. They just +looked into the glowing bed of coals and saw—different things! +</P> + +<P> +Then, "I think," Mary Alice began, in a voice that was full of tears, +"I think I wish we hadn't played any game. I think I wish I hadn't +seen him at all." +</P> + +<P> +"Lovey <I>dear</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I do!" wept Mary Alice, refusing to be comforted. "Everything +was beautiful, before he came. And now he's gone, and I'm +so—lonesome!" +</P> + +<P> +Godmother was silent for a moment. "There's the Secret," she +suggested, at last. "It was—it was when I felt just as you do now, +that I began to learn the Secret." +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice made no reply; there seemed to be nothing that she could say +But after they had sat silent for a long while, she got up and kissed +her godmother with a new passion which had in it tenderness as well as +adoration. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe I can be brave and lovely about it, as you must have +been to make people love you so. But I'm going to <I>try</I>," she said. +</P> + +<P> +The success with which Mary Alice's trying met was really beautiful to +see. At first, it was pretty hard for her to care much about the +Secret, or about people. Every assemblage just seemed to her an empty +crowd where he was not. But when she began to wonder to how many of +those selfsame people the others seemed the same as to her, she was +interested once more; the Secret began to work. +</P> + +<P> +It worked so well, in fact, that Mary Alice came to be quite famous in +a small way. People in Godmother's distinguished and delightful "set" +talked enthusiastically of Mary Alice's quiet charm, and she was asked +here and asked there, and had a quite wonderful time. +</P> + +<P> +Her "poor" friend came in, whenever he could, for tea and toast; and +sometimes he made what he called "a miserable return" for this +hospitality, by asking Godmother and Mary Alice to dine with him at his +palace on upper Fifth Avenue and afterwards to sit in his box at the +opera. He was a widower, and his two sons were married and lived in +palaces of their own. His only daughter was abroad finishing her +education; and his great, lonely house was to serve a brief purpose for +her when she "came out" and until she married. Then, he thought, he +would either give it up or turn it over to her; certainly he would not +keep it for himself. +</P> + +<P> +At first, Mary Alice found it hard to remember the Secret "with so many +footmen around." But by and by she got used to them and, other things +being equal, could have nearly as good a time in a palace as in a flat. +For this, she had a wonderful example in Godmother of whom some one had +once said, admiringly, that she was "never mean to anybody just because +he's rich." It was true. Godmother was just as "nice" to the rich as +to the poor, to the "cowering celebrity" (as she was wont to say) as to +the most important nobody. It was the Secret that helped her to do it. +It was the Secret that helped Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +And so the winter went flying by. Twice, letters came—from him; and +Mary Alice answered them, giving the answers to Godmother to send. +Once he wrote from London, and once from somewhere on the Bosphorus. +They were lonesome letters, both; but he didn't ask for the Secret, +though he mentioned it each time. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TELLING THE SECRET TO MOTHER +</H3> + + +<P> +In March, Godmother said: "I am going abroad for the summer, dear, and +I've just had a conference with my man of affairs. He reports some +unexpectedly good dividends from my small handful of stock in a company +that is enjoying a boom, and so if we're careful—you and I—there will +be enough so I can take you with me." Mary Alice was too surprised, +too happy to speak. "Now, you'll want to go home, of course," +Godmother went on, "and so we'll agree on a sailing date and then you +may fly back to mother as soon as you wish, and stay till it's time to +go abroad." +</P> + +<P> +They decided to sail the first of May; so Mary Alice went home almost +immediately, and on an evening late in March got off the train on to +that familiar platform whence she had so fearfully set forth only four +short months ago. +</P> + +<P> +Father was at the station to meet her; and at home, by the soft-coal +fire burning beneath the white marble mantel in the sitting-room, +Mother was sewing and waiting for her. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice was thinking, as she and Father neared the house, of that +miserable evening in the fall when she had stolen past her mother and +gone up to her room and wept passionately, in the dark, because life +had no enchantment for her. There would be no stealing past dear +Mother now! For the Secret was for Mother, too—yes, very much indeed +for Mother, as Mary Alice and Godmother had agreed in their wonderful +"tucking in" talk the night before Mary Alice came away. All the way +home, on the train, she had hardly been able to wait till she got to +Mother with this beautiful new thing in her heart. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps Mother had dreaded her girl's home-coming, in a way, almost as +much as she yearned for it. But if she had, Mary Alice never knew it; +and if she had, Mother herself soon forgot it. For in all the twenty +years of Mary Alice's life, her mother had never, it seemed, had so +much of her girl as in the month that followed her home-coming. Hour +after hour they worked about the house or sat before that grate fire in +the unchanged sitting-room, and talked and talked and talked. Mary +Alice told every little detail of those four months until her mother +lived them over with her and the light and life of them animated her as +they had animated Mary Alice. +</P> + +<P> +Little by little, in that month, Mary Alice came at least to the +beginning of a wonderful new understanding: came to see how +parents—and <I>god</I>parents!—cease to have any particular future of +their own and live in the futures of the young things they love. Mary +Alice's bleak years had been bitter for her mother, too; perhaps +bitterer than for her. And her new enchantment with life was like new +blood in her mother's veins. +</P> + +<P> +Mother cried when Mary Alice told her the Secret. "Oh, it's true! it's +true!" she said. "If only everybody could know it, what a different +world this would be!" +</P> + +<P> +And as for the—Other! When Mary Alice told her mother about him and +what his coming into her life and his going out of it had meant, Mother +just held her girl close and could not speak. +</P> + +<P> +The precious month flew by on wings as of the wind. Mary Alice was +"the town wonder," as her brother Johnny said, and she enjoyed that as +only a girl who has been the town wall-flower can; but after all, +everything was as nothing compared with Mother and the exultation that +had so evidently come into her life because out of her love and pain +and sacrifice a soul had come into the world to draw so richly from the +treasures of other hearts and to give so richly back again. There is +no triumph like it, as Mary Alice would perhaps know, some day. A +mother's purest happiness is very like God's own. +</P> + +<P> +But at last the sailing date was close at hand. Mary Alice's heart was +heavy and glad together. "If I could only take you!" she whispered to +her mother. +</P> + +<P> +Mother shook her head. "I wouldn't go and leave your father and the +children," she said. "You go and enjoy it all for me. I like it +better that way." +</P> + +<P> +And so, once more Mary Alice smiled through tear-filled eyes at the +dear faces on the station platform, and was gone again into the big +world beyond her home. But this time what a different girl it was who +went! +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +X +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE OLD WORLD AND THE KING +</H3> + + +<P> +They had an unusually delightful voyage. The weather was perfection +and their fellow-voyagers included many persons interesting to talk +with and many others interesting to observe and speculate about. +</P> + +<P> +One particularly charming experience came to Mary Alice through the +Captain's appreciation of her eagerness. Godmother had taught her to +love the stars. As well as they could, in New York where, to most +people, only scraps of sky are visible at a time, they had been wont to +watch with keen interest for the nightly appearance of stars they could +see from their windows or from the streets as they went to and fro. +And when they got aboard ship and had the whole sky to look at, they +revelled in their night hours on the deck, and in picking out the +constellations and their "bright, particular stars." This led the +Captain to tell Mary Alice something of the stars as the sailors' +friends; and she had one of the most memorable evenings of her life +when he explained to her something of the science of navigation and +made her see how their great greyhound of the ocean, just like the +first frail barks of the Tyrians, picked its way across trackless +wastes of sea by the infallible guidance of "the friendly stars." All +this particularly interested Mary Alice because of Some One who lived +much in the open and spent many and many a night on the broad deserts, +looking up at the stars. +</P> + +<P> +They landed at Naples, and lingered a fortnight in that lovely +vicinity; then, up to Rome, to Florence and Venice, to Milan and the +Italian Lakes, through Switzerland into France, and so to Paris. +Godmother had once spent a winter at Capri; she had spent several +winters in Florence. She knew Venice well. She had hosts of dear, +familiar things to show Mary Alice in each place. +</P> + +<P> +At last they came to Paris. Godmother lamented that it was in July +they came; but Mary Alice, who had no recollections of Paris in April +and May, found nothing to lament. They stayed more than a month—and +made a number of the enchanting little journeys which can be made out +of Paris forever and ever without repeating, it seems. +</P> + +<P> +Then, with a trunk in which were two "really, truly" Paris +dresses—very, very modest ones, to be sure, but unmistakably touched +with Parisian chic—and a mind in which were hundreds of wonderful +Paris memories, Mary Alice crossed to England. They went at once to +London where, it seemed to Mary Alice, she must stay forever, to be +satisfied. Godmother had hosts of charming friends in London, even +beyond what she had in Italy and France; but for the first fortnight +she gave up her time entirely to Mary Alice's sightseeing. By and by +her friends began to find out she was there and to clamour insistently +for her. And as the exodus from town was as complete as it ever gets, +most of the invitations were from the country. So that Mary Alice +began to see something of that English country-house life she had read +so much about, and to meet personages whose names filled her with +awe—until she remembered the Secret. And thus she came to the Great +Event of her life. +</P> + +<P> +Godmother had what Mary Alice called "a duchess friend" of whom she was +very, very fond. The Duchess was a woman about Godmother's age, and +quite as lovely to look at as a duchess should be. She was mistress of +many and vast estates, and wore—on occasions—a coronet of diamonds +and strings of pearls "worth a king's ransom," just like a duchess in a +story. But she seemed to Mary Alice to have hardly the mildest +interest in the jewels she wore and the palaces she lived in; Mary +Alice found it hard to bear in mind that to the Duchess these were just +as matter-of-fact, as usual, as unvariable, as the home sitting-room +and the "good" hat had once been to Mary Alice. And like Mary Alice, +the Duchess found her happiness in reaching out for something new and +different. The Duchess liked the world that Godmother lived in—the +world of Godmother's lovely mind; and she loved Godmother's +companionship. +</P> + +<P> +That was how it came about that Mary Alice found herself very often in +exalted society. The exalted personages did not notice her much; but +every once in a while, by remembering the Secret, she got on happy +terms with some of them. +</P> + +<P> +And at last a very unusual thing happened. The King was coming to +honour the Duke and Duchess with a visit; coming to see one of those +ancient and glorious estates the like of which no king owns, and which +are the pride of all the kingdom. Many sovereigns had stayed at this +splendid old place on England's south coast—a place as famous for its +beauty as for its six hundred years of history; so it was no unusual +thing for it to house a king. The unusual part of it all was Mary +Alice being there. By the King's permission a wonderful house party +was asked to meet him. Godmother couldn't be asked; she had never been +presented, and the King was unaware of her existence. The Duchess +would not have dared to present Godmother's name on the list submitted +to the King. Much less, therefore, would she have dared to present +Mary Alice's. "But——!" said the Duchess, and went on to unfold a +plan. +</P> + +<P> +If Mary Alice would not mind staying on with the Duchess while +Godmother paid another visit; and if she would not mind having a room +somewhere in a remote wing; and would not mind not being asked to +mingle with the party in any way, she might see something of such +sights as perhaps she would never be able to see otherwise. Mary Alice +was delighted partly because she wanted to see the sights and partly +because the thought of going away from this wonderful place made her +heart ache. So she was moved out of the fine guest suite she and +Godmother had been lodged in, and over to a room in a far wing of the +vast house. From this wing one could look down on to the terraces for +which the love and genius of none other than quaint John +Evelyn—greatest of England's Garden Philosophers—were responsible. +To these terraces the guests would certainly come, and to the +world-famous rose garden into which also Mary Alice could look from her +window in the far wing. But even if she were to see no royalty, she +was grateful for the privilege of staying on a few days longer in this +Paradise by the sea. And not the least delight of her new quarters was +that they were high enough up so that from them she could overlook the +sheltering Ilex-trees which made these marvellous gardens possible so +close to the shore, and see the Channel ships a-sailing—three-masted +schooners laden with wood; fishing-smacks; London barges with their +picturesque red sails bellying in the wind; and an occasional ocean +liner trailing its black smoke across the horizon. What with the sea +and the gardens and the rich history of the place, Mary Alice felt that +she could never tire of it, even if she did not see the King. But it +would be delightful to see him, too. Some day the history of this +splendid old place would include this royal visit; and Mary Alice, who +had read of other such occasions and wished she might have been a mouse +in a corner to witness them—as, for instance, when Queen Elizabeth was +here—now felt the thrill of having that wish come true, in a way; and +so far from feeling "set aside" or slighted, liked her window in the +wing and her participation in the party above any other she might have +had. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice dined, the first night of the house party, with the +Duchess's older children, and then went back to her room to sit at the +window and look down on the terraces where, after a while, some of the +men guests came to smoke. +</P> + +<P> +It was late, but the twilight still lingered. Mary Alice could not +tell who many of the men were, but she could see the King and she +watched him interestedly as he paced up and down. She had been told +how no one must speak to a king until the king has first spoken to him; +and she felt that at best it must be a dreary business—being a king. +</P> + +<P> +Presently, though, in the thickening shadows she saw a form that made +her heart stand still. <I>Could it be</I>? She was probably +mistaken—madly mistaken—but something in the way a man down there +carried himself made her think of Godmother's little drawing-room in +far-off New York and a man who was "playing the game." But the King +was talking to this man—talking most interestedly, it seemed. She +<I>must</I> be mistaken! +</P> + +<P> +Nevertheless, when the men had all gone in, she put on a white shawl +and slipped down on to the terrace. She felt as if she must know; and +of course she couldn't ask, for she did not know his name. +</P> + +<P> +The terraces were deserted, and she paced up and down undisturbed, +trying to assure herself that Godmother would probably have known if he +were in England—his last letter had been from the Far East—and +especially if he were coming here. There were times, as she reminded +herself, when she was continually seeing him; out of every crowd, +suddenly his tall form would seem to emerge; in the loneliness of quiet +places, as by miracle he would seem to be where a moment ago she knew +there was no one. Then a sense of separation would intervene, and for +days she would be given over to the belief that she was never to see +him again. To-night was doubtless just one of the times when, for no +reason that she could understand, he seemed physically near to her. +</P> + +<P> +She was standing very still in the shadow of an ivy-grown pillar, +looking up at the Pole star and wondering if he in his wanderings might +not be looking at it too, when a man's voice close beside her made her +jump. It was an unfamiliar voice. "Star-gazing?" it said, pleasantly. +She turned, and recognized the King. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Your Majesty," she answered. At first she thought she was going +to be frightened. Then she remembered the Secret, and before she knew +it she was deep in conversation with the King. +</P> + +<P> +As she talked, a puzzled expression she could not see came into the +King's face. He had a wonderful memory for names, a memory which +seldom failed him; but he couldn't place this girl. And it was dark, +too, so he couldn't see her. But he liked to hear her talk. She had +that rare thing, in his experience, a fresh, sweet view-point. The +bloom of enchantment was still on life for her, and as he drew her out, +he found that she was refreshing him as nothing had done for a weary +while. +</P> + +<P> +Then, kingly obligation called him indoors to join the throng whose +everlasting sameness palled on him almost unendurably. Something he +said made Mary Alice feel this—made her see, as in a flash, a girl who +had gone home, once, from a party and wept because life was so dull. +She was sorry for the King! +</P> + +<P> +"I seldom forget a name," he said, "but I—before we go in, won't you +please remind me of yours?" +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice laughed. "Your Majesty has never heard my name," she said, +"and I can't go in; I'm not of the party." And she explained. +</P> + +<P> +"I see," he said. "I shall have to thank the Duchess. I have had a +most refreshing quarter of an hour." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm glad," said Mary Alice, simply. "I felt afraid, at first—as +nearly everybody does, I suppose. And then I thought how dreadful that +must be—to have every one afraid of you, when you're really a very +nice, gentle person—I mean——! Well, I guess Your Majesty knows what +I mean. And then I remembered my Secret——" +</P> + +<P> +"Secret?" +</P> + +<P> +And so, of course, she had to tell. It was rather a long story, hurry +as she would, because the King interrupted with so many questions. +But she wouldn't tell what the Secret was until "the very last thing." +</P> + +<P> +"Um," said the King, when she had finally divulged it. That was all he +said; but the way he said it made Mary Alice know that the Secret was +right. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A MEETING AND A PARTING +</H3> + + +<P> +The next day was full of activities which kept the house guests far +afield. But Mary Alice had an exciting day at home; for the King had +spoken to the Duchess about her and asked to have her presented to him +that evening. +</P> + +<P> +The Duke and Duchess had spent a fortune on the entertainment of their +King; had provided for his beguiling every costly diversion that could +be thought of. But they had not been able to give him anything new, +and they felt that he was enduring the visit amiably rather than +actually enjoying it. It remained, apparently, for the Girl from +Nowhere to give him real pleasure. +</P> + +<P> +So the Duchess—secretly sympathetic—left orders with her French maid +that Mary Alice was to be made ready to see the King. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice chose the simplest thing that rigorous French maid would +allow and kept as close as possible to her own individual and +unpretending style. But even then, she was a pretty resplendent young +person as she stole timidly down to find the Duchess and be presented +to the King. +</P> + +<P> +The guests were assembled in the great drawing-room, and Mary Alice was +frightened almost to death when she saw the splendour of the scene and +realized what part she had to play in it. +</P> + +<P> +Then, in a daze, she was swept forward and presented, and found herself +looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness. So she +smiled back again, and soon forgot the onlookers, answering His +Majesty's kindly questions. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-102"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-102.jpg" ALT=""…found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness."" BORDER="2" WIDTH="330" HEIGHT="619"> +<H4> +[Illustration: "…found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness."] +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +He turned from her, presently, to speak to some one else, and Mary +Alice caught sight then of a face she knew. For an instant, she stood +staring. For an instant, he stood staring back, as unbelieving as she. +</P> + +<P> +Then, "You seem to be on friendly terms with His Majesty," he said. +"Have you showed him how to play the game, too?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," Mary Alice answered, "but I've told him the Secret." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +As soon as they could, they escaped—those two—out on to the terrace +where the stars were shining thickly overhead. +</P> + +<P> +"On one of those—those times in New York when we talked together," he +said, "you told me that when something very marvellous had happened to +you and you couldn't believe you were awake, that it was really true, +you asked your Godmother to pinch you. It—er, wouldn't be at all +proper for me to ask you to please pinch me. But if you know any +perfectly proper equivalent, I wish you'd do it." +</P> + +<P> +"I've pinched myself," she returned, "and it seems I am awake. So I +judge you must be, too." +</P> + +<P> +"Then how, please——?" +</P> + +<P> +And she told him. +</P> + +<P> +"And you don't know yet who I am?" +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +So he told her. "I warned you it was nothing interesting," he said; +"it is just my work that people are interested in. I don't belong in +there," indicating the great house, "any more than you do. They like +me for a novelty, because I've dared and suffered; and because, as +things turned out, I was in a position to do what they are pleased to +call a great service to the Empire. I wish I liked them better—they +want to be very kind to me, and I was born of them, so they like me the +better for that. But I've been in the wilderness too much—I can't get +used to these strange folk at home." +</P> + +<P> +"I used to think I couldn't get used to strange folk," Mary Alice +murmured, "but I seem to have got on fairly well for a girl from +Nowhere." +</P> + +<P> +"Was it the Secret?" +</P> + +<P> +She nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"When may I know?" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I can't tell." +</P> + +<P> +"You told the King." +</P> + +<P> +"He seemed to need it so." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't I need it?" +</P> + +<P> +"I—I can't tell." +</P> + +<P> +He seemed discouraged, and as if he did not know what next to say. +They strolled in silence over to where she had been standing the night +before when the King spoke to her. From within the great house came +the entrancingly sweet song of a world-famous soprano engaged to pour +her liquid notes before the King. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice stood very still, drinking it in. When it ceased, she stole +a look up at the bronzed face beside her; the light from a window in +her far wing of the house fell full on that rugged face, and it looked +very stern but also very sad. Mary Alice's heart, which had been +exultant only a short while ago, began suddenly—in one of those +strange revulsions which all hearts know—to ache indefinably. This +hour would probably be like those other brief hours in which he had +shared her life. To-morrow, or next day, he would be gone; and forever +and forever the memory of these moments on the terrace, with the stars +overhead and that exquisite song in their ears, would be coming back to +taunt her unbearably. +</P> + +<P> +She made up her mind that before he went out of her life again, she +would tell him the Secret; so that at least, wherever he went, however +far from him the rest of her way through life might lie, they would +always have that thought in common; and whenever it came to help him, +as it must, he would think of her. +</P> + +<P> +Timidly she laid a hand upon his arm. He had been far away, following +the trail of long, long thoughts, and her touch recalled him sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I want to tell you the Secret." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think I want to know," he answered, rather shortly. +</P> + +<P> +"Why—why——" Mary Alice faltered. Her lips quivered and her eyes +began to fill. "I—I must go in," she said. +</P> + +<P> +He put out a hand to detain her, but either she did not see it in the +dark, or else she eluded it; for in a moment she was gone, across the +terrace towards the lighted French windows of the rooms of state. +</P> + +<P> +How she managed to get through those next few minutes until she could +find the Duchess and ask to be excused, Mary Alice never knew. All of +her that was capable of feeling or caring about anything seemed to have +left this part of her that wore the Duchess's lovely white gown and +scarf of silver tissue, and to be out on the dark terrace under the +pale star beams, with a tall young man who spoke bitterly. This girl +in the sheen of white and silver to whom the King was speaking kindly, +was some one unreal and ghostly who acted like a real live girl, but +was not. +</P> + +<P> +As she hurried along the great corridors towards her room in the far +wing, Mary Alice felt that she could hardly wait to get off these +trappings of state; to get back to her old simple self again and bury +her head in her pillow and cry and cry. She wished with all her heart +for Godmother. But most of all she was sick for home, for Mother, and +the unchanging sitting-room. +</P> + +<P> +"He" had seemed disappointed to find her here. And she——? Well! she +was sorry she had seen him. In New York, where she had not even known +his name, he had seemed to belong to her, in a way, by right of their +common sympathy and understanding. Here, among all these people who +were his people, who delighted to honour him, he seemed completely lost +to her.… +</P> + +<P> +After a weary while, Mary Alice got up and sat by the window, looking +across to the main part of the great house and wondering which of the +darkened windows was his and if he had dismissed her easily from his +mind and gone comfortably to sleep. The early dawn breeze was blowing +from the sea when she dozed into a brief, dream-troubled sleep. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +XII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AT OCEAN'S EDGE +</H3> + + +<P> +Only the gardeners and a few of the house servants were about when she +went down-stairs, through the still house and out on to the terraces, +towards the sea. She had hung the white and silver finery carefully +away, glad to feel so far divorced from it and all it represented as +she did in her gown of unbleached linen crash which she and Godmother +had made. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm like Cinderella," she reminded herself as she buttoned the crash +gown, "Godmother and all. Only, her prince loved her when he saw her +in her finery, and mine despised me. I suppose he thought I was a +silly little 'climber' trying to get out of the chimney-corner where I +belong. But I think he owed it to me to let me explain." +</P> + +<P> +There was a cove on the shore whose shelter she particularly loved; and +she was going thither now, as these bitter reflections filled her mind. +The tide was ebbing, but the thin, slowly-widening line of beach was +wet and she had to pick her way carefully. She was so mindful of her +steps and, under all her mindfulness, so conscious of the ache in her +heart, that she was not noticing much else than the way to pick her +steps; and she had rounded the rocky corner of the cove and was far +into her favoured little nook, when she saw that it was occupied. A +man sat back in its deepest shelter, looking out to sea. He started +when he saw her, and she looked back as if calculating a flight. +</P> + +<P> +"Please don't go," he begged, rising to greet her. "I was unpardonably +rude to you last night and it has made me very wretched. You have no +right to pardon me, but I hope you won't go away without letting me +tell you how sorry I am." +</P> + +<P> +"I—it was nothing—I pardon you—I think I understand," said Mary +Alice, weakly. +</P> + +<P> +He shook his head. "How could you—who are so gentle—understand?" +Mary Alice looked about to protest, but he silenced her with a +commanding gesture. "I've been so much with savages that I've grown +savage in my own ways, it seems. But—it was like this: You taught me +a game, once. It was a charming game and I was glad to learn. But we +could play it only twice, and then I had to go away. And after I went +I—I was always missing the game, always wanting to play again. At +what you called 'candle-lightin' time,' wherever I was—in strange +drawing-rooms, on rushing express trains, on ships plowing the seas, +sitting about camp-fires in the wilderness—I'd always seem to see that +little, dim-lit room in your New York, and you kneeling beside me on +the hearth-rug, with the firelight on your face and hair. I've always +been a lonely chap; but after that I was lonelier than ever; I used to +think I couldn't bear it. Then last night—how shall I tell you how I +felt? I've comforted myself, before, with the dream that some day I +might get back to New York, to that little room at candle-lightin' +time, and find you again, and forget everything in all the world but +that you were there and I was with you, kneeling on the hearth-rug and +making toast for tea. And when I saw you, all white and silver +glitter, talking to the King—the dream was gone. There wasn't any +girl on the hearth-rug in New York; there was only another girl of the +kind that always makes me feel so strange, so ill at ease. It was only +night before last that I learned I am to go away again directly, to the +Far East, for the Government; and I was so happy, for I thought I'd go +the westward way and see you again in New York. Then, suddenly, I +realized that you were gone—not merely from New York, but from the +dream. And I was surprised into rudeness. That's all. But <I>please</I> +forgive me!" +</P> + +<P> +"I told you I understood," said Mary Alice, "and in a way I did—not +that the—the dream as you call it meant so much to you, but that you +were disappointed to find Cinderella come out of her chimney corner and +talking to the King. I know that when we have a person definitely +placed in our minds, we don't like to have him bob up suddenly in quite +another quarter and in what seems like quite another character." +</P> + +<P> +"Not if that person has been a kind of—of lode-star to you, and you +have been steering your course by—by her," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Alice flushed. "Now I think you ought to let <I>me</I> tell," she +began, with downcast eyes. And so she told: how she had come there, +and how she had stayed, like the little mouse under the Queen's chair, +and how glad she was to have seen from a distance a little of this +splendour and great society, and how gladder still to hang her borrowed +white and silver away and be done with it and all it stood for and go +back to her gown of crash and her chimney-corner place in life, "which +I can now see," she added "is the place for dreams and sweet +companionship." +</P> + +<P> +"And when I get back, will you be there?" he cried, eagerly. +</P> + +<P> +"When you get back I will be there," she promised. +</P> + +<P> +After that they sat and talked for long and long, while the blue sea +sparkled in the summer morning sun. When, at length, they rose to go, +there was a light that never shone on land or sea in his face and in +hers. There had been no further promises; only that one: "When you get +back I will be there." But each heart understood the other, and she +rejoiced to wait further declaration of his love until he could, +according to his tender fancy, make it to her as in his "dream come +true." +</P> + +<P> +On the beach as they strolled back, it was her eyes—shining with a +soft, new radiance—that first caught sight of something; her fancy +that first grasped its significance. "Look!" she cried. In a +bowl-like hollow of a big brown rock, the receding tide had left a +little pool of sea-water. "It's left behind—this bit of the infinite, +unresting sea!" she said. "Who knows what far, far shores it's come +from? And now, here it is, and the great mother-sea's gone off and +left it." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled tenderly at her sweet whimsy. "The great mother-sea will +come back for it at sundown," he reminded her. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes—yes"—perhaps it was the coming separation between the two that +made her voice quaver so sympathetically—"the Infinite always comes +back for us. But we don't always remember that it will! This is such +a little bit of the great sea. Maybe it never was left alone before; +maybe it doesn't know how surely the waters that left it behind will +come back for it this evening. Maybe it's—it's lonesome. I—I think +I know how it feels." +</P> + +<P> +"And I," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Next time you feel that way will you remember this brown rock and the +tide that is so surely coming back tonight?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Indeed I will," he told her. +</P> + +<P> +"And so will I," she went on. "And I'll try to remember, too, that +perhaps it was put here for us to see and think of when we need +encouragement—just as, I dare say, we are left behind, sometimes, so +that other lonely folk may see us and be reminded that——" She +stopped. +</P> + +<P> +"That what?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Why!" she cried, "it's the Secret! The more you live, the more +everything helps you to believe the Secret and to feel the brotherhood +it brings." +</P> + +<P> +He looked guilty. "I don't deserve to know the Secret," he said, +"after last night. But——" +</P> + +<P> +"But I am going to tell you," she declared, "so when you're far away +from what you love most, or when you're with people you think are +different from you and do not understand, you can remember——" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" eagerly. +</P> + +<P> +"Just remember—and you've no idea how it helps until you've +tried—that <I>everybody's lonesome</I>. That's the Secret." +</P> + +<P> +</P> + +<P> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Everybody's Lonesome, by Clara E. 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Laughlin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Everybody's Lonesome + A True Fairy Story + +Author: Clara E. Laughlin + +Illustrator: A. I. Keller + +Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #17507] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERYBODY'S LONESOME *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: "Both wanted to toast, and they took turns."] + + + + + + +Everybody's Lonesome + +A True Fairy Story + + +By + +CLARA E. LAUGHLIN + + + + +Author of "Evolution of a Girl's Ideal," "The Lady in Gray," etc. + + + + +Illustrated by + +A. I. KELLER. + + + + + +New York Chicago Toronto + +Fleming H. Revell Company + +London and Edinburgh + + + + +Copyright, 1910, by + +FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY + + + + +To + +Mabel Tallaferro, + +The Faery Child + + + + +CONTENTS + + I. DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE + II. YOUR OWN IS WAITING + III. FINDING THE FIRST FAIRY + IV. BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN + V. GOING TO THE PARTY + VI. THE "LION" OF THE EVENING + VII. AT CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME + VIII. LEARNING TO BE BRAVE AND SWEET + IX. TELLING THE SECRET TO MOTHER + X. THE OLD WORLD AND THE KING + XI. A MEETING AND A PARTING + XII. AT OCEAN'S EDGE + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + "BOTH WANTED TO TOAST, AND THEY TOOK + TURNS" . . . . . . _Title_ + + ". . . . FOUND HERSELF LOOKING INTO EYES + THAT SMILED AS WITH AN OLD FRIENDLINESS" + + + + +Everybody's Lonesome + + +I + +DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE + +Mary Alice came home quietly from the party. Most of the doors in the +house were closed, because it was cold, and the halls were hard to +heat. Mary Alice knew exactly what she should see and hear if she +opened that door at her right as she entered the house, and went into +the sitting-room. There was a soft-coal fire in the small, +old-fashioned grate under the old, old-fashioned white marble mantel. +Dozing--always dozing--on the hearth-rug, at a comfortable distance +from the fire, was Herod, the big yellow cat. In the centre of the +room, under the chandelier, was a table, with a cover of her mother's +fancy working, and a drop-light with a green shade. By the unbecoming +light of this, her mother was sewing. What day was this? Tuesday! +She was mending stockings. Mary Alice could see it all. She had been +seeing it for twenty years during which nothing--it seemed to her--had +changed, except herself. If she went in there now, her mother would +ask her the same questions she always asked: "Did you have a nice +time?" "Who was there?" "Anybody have on anything new?" "What +refreshments did they serve?" + +Mary Alice was tired of it all--heartsick with weariness of it--and she +stole softly past that closed sitting-room door and up, through the +chilly halls where she could see her own breath, to her room. + +She did not light the gas, but took off in the dark her "good" hat and +her "best" gloves and her long black cloth coat of an ugly +"store-bought" cut, which was her best and worst. Then, in an abandon +of grief which bespoke real desperation in a careful girl like Mary +Alice, she threw herself on her bed--without taking off her "good" +dress--and buried her head in a pillow, and _hated everything_. + +It is hard to be disappointed in love, but after all it is a rather +splendid misery in which one may have a sense of kinship with earth's +greatest and best; and it has its hopes, its consolations. There is +often the hope that this love may return; and, though we never admit +it, there is always--deep down--the consolation of believing that +another and a better may come. + +But to be disappointed in the love of life is not a splendid misery. +And Mary Alice was disappointed in her love of life. To be twenty, and +not to believe in the fairies of Romance; to be twenty and, instead of +the rosy dreams you've had, to see life stretching on and on before +you, an endless, uninspired humdrum like mother's, darning stockings by +the sitting-room fire--that is bitterness indeed. + +Hardship isn't anything--while you believe in life. Stiff toil and +scant fare are nothing--while you expect to meet at any turning the +Enchanter with your fortune in his hands. But to be twenty and not to +believe----! + +Mary Alice had never had much, except the wonderful heart of youth, to +feed her faith with. She wasn't pretty and she wasn't clever and she +had no accomplishments. Her people were "plain" and perpetually +"pinched" in circumstance. And her life, in this small town where she +lived, was very narrow. + +In the mornings, Mary Alice helped her mother with the housework. In +the afternoons, after the midday dinner was cleared away, Mary Alice +had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed--made new +clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while she +took some fancy work and went to see a girl friend, or a girl friend +brought some fancy work and came to see her. Occasionally she and +another girl went for a walk. Semi-occasionally there was a church +social or a sewing circle luncheon, or somebody gave a party. + +Somebody had given a party to-day, and Mary Alice had gone to it with +high hope of finding it "interesting" and had come away from it with a +deep despair of ever finding in life that which would make the monotony +of it worth while. + +Many another girl, feeling as Mary Alice did, would have gone away from +home seeking "life" in a big city. But Mary Alice, besides having no +qualifications for earning her way in a big city, had a most unhappy +shyness. She was literally afraid of strangers, and never got very +well acquainted even with persons she had associated with for a long +time. + +At the party to-day--it was an afternoon tea--Mary Alice had been more +bitterly conscious than ever before of her lack of charms and the bleak +prospect that lack entailed upon her. For the tea was given for a girl +who was visiting in town, a girl of a sort Mary Alice had never seen +before. She was pretty, that visiting girl, and she was sweet; she had +a charm that was irresistible; she seemed to like everybody, and there +was no mistake about everybody liking her. Even the town girls liked +her and were not jealous. Even Mary Alice liked her, and was not +afraid of her. But there she was--that girl!--vital, radiant, an +example of what life might be, at twenty. And Mary Alice came away +hating as she had never done before, life as it was for her and as it +promised to continue. + +Presently she withdrew her head from the pillow and lay looking into +the dark where, as we all know, the things that might be, that should +have been, shape themselves so much more readily than in any light. +And, lying there, Mary Alice wondered if there were any fairy power on +earth that could make of her a being half so sweet as that girl she had +seen this afternoon. + +Then she heard her mother open the sitting-room door and call her. It +was time to get their simple supper ready. + +"In a minute!" she called back. "I'm changing my dress." And she +jerked at the hooks of her blue taffeta "jumper dress" with uncareful +haste; bathed her face in cold water; put on her dark red serge which +had been "good" last year; and went down-stairs to help her mother. + +She could see it all as she went--all she was to do. There was the +threadbare blanket they used for a silence cloth, and the table-cloth +with the red stain by Johnny's place where he had spilled cranberry +jelly the night before last, when the cloth was "span clean." There +were the places to set, as always, with the same old dishes and the +same old knives and forks; and with the mechanical precision born of +long practice she would rightly place, without half looking at them, +the various napkins each in its slightly different wooden ring. The +utmost variety that she could hope for would be hot gingerbread instead +of the last of Sunday's layer-cake, and maybe frizzled beef, since they +had finished Sunday's roast in a meat pie this noon. + +"I didn't hear you come in," said her mother as Mary Alice opened the +sitting-room door, "and I was listening for you." + +"I went right up-stairs to change my things," said Mary Alice, hoping +that would end the matter. + +"That's what I knew you must have done when it got to be six o'clock +and I didn't hear you. I could hardly wait for you to come. I've such +a surprise for you." + +Mary Alice could hardly believe her ears. "A surprise?" she echoed, +incredulously. + +"Yes. I got a letter this afternoon from your dear godmother." + +"Oh!" Mary Alice's tone said plainly: Is that all? She had her own +opinion of her godmother, whom she had not seen since she was a small +child, and it was not an enthusiastic one. Her name--which she +hated--was her godmother's name. And aside from that, all she had ever +got from her godmother was an occasional letter and, on Christmas and +birthdays, a handkerchief or turnover collar or some other such trifle +as could come in an envelope from Europe where her godmother lived. + +Even in the matter of a godmother, it seemed, it was Mary Alice's luck +to have one without any of the fairy powers. For although Mary Alice's +mother had dearly loved, in her girlhood, that friend for whom she had +called her first baby, she had always to admit, to Mary Alice's eager +questioning, that the friend was neither beautiful nor rich nor gifted. +She was a "spinster person" and years ago some well-to-do friend had +taken her abroad for company. And there she had stayed; while the +friend of her girlhood, whose baby was called for her, heard from her +but desultorily. + +"Your godmother has come back," said Mary Alice's mother, her voice +trembling with excitement; "she's in New York. And she wants you to +come and see her." + +For a moment, visions swam before Mary Alice's eyes. Then, "How kind +of her!" she said, bitterly; and turned away. + +Her mother understood. "She's sent a check!" she cried, waving it. + + +After that, until Mary Alice went, it was nothing but talk of clothes +and other ways and means. Just what the present circumstances of +Godmother were, they could not even conjecture; but they were probably +not very different than before, or she would have said something about +them. And the check she sent covered travelling expenses only. Nor +did she write: Never mind about clothes; we will take care of those +when she gets here. + +"I haven't the least idea what kind of a time you'll have," Mary +Alice's mother said, "but you mustn't expect many parties or much young +society. Your godmother has been abroad so long, she can't have many +acquaintances in this country now. But you'll see New York--the crowds +and the shops and the great hotels and the places of historic interest. +And even if you don't meet many people, you'll probably have a very +interesting time." + +"I don't care about people, anyway," returned Mary Alice. + +Her mother looked distressed. "I wouldn't say that, if I were you," +she advised. "Because you _want_ to care about people--you _must_! +Sights are beguiling, but they're never satisfying. We all have to +depend on people for our happiness--for love." + +"Then I'll never be happy, I guess," said Mary Alice. + +"I'm afraid, sometimes, that you've started out not to be," her mother +answered, gravely, "but we'll hope for the best." + + + + +II + +YOUR OWN IS WAITING + +Mary Alice dreaded to meet her godmother. The excitement of getting +away was all very well. But once she was alone in the Pullman, and the +friendly faces on the station platform were left behind, she began to +think apprehensively of what she was going to. She was sure to feel +"strange" with her godmother, and there was at least a pretty good +chance that she might actually dislike her. Also, there was every +reason to doubt if her godmother would like Mary Alice. Mary Alice had +several times met persons who had "been to Europe," and she had never +liked them; their conversation was all about things she did not know, +and larded with phrases she could not understand. Those years in +Europe made her doubly dread her godmother. + +But the minute she saw her godmother at the Grand Central Station, she +liked her; and before they had got home, in the Fourth Avenue car, she +liked her very much; and when she lay dozing off to sleep, that first +night in New York, she was blissfully conscious that she loved her +godmother. + +Godmother lived in an apartment in Gramercy Park. It was an +old-fashioned apartment, occupying one floor of what had once been a +handsome dwelling of the tall "chimney" type common in New York. All +around the Square were the homes of notable persons, and clubs +frequented by famous men. Godmother was to point these out in the +morning; but this evening, before dinner was served, while she and Mary +Alice were standing in the window of her charming drawing-room, she +showed which was The Players, and indicated the windows of the room +where Edwin Booth died. It seemed that she had known Edwin Booth quite +well when she was a girl, and had some beautiful stories of his +kindness and his shyness to tell. + +Mary Alice was surprised and delighted, and she looked over at the +windows with eager, shining eyes. "He must have been wonderful to +know," she said. "Do you suppose there are many other great people +like that?" + +"A good many, I should say," her godmother replied. And as they sat at +dinner, served by Godmother's neat maid-of-all-work, it "kind o' came +out," as Mary Alice would have said, how many delightful people +Godmother had counted among her friends. + +"You've had a beautiful time, all your life, haven't you?" Mary Alice +commented admiringly, when they were back in the cozy drawing-room and +Godmother was serving coffee from the copper percolator. + +"Not all my life, but most of it--yes," said Godmother. "It took me +some time to find the talisman, the charm, the secret--or whatever you +want to call it--of having a happy time." + +"But you found it?" + +Godmother flushed as if she were a little bit embarrassed. "Well," she +said, "I found one--at last--that worked, for me." + +"I wish I could find one," sighed Mary Alice, wistfully. + +"I'm going to try to give you mine," said Godmother, "or at least to +share it with you. And all I ask of you is, that if it 'works' for +you, you'll pass it on to some one else." + +"Oh, I will!" cried Mary Alice. "What is it?" + +"Wait a minute! I have to tell you about me, first--so you'll +understand." + +"Please do!" urged Mary Alice. "I'd love to hear." + +"Well, you see, when the invitations to my christening were sent out, +my folks forgot the fairies, I guess. And as I grew up, I found that I +hadn't been gifted with wealth or beauty or talents or charm----" + +"I know," Mary Alice broke in. + +Godmother looked surprised. + +"I mean, I know how that feels," Mary Alice explained. + +"Then you know I was pretty unhappy until--something happened. I met a +charming woman, once, who was so sweet and sympathetic that my heart +just opened to her as flowers to sunshine; and I told her how I felt. +'Well, that _was_ an oversight!' she said, 'but you know what to do +about it, don't you?' I said I didn't. 'Why!' she said, 'the fairies +had their gifts all ready to bring, and when they were not invited to +the party, what would they naturally do?' 'Give them to some one +else!' I cried. I shall never forget how reproachfully she looked at +me. 'That is a purely human trick!' she said; 'fairies are never +guilty of it. When they have something for you, they keep it for you +till you get it. If they were not asked to your party, it's your +business to hunt them out and get your gifts. Somewhere in the world +your own is waiting for you.' That was a magic thought: Somewhere in +the world your own is waiting for you. I couldn't get away from it; it +filled my mind, waking and asleep. And I set out to find if it was +true." + +"And _was_ it?" + +"Well, it must have been. For I've found some of my own, surely, and I +believe I shall find more. And oh! the joy it is to look and look, +believing that you will surely find. I haven't found wealth, nor +beauty, nor accomplishments--perhaps I didn't look in the right places +for any of those--but I've found something I wouldn't trade for all the +others. It is all I have to bequeath you, dear. But the beautiful +part of this bequest is, I don't have to die to enrich you with it, nor +do I have to impoverish myself to give it away. I just whisper +something in your ear--and then you go and see if it isn't so." + +"Whisper it now, please," begged Mary Alice, going over to her +godmother and putting her ear close. + +"Oh, no," said Godmother, kissing Mary Alice's ear, "this isn't the +time at all. And it's _fatal_ to tell till the right time comes." + +And no teasing would avail to make her change her mind. + + + + +III + +FINDING THE FIRST FAIRY + +The next few days were spent in sightseeing; and Mary Alice would never +have believed there could be any one so enchanting to see sights with +as Godmother. They looked in all the wonderful shop-windows and +"chose" what they would take from each if a fairy suddenly invited them +to take their choice. No fairy did; but they hardly noticed that. + +Then they'd go and "poke" in remnant boxes on the ends of counters in +the big department stores, and unearth bits of trimming and of lace +with which Godmother, who was clever with her needle and "full of +ideas," showed Mary Alice how to put quite transforming touches on her +clothes. + +They visited art galleries, and Godmother knew things about the +pictures that made them all fascinating. Instead of saying, +"Interesting composition, that!" or "This man was celebrated for his +chiaroscuro," Godmother was full of human stories of the struggles of +the painters and their faithfulness to ideals; and she could stand in +front of a canvas by almost any master, and talk to Mary Alice about +the painter and the conditions of his life and love and longing when he +painted this picture, in a way that made Mary Alice feel as if she'd +like to _shake_ the people who walked by with only an uninterested +glance; as if she'd like to bring them back and prod them into life, +and cry, "Don't you see? How _can_ you pass so carelessly what cost so +much in toil and tears?" + +Godmother had that kind of a viewpoint about everything, it seemed. +When they went to the theatre, she could tell Mary Alice--before the +curtain went up, and between the acts--such things about the actors and +the playwright and the manager, as made the play trebly interesting. + +On the East Side they visited some of the Settlements and "prowled" (as +Godmother loved to call it) around the teeming slums; and Godmother +knew such touching stories of the Old World conditions from which these +myriads of foreign folk had escaped, and of the pathos of their trust +in the New World, as kept Mary Alice's eyes bright and wet almost every +minute. + +One beautiful sunny afternoon they rode up on top of a Fifth Avenue +motor 'bus to 90th Street, and Godmother pointed out the houses of many +multi-millionaires. She knew things about many of them, too--sweet, +human, heart-touching things about their disappointments and +unsatisfied yearnings--which made one feel rather sorry for them than +envious of their splendours. + +Thus the days passed, and Mary Alice was so happy that--learning from +Godmother some of her pretty ways--she would go closer to that dear +lady, every once in a while, and say: "Pinch me, please--and see if I'm +awake; if it's really true." And Godmother always pinched her, +gravely, and appeared to be much relieved when Mary Alice cried "Ouch! +I _am_!" + +They didn't see anybody, except "from a distance" as they said, for +fully a week; they were so busy seeing sights and getting acquainted. +Every night when Godmother came to tuck Mary Alice in, they had the +dearest talks of all. And every night Mary Alice begged to be told the +Secret. But, "Oh, dear no! not yet!" Godmother would always say. + +One night, however, she said: "Well, if I'm not almost forgetting to +tell you!" + +Mary Alice jumped; that sounded like the Secret. But it +wasn't--although it was "leading up to it." + +"Tell me what?" she cried, excitedly. + +"Why, to-day I saw one of your fairies." + +"My what?" + +"Your fairies that you said were left out of your christening party." + +"You did! Where?" + +"I'll tell you that presently. But it seems, from what this fairy +said, that there are a great number of your fairies with gifts for you, +all waiting quite impatiently to be found. She says that it is +considered quite 'ordinary' now, to send all of a great gift by one +fairy--yes, and not at all safe. For if that one fairy should miss you +and you should not find her, you'd be left terribly unprovided for, you +see. So the gift is usually divided into many parts, and a different +fairy has each part. Now, the gift of beauty, for instance; she is one +of the fairies who has that gift for you." + +Mary Alice's eyes opened wide. Her belief in this wonderful Godmother +was such that she was almost prepared to see Godmother wave a wand and +command her to become beautiful--and then, on looking into a mirror, to +find that she was so. "What did she say?" she managed at last to gasp. + +"She said: 'Has she pretty hair?' And I answered, 'Yes.' 'Then,' the +fairy went on, 'the one who had that gift must have got to the +christening, somehow. Maybe the mother wished for her--and that is as +good as an invitation.'" + +"She did!" cried Mary Alice. "She's always said she watched me so +anxiously when I was a wee baby, hoping I'd have pretty hair." + +"Well, that's evidently how that fairy got to you. But it seems there +were two. This one I saw to-day says there are two beauties in 'most +everything--but especially in hair--one is in the thing itself and the +other is in knowing what to do with it. It seems she is the 'what to +do' fairy." + +And so she proved to be. For, when she came to luncheon next day, she +told Mary Alice how she had always been "a bit daft about hair." "When +I played with my dolls," she said, "I always cared much more for +combing their hair and doing it up with mother's 'invisible' pins, than +for dressing them. And it used to be the supreme reward for goodness +when I could take down my mother's beautiful hair and play with it for +half an hour. I'm always wanting to play with lovely hair. And when I +saw yours at the theatre the other evening, I couldn't rest until I'd +asked your godmother if she thought you'd let me play with it." + +So after luncheon they went into Mary Alice's room and wouldn't let +Godmother go with them. "Not at all!" said the "what to do fairy," +"you are the select audience. You go into the drawing-room and +'compose yourself.' When we're ready for you, we'll come out." + +Then, behind locked doors, with much delightful nonsense and +excitement, she divested Mary Alice's head of sundry awful rats and +puffs, combed out the bunches which Mary Alice wore in her really +lovely hair, brushed smooth the traces of the curling iron, and then +made Mary Alice shut her eyes and "hope to die" if she "peeked once." + +When permission to "peek" was given, Mary Alice didn't know herself. + +"There!" said the fairy, when the excitement of Godmother's delight had +subsided, "I've always said that the three most important beauty +fairies for a girl to find are the how-to-stand fairy, the how-to-dress +fairy, and the what-to-do-with-your-hair fairy. Anybody can find them +all; and nobody who has found them all needs to feel very bad if she +can't find some of the others who have her christening gifts." + +Mary Alice began looking for the others, right away. But even one +fairy had transformed her, outside, from an ordinary-looking girl into +a young woman with a look of remarkable distinction; just as Godmother +had transformed her, within, from a girl with a dreary outlook on life, +to one who found that + + "The world is so full of a number of things, + I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." + + +"Is this the Secret?" she asked Godmother, that night. + +"Oh, dear, no!" laughed Godmother, "only the first little step towards +realizing it." + + + + +IV + +BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN + +One day when Mary Alice had been in New York nearly two weeks--and had +found several fairies--Godmother was obliged to go out, in the +afternoon, to some sort of a committee meeting which would have been +quite uninteresting to an outsider. But Mary Alice had some sewing to +do--something like taking the ugly, ruffly sleeves of cheap white lace +out of her blue taffeta dress and substituting plain dark ones of net +dyed to match the silk; and she was glad to stay at home. + +"If an elderly gentleman comes in to call on me, late in the afternoon +but before I get back home," said Godmother, in departing, "ask him in +and be nice to him. He's a lonely body, and he'll probably be tired. +He works very hard." + +Mary Alice promised, and went happily to work on the new sleeves which +were to give her arms and shoulders something of an exquisite outline, +in keeping with the fairy way of doing her hair, which Godmother had +taught her to admire in a beautiful marble in the Metropolitan Museum. + +About five o'clock, when Godmother's neat little maid had just lighted +the lamps in the pretty drawing-room and replenished the open fire +which was one of the great compensations for the many drawbacks of +living in an old-fashioned house, the gentleman Godmother had expected +called. + +Mary Alice went in to see him, and explained who she was. He said he +had heard about her and was glad to make her acquaintance. + +He seemed quite tired, and Mary Alice asked him if he had been working +hard that day. + +"Yes," he said, "very hard." + +"Wouldn't you like a cup of tea?" she asked. And he said he would. + +When the tea came, he seemed to enjoy it so much that Mary Alice really +believed he was hungry. Indeed, he admitted that he was. "I haven't +had any luncheon," he said. + +Mary Alice's heart was touched; she forgot that the man was strange, +and remembered only that he was tired and hungry. + +The little maid brought thin slices of bread and butter with the tea. +Mary Alice felt they must seem absurd to a hungry man. "I know what's +lots nicer with tea," she said. + +"What?" he asked, interestedly. + +"Toast and marmalade," she answered. "I'm going to get some." And she +went to the kitchen, cut a plateful of toasting slices and brought them +back with a long toasting fork and a jar of orange marmalade. + +"At home," she said, "we often make the toast for supper at the +sitting-room fire, and it's _much_ nicer than 'gas range toast.'" + +"I know it is," he said; "let's do it." + +So they squatted on the rug in front of the open fire. Both wanted to +toast, and they took turns. + +"I don't get to do anything like this very often--only when I come +here," he said, apologizing for accepting his turn when it came. + +"Don't you live at home?" asked Mary Alice. + +"Well, no," he answered, "I'd hardly call what I do 'living at home.'" + +There was something about the way he said it that made Mary Alice feel +sorry for him; but she didn't like to ask any more questions. + +They had a delightful time. Mary Alice had never met a man she enjoyed +so much. He liked to "play" as much as Godmother did, and they talked +most confidentially about their likes and dislikes, many of which +seemed to be mutual. Mary Alice admitted to him how she disliked to +meet strangers, and he admitted to her that he felt the very same way. + +Godmother tarried and tarried, and at six o'clock the gentleman said he +must go. + +"Oh, dear!" sighed Mary Alice. "I'm sorry! I'm having such a nice +time." + +"So am I," he echoed gallantly, "but I'm hoping you will ask me again." + +"Indeed I will!" she cried. "We seem to--to get on together +beautifully." + +"We do," he agreed, "and if it's a rare experience for you, I don't +mind telling you it is for me too." + +He couldn't have been gone more than ten minutes when Godmother came in. + +"That gentleman called," Mary Alice told her. "He's just gone. We had +a lovely time." + +"I know," said Godmother, "I met him down-stairs and we've been +chatting. He says he doesn't know when he's spent a pleasanter hour." + +"Poor man!" murmured Mary Alice, "he seems to be a lonely body." + +"He is," said Godmother. "He likes to come in here, once in a while, +for a cup of tea and an hour's chat. And I'm always glad to have him." + +"I should think so!" agreed Mary Alice. "He ate nearly a whole plate +of toast." + +Godmother laughed so heartily that Mary Alice was a little mystified. +She didn't see the joke in being hungry. She didn't even see it when +Godmother told her who the man was. + +"Not really?" gasped Mary Alice. Godmother nodded. "Why, he told me +him_self_----!" Mary Alice began; and then stopped to put two and two +together. It was all very astounding, but there was no reason why what +he had told her and what Godmother said might not both be true. + +"If I had _known_!" she said, sinking down, weak in the knees, into the +nearest chair. + +"That was what gave him his happy hour," said Godmother. "You didn't +know! It is so hard for him to get away from people who know--to find +people who are able to forget. That's why he likes to come here; I try +to help him forget, for an hour, once in a while, at 'candle-lightin' +time.'" + +"I see," murmured Mary Alice. + +The man was one of those great world-powers of finance whose +transactions filled columns of the newspapers and were familiar to +almost every school child. + + +That night when Godmother was tucking Mary Alice in, they had a long, +long talk about the caller of the afternoon and about some other people +Godmother knew, and about how sad a thing it is to take for granted +about any person certain qualities we think must go with his estate. + +"And now," said Godmother, "I'm going to tell you the Secret." + +And she did. Then turned out the light, kissed Mary Alice one more +time, and left her to think about it. + + + + +V + +GOING TO THE PARTY + +"Now," said Godmother, the very next morning after she had told Mary +Alice the Secret, "to see how it _works_! This evening I am going to +take you to a most delightful place." + +"What kind of a place?" Mary Alice begged to know. Already, despite +the Secret, she was feeling fearful. + +Godmother squeezed Mary Alice's hand sympathetically; and then, because +that was not enough, she dropped a brief kiss on Mary Alice's anxious +young forehead. "I know how you feel, dear," she whispered. "All of +us, I guess, have fairy charms that we're afraid to use. Others have +used them, we know, and found them miraculous. But somehow, we're +afraid. I'm all undecided in my mind whether to tell you about this +place we're going to, or not to tell you about it. I want to do what +is easiest for you. Now, you think! It probably won't be a very large +assembly. These dear people, who have many friends, are at home on +Friday evenings. Sometimes a large number call, sometimes only a few. +And in New York, you know, people are not 'introduced round'; you just +meet such of your fellow guests as happen to 'come your way,' so to +speak. That is, if there are many. We'll go down and call this +evening--take our chance of few or many, and try out our Secret. And +I'll do just as you think you'd like best; I'll tell you about the +people we're going to see and try to guess as well as I can who else +may be there. Or I won't tell you anything at all--just leave you to +remember that 'folks is folks,' and to find out the rest for yourself. +You needn't decide now. Take all day to think about it, if you like." + +"Oh, dear!" cried Mary Alice, "I'm all in a flutter. I don't believe +I'll ever be able to decide, but I'll think hard all day. And now tell +me what I am to wear." + +She went to her room and got her dark blue taffeta and showed the +progress of yesterday with the new dark net sleeves to replace the ugly +ruffly white lace ones. + +"That's going to be fine!" approved Godmother. "Now, this morning I am +going to help you make the new yoke and collar; and then"--she squinted +up her eyes and began looking as if she were studying a picture the way +so many picture-lovers like to do, through only a narrow slit of vision +which sharpens perspective and intensifies detail--"I think we'll go +shopping. Yesterday, when I was hurrying past and hadn't time to stop +for longer than a peek, I saw in a Broadway shop-window some short +strings of pink imitation coral of the most adorable colour, for--what +do you think? Twenty-five cents a string! I've a picture of you in my +mind, with your dark blue dress and one of those coral strings about +your throat." + +Godmother's picture looked very sweet indeed when she came out to +dinner that evening. It was astonishing how many of her fairies Mary +Alice had found in two short weeks! The lovely lines of her shoulders, +which she had never known were the chief of all the "lines of beauty," +were no longer disfigured by stiff, outstanding bretelles and +ruffled-lace sleeves, but revealed in all their delicate charm by the +close-fitting plain dark net. And above them rose the head of such +unsuspected loveliness of contour, which rats and puffs and pompadour +had once deformed grotesquely, but which the wonderful new +hair-dressing accentuated in a transfiguring degree. The poise of Mary +Alice's head, the carriage of her shoulders, were fine. But she had +never known, before, that those were big points of beauty. So she +_did_ took lovely, with the tiny touch of coral at her throat, the pink +flush in her cheeks, and the sparkle of excitement in her eyes. It was +her first "party" in New York, and she and Godmother had had the most +delicious day getting ready for it. Mary Alice couldn't really believe +that all they did was to fix over her blue "jumper dress" and invest +twenty-five cents in pink beads. But it seemed that when you were with +a person like Godmother, what you actually did was magnified a +thousandfold by the enchanting way you did it. Mary Alice was +beginning to see that a fairy wand which can turn a pumpkin into a gold +coach is not exceeded in possibilities by a fairy mind which can turn +any ordinary, commonplace, matter-of-fact thing into a delightful +"experience." + +But something had happened during the afternoon which decided what to +do about the party. They were walking west in Thirty-Third Street, +past the Waldorf, when a lady came out to get into her auto. Godmother +greeted her delightedly and introduced Mary Alice. But the lady's name +overpowered Mary Alice and completely tied her tongue during the +moment's chat. + +"I used to see her a great deal, in Dresden," said Godmother when they +had gone on their way, "and she's a dear. We must go and see her as +she asked us to, and have her down to see us." Godmother spoke as if a +very celebrated prima donna at the Metropolitan Opera were no different +from any one else one might happen to know. Mary Alice couldn't get +used to it. + +"I--I guess I manage better when I don't know so much," she said, +smiling rather wofully and remembering the man of many millions to whom +she had been "nice" because she thought he was homeless and hungry. + +So to the "party" they went and never an inkling had Mary Alice where +it was to be or whether she was to see more captains of finance or more +nightingales of song, "or what." + + + + +VI + +THE "LION" OF THE EVENING + +The house they entered was not at all pretentious. It was an +old-fashioned house in that older part of New York in which Godmother +herself lived--only further south. But it was a remodelled house; the +old, high "stoop" had been taken away, and one entered, from the street +level, what had once been a basement dining-room but was now a kind of +reception hall. Here they left their wraps in charge of a well-bred +maid whom Godmother called by name and seemed to know. And then they +went up-stairs. Mary Alice was "all panicky inside," but she kept +trying to remember the Secret. + +Their hostess was a middle-aged lady, very plain but motherly-looking. +She wore her hair combed in a way that would have been considered +"terribly old-fashioned" in Mary Alice's home town, and she had on +several large cameos very like some Mary Alice's mother had and scorned +to wear. + +Mary Alice was reasonably sure this lady was not "a millionairess or +anything like that," and she didn't think she was another prima donna. +The lady's name meant nothing to her. + +"Well," their hostess said as Godmother greeted her, "now the party +_can_ begin--here's Mary Alice! _Two_ Mary Alices!" she added as she +caught sight of the second one. "Who says this isn't going to be a +real party?" + +Evidently they liked Godmother in this house; and evidently they were +prepared to like Mary Alice. Then, before she had time to think any +more about it, three or four persons came up to greet Godmother, who +didn't try to introduce Mary Alice at all--just let her "tag along" +without any responsibility. + +Mary Alice found that she liked to hear these people talk. They had a +kind of eagerness about many things that made them all seem to have +much more to say than could possibly be said then and there. Mary +Alice felt just as she thought the lady must have felt who, after the +man standing beside Mary Alice had made one or two remarks, in a brief +turn the conversation took towards the Children's Theatre, cried: "Oh! +I want to talk to you about that." And they moved away somewhere and +sat down together. Then, somehow, from that the general talk glanced +off on to some actors and actresses who had come out of the foreign +quarter where the Children's Theatre was, and were astonishing up-town +folk with the fire and fervour of their art. Some one who seemed to +know a good deal about the speaking voice, commented on the curious +change of tone, from resonant throat sounds to nasal head sounds, which +generally marked the Slav's transition from his native tongue to +English; and gave several examples in such excellent imitation that +every one was amused, even Mary Alice, who knew nothing about the +persons imitated. + +Then, some one who had been recently to California and seen Madame +Modjeska and been privileged to hear some chapters of the memoirs she +was writing, told an incident or two from them about the experiences of +that great Polish artiste in learning English. A man asked this lady +if she knew what Modjeska was going to do with her Memoirs when they +were ready for publication; and they two moved away to talk more about +that. And so it went. Mary Alice didn't often know what the talk was +about; but she was so interested in it that she found herself wishing +they would talk more about each thing and wouldn't break up and drift +off the way they did. They had such a wide, wide world--these +people--and they seemed to see everything that went on around them, to +feel everything that can go on within. And they made no effort about +anything. They talked about the Red Cross campaign against +tuberculosis, or big game hunting in Africa, or the unerring accuracy +of steel-workers on the skeletons of skyscrapers, throwing red-hot +rivets across yawning spaces and striking the bucket, held to receive +them, every time. And their talk was as simple, as eager, as +unaffected, as hers had been as she talked with Godmother about her +blue silk dress. All those things were a part of their world, as the +blue dress was a part of hers. + +She was so interested that she forgot to be afraid. And by and by when +Godmother had drifted off with some one and Mary Alice found herself +alone with one man, she was feeling so "folksy" that she looked up at +him and laughed. + +"Seems as if every one had found a 'burning theme'--all but us!" she +said. + +The young man--he _was_ young, and very good-looking, in an unusual +sort of way--flushed. "I don't know any of them," he said; "I'm a +stranger." + +"So am I," said Mary Alice, "and I don't know any one either. But I'd +like to know some of these people better; wouldn't you?" + +"I don't know," returned the young man. "I haven't seen much of +people, and I don't feel at home with them." + +"Oh!" cried Mary Alice, quite excitedly, "you need a fairy godmother to +tell you a Secret." + +The young man looked unpleasantly mystified. "What secret?" he asked. + +She started to explain. He seemed amused, at first, in a supercilious +kind of way. But Mary Alice was so interested in her "burning theme" +that she did not notice how he looked. Gradually his superciliousness +faded. + +"Let us find a place where you can tell me the Secret," he said, +looking about the drawing-room. Every place seemed taken. + +"There's a settle in the hall," suggested Mary Alice. And they went +out and sat on that. "But I can't tell you the Secret," she said. +"Not yet, anyway." + +"Please!" he begged. "I may never see you again." + +She looked distressed. "Oh, do you think so?" she said. "But anyhow I +can't tell you. I can only tell you up to where the Secret comes in, +and then--if I never see you again, you can think about it; and any +time you write to me for the Secret, I'll send it to you to help you +when you need it most." + +"I need it now," he urged. + +"No, you don't," she answered. "I thought I needed it right away, but +I wouldn't have understood it or believed it if I'd heard it then." +And she told him how it was whispered to her, after she had been kind +to the man of many millions. + +"And does it work?" he asked, laughing at her story of the toast and +tea. + +"I don't know, yet," she admitted, "I'm just trying it. That's another +reason I can't tell you now. I have to wait until I've tried it +thoroughly." + + +"You're a nice, modest young person from the backwoods," laughed +Godmother when they were going home, "selecting the largest, livest +lion of the evening and running off with him to the safe shelter of the +hall." + +"Lion?" said Mary Alice, wonderingly. "What lion?" + +"The young man you kept so shamelessly to yourself nearly all evening." + +"I didn't know he was any kind of a lion," apologized Mary Alice, +humbly. "He just seemed to be----" She stopped, and her eyes danced +delightedly. "I was trying the Secret on him," she went on, "and I +believe it worked." + +"I think it must have," said Godmother, "for he came up to me, before I +left, and exhibited all the signs of a gentleman who wants to be asked +to call. So I invited him to come in to-morrow for a cup of tea." + +"Is he--is he coming?" asked Mary Alice, "and won't you please tell me +what kind of a lion he is, and what's his name?" + +"He is coming," said Godmother, smiling mischievously, "and I don't +know whether to tell you his name or not. Maybe he'd rather do that +himself." + +"I don't care if he doesn't," laughed Mary Alice; "he's a nice man, and +he seemed to be real----" And then she stopped again and looked +mysteriously knowing. And Godmother nodded approvingly. + +"I loved the party," murmured Mary Alice, happily, as Godmother bent +over to give her her last good-night kiss. "I never supposed a party +where one didn't know a soul could be so nice." + +"Knowing or not knowing people makes much less difference--when you +remember the Secret. Don't you find it so?" said Godmother. + +And Mary Alice assented. "Yes, oh, yes! It's a wonderful magic--the +dear Secret is," she said. + + + + +VII + +AT CANDLE-LIGHTIN' TIME + +The next morning, Mary Alice wanted to know who everybody was; and +Godmother told her--every one but "the young man lion" as she called +him. The home they had been to was that of a celebrated editor and man +of letters who numbered among his friends the most delightful people of +many nations. The guests represented a variety of talents. The large, +dark, distinctly-foreign looking man was the great baritone of one of +the opera houses. The younger man, with the long, dark hair, was a +violinist about whom all New York was talking. The gray-haired man +with the goatee was an admiral. The gentle-spoken, shy man with the +silver hair was a famous Indian fighter of the old frontier days. The +man who spoke informedly of the Children's Theatre was one of the +best-known of American men of letters. The lady who was anxious to +interrogate him about it was one whose fame as an uplifter of humanity +has travelled 'round the globe. This one was a painter, and that one a +sculptor, and another was a poetic dramatist. + +"My!" sighed Mary Alice, "I'm glad you _didn't_ tell me before we went. +As nearly as I can remember, I talked to the Admiral about the Fifth +Avenue shopwindows, and to the General about the Jumel Mansion--which +he said he had never seen but had always meant to see--and to the +painter--what _did_ I talk to the painter about? Oh! my pink beads. +He admired the colour." + +"Yes," said Godmother, "and if you had known who they were you would +probably have tried to talk to the Admiral about ships and sea-fights, +and to the painter about the Metropolitan Museum, and would have bored +them terribly. Most real people, I think, like to be taken for what +they are rather than for what they may have done. That is one of the +things I learned in my long years in Europe where I was constantly +finding myself in conversation with some one I did not know. We always +began on a basis of common humanity, and we soon found our mutual +interests, and enjoyed talking about them. It taught me a great deal +about people and the folly of taking any of them on other people's +estimates." + +But all this was only mildly interesting, now, compared with "the young +man lion." + +Of course they had to tell him, first thing when he came, that Mary +Alice did not know who he was. He looked a little surprised at first; +then he seemed to relish the joke hugely. When Godmother added certain +explanations, he grew grave again. + +"I like that," he said. "I think it's a fine game, and I wish I might +play it. I can't, most of the time. But I can play it with you, if +you'll let me," he went on, turning to Mary Alice. She nodded assent. +"That's splendid!" he cried. "I haven't played a jolly game like this +since I was a boy. Now, you're not to think I'm a king in disguise or +anything like that. There's really nothing about me that's at all +interesting; only, on account of something that has happened to me, +people are talking about me--for nine days or so. I'll be going on, in +a day or two, and every one will forget. Now let's play the game. May +I make toast?" + +"You may," she said. + +In a little while, some one came to call on Godmother who took the +caller into the library; and the toast-making went on undisturbed. + +Whoever he was, he seemed to know something about camp-fires; and +squatting on the rug before the glowing grate, toasting bread, reminded +him of things he had heard strange men tell, as the intimacy of the +night fire in the wilderness brought their stories out. It was +fascinating talk, and Mary Alice listened enthralled. + +"I didn't know I had that much talk in me," he laughed, a little +confusedly, as he rose to go. "It must be the surroundings that are +responsible--and the game." + +Godmother, whose caller was gone, asked him to stay to dinner. + +"I wish I could!" he said wistfully, noting in the distance the cozy +dinner table set for two. "If you could only know where I must dine +instead!" + +"You seem to dread it," said Mary Alice. + +"I do," he answered. + +She looked at Godmother. "I wish we could tell him the Secret," she +suggested shyly, "it might help." + +Godmother looked very thoughtful, as if gravely considering. "Not +yet," she decided, shaking her head; "it's too soon." + +"I think so too," he said. "I'm afraid you might lose interest in me +after you had told me. I'd rather wait." + + +The next day was Sunday. He had engagements for lunch and dinner, but +he asked if he might slip in again for tea; he was leaving town Monday. + +So they had another beautiful hour, at what Godmother loved to speak of +as "candle-lightin' time," and while Mary Alice was in the kitchen +cutting bread to toast, Godmother and her guest made notes in tiny +note-books. + +"There!" she said, when she had written the Gramercy Park address in +his book. "Anything you send here will always reach her, wherever she +is." + +"And any answer she may care to make to me, if you'll address it to me +there," handing back her book to her, "will always reach me, wherever I +may be." + + +"It is a splendid game," he said when he was going, "and I'm glad you +let me play. If more people played this game, I'd find the world a lot +pleasanter place to live in." + +"When you know the Secret you can show other people how to play," Mary +Alice suggested. + +"That's so," he said. "Well, I shan't let you forget you are to tell +it to me." + + + + +VIII + +LEARNING TO BE BRAVE AND SWEET + +Godmother's charming drawing-room seemed intolerably empty when he had +gone and they two stood by the fire and looked into it trying to see +again the jungle scene he had pointed out to them in the bed of coals. +But the jungle was gone; the vision had faded with the seer. And +Godmother and Mary Alice began picking up the teacups and the toast +plate, almost as if there had been a funeral. + +Then Godmother laughed. "How solemn we are!" she said, pretending to +think it all very funny. + +But Mary Alice couldn't pretend. She set down his teacup which she had +just lifted with gentle reverence off the mantel, where he left it, and +went closer to Godmother. Her lips were trembling, but she did not +have to speak. + +"I know, Precious--I know," whispered Godmother. She sat down in a big +chair close to the fire--the chair he had just left--and Mary Alice sat +on the hearth-rug and nestled her head against Godmother's knees. +Neither of them said anything for what seemed a long time. They just +looked into the glowing bed of coals and saw--different things! + +Then, "I think," Mary Alice began, in a voice that was full of tears, +"I think I wish we hadn't played any game. I think I wish I hadn't +seen him at all." + +"Lovey _dear_!" + +"Yes, I do!" wept Mary Alice, refusing to be comforted. "Everything +was beautiful, before he came. And now he's gone, and I'm +so--lonesome!" + +Godmother was silent for a moment. "There's the Secret," she +suggested, at last. "It was--it was when I felt just as you do now, +that I began to learn the Secret." + +Mary Alice made no reply; there seemed to be nothing that she could say +But after they had sat silent for a long while, she got up and kissed +her godmother with a new passion which had in it tenderness as well as +adoration. + +"I don't believe I can be brave and lovely about it, as you must have +been to make people love you so. But I'm going to _try_," she said. + +The success with which Mary Alice's trying met was really beautiful to +see. At first, it was pretty hard for her to care much about the +Secret, or about people. Every assemblage just seemed to her an empty +crowd where he was not. But when she began to wonder to how many of +those selfsame people the others seemed the same as to her, she was +interested once more; the Secret began to work. + +It worked so well, in fact, that Mary Alice came to be quite famous in +a small way. People in Godmother's distinguished and delightful "set" +talked enthusiastically of Mary Alice's quiet charm, and she was asked +here and asked there, and had a quite wonderful time. + +Her "poor" friend came in, whenever he could, for tea and toast; and +sometimes he made what he called "a miserable return" for this +hospitality, by asking Godmother and Mary Alice to dine with him at his +palace on upper Fifth Avenue and afterwards to sit in his box at the +opera. He was a widower, and his two sons were married and lived in +palaces of their own. His only daughter was abroad finishing her +education; and his great, lonely house was to serve a brief purpose for +her when she "came out" and until she married. Then, he thought, he +would either give it up or turn it over to her; certainly he would not +keep it for himself. + +At first, Mary Alice found it hard to remember the Secret "with so many +footmen around." But by and by she got used to them and, other things +being equal, could have nearly as good a time in a palace as in a flat. +For this, she had a wonderful example in Godmother of whom some one had +once said, admiringly, that she was "never mean to anybody just because +he's rich." It was true. Godmother was just as "nice" to the rich as +to the poor, to the "cowering celebrity" (as she was wont to say) as to +the most important nobody. It was the Secret that helped her to do it. +It was the Secret that helped Mary Alice. + +And so the winter went flying by. Twice, letters came--from him; and +Mary Alice answered them, giving the answers to Godmother to send. +Once he wrote from London, and once from somewhere on the Bosphorus. +They were lonesome letters, both; but he didn't ask for the Secret, +though he mentioned it each time. + + + + +IX + +TELLING THE SECRET TO MOTHER + +In March, Godmother said: "I am going abroad for the summer, dear, and +I've just had a conference with my man of affairs. He reports some +unexpectedly good dividends from my small handful of stock in a company +that is enjoying a boom, and so if we're careful--you and I--there will +be enough so I can take you with me." Mary Alice was too surprised, +too happy to speak. "Now, you'll want to go home, of course," +Godmother went on, "and so we'll agree on a sailing date and then you +may fly back to mother as soon as you wish, and stay till it's time to +go abroad." + +They decided to sail the first of May; so Mary Alice went home almost +immediately, and on an evening late in March got off the train on to +that familiar platform whence she had so fearfully set forth only four +short months ago. + +Father was at the station to meet her; and at home, by the soft-coal +fire burning beneath the white marble mantel in the sitting-room, +Mother was sewing and waiting for her. + +Mary Alice was thinking, as she and Father neared the house, of that +miserable evening in the fall when she had stolen past her mother and +gone up to her room and wept passionately, in the dark, because life +had no enchantment for her. There would be no stealing past dear +Mother now! For the Secret was for Mother, too--yes, very much indeed +for Mother, as Mary Alice and Godmother had agreed in their wonderful +"tucking in" talk the night before Mary Alice came away. All the way +home, on the train, she had hardly been able to wait till she got to +Mother with this beautiful new thing in her heart. + +Perhaps Mother had dreaded her girl's home-coming, in a way, almost as +much as she yearned for it. But if she had, Mary Alice never knew it; +and if she had, Mother herself soon forgot it. For in all the twenty +years of Mary Alice's life, her mother had never, it seemed, had so +much of her girl as in the month that followed her home-coming. Hour +after hour they worked about the house or sat before that grate fire in +the unchanged sitting-room, and talked and talked and talked. Mary +Alice told every little detail of those four months until her mother +lived them over with her and the light and life of them animated her as +they had animated Mary Alice. + +Little by little, in that month, Mary Alice came at least to the +beginning of a wonderful new understanding: came to see how +parents--and _god_parents!--cease to have any particular future of +their own and live in the futures of the young things they love. Mary +Alice's bleak years had been bitter for her mother, too; perhaps +bitterer than for her. And her new enchantment with life was like new +blood in her mother's veins. + +Mother cried when Mary Alice told her the Secret. "Oh, it's true! it's +true!" she said. "If only everybody could know it, what a different +world this would be!" + +And as for the--Other! When Mary Alice told her mother about him and +what his coming into her life and his going out of it had meant, Mother +just held her girl close and could not speak. + +The precious month flew by on wings as of the wind. Mary Alice was +"the town wonder," as her brother Johnny said, and she enjoyed that as +only a girl who has been the town wall-flower can; but after all, +everything was as nothing compared with Mother and the exultation that +had so evidently come into her life because out of her love and pain +and sacrifice a soul had come into the world to draw so richly from the +treasures of other hearts and to give so richly back again. There is +no triumph like it, as Mary Alice would perhaps know, some day. A +mother's purest happiness is very like God's own. + +But at last the sailing date was close at hand. Mary Alice's heart was +heavy and glad together. "If I could only take you!" she whispered to +her mother. + +Mother shook her head. "I wouldn't go and leave your father and the +children," she said. "You go and enjoy it all for me. I like it +better that way." + +And so, once more Mary Alice smiled through tear-filled eyes at the +dear faces on the station platform, and was gone again into the big +world beyond her home. But this time what a different girl it was who +went! + + + + +X + +THE OLD WORLD AND THE KING + +They had an unusually delightful voyage. The weather was perfection +and their fellow-voyagers included many persons interesting to talk +with and many others interesting to observe and speculate about. + +One particularly charming experience came to Mary Alice through the +Captain's appreciation of her eagerness. Godmother had taught her to +love the stars. As well as they could, in New York where, to most +people, only scraps of sky are visible at a time, they had been wont to +watch with keen interest for the nightly appearance of stars they could +see from their windows or from the streets as they went to and fro. +And when they got aboard ship and had the whole sky to look at, they +revelled in their night hours on the deck, and in picking out the +constellations and their "bright, particular stars." This led the +Captain to tell Mary Alice something of the stars as the sailors' +friends; and she had one of the most memorable evenings of her life +when he explained to her something of the science of navigation and +made her see how their great greyhound of the ocean, just like the +first frail barks of the Tyrians, picked its way across trackless +wastes of sea by the infallible guidance of "the friendly stars." All +this particularly interested Mary Alice because of Some One who lived +much in the open and spent many and many a night on the broad deserts, +looking up at the stars. + +They landed at Naples, and lingered a fortnight in that lovely +vicinity; then, up to Rome, to Florence and Venice, to Milan and the +Italian Lakes, through Switzerland into France, and so to Paris. +Godmother had once spent a winter at Capri; she had spent several +winters in Florence. She knew Venice well. She had hosts of dear, +familiar things to show Mary Alice in each place. + +At last they came to Paris. Godmother lamented that it was in July +they came; but Mary Alice, who had no recollections of Paris in April +and May, found nothing to lament. They stayed more than a month--and +made a number of the enchanting little journeys which can be made out +of Paris forever and ever without repeating, it seems. + +Then, with a trunk in which were two "really, truly" Paris +dresses--very, very modest ones, to be sure, but unmistakably touched +with Parisian chic--and a mind in which were hundreds of wonderful +Paris memories, Mary Alice crossed to England. They went at once to +London where, it seemed to Mary Alice, she must stay forever, to be +satisfied. Godmother had hosts of charming friends in London, even +beyond what she had in Italy and France; but for the first fortnight +she gave up her time entirely to Mary Alice's sightseeing. By and by +her friends began to find out she was there and to clamour insistently +for her. And as the exodus from town was as complete as it ever gets, +most of the invitations were from the country. So that Mary Alice +began to see something of that English country-house life she had read +so much about, and to meet personages whose names filled her with +awe--until she remembered the Secret. And thus she came to the Great +Event of her life. + +Godmother had what Mary Alice called "a duchess friend" of whom she was +very, very fond. The Duchess was a woman about Godmother's age, and +quite as lovely to look at as a duchess should be. She was mistress of +many and vast estates, and wore--on occasions--a coronet of diamonds +and strings of pearls "worth a king's ransom," just like a duchess in a +story. But she seemed to Mary Alice to have hardly the mildest +interest in the jewels she wore and the palaces she lived in; Mary +Alice found it hard to bear in mind that to the Duchess these were just +as matter-of-fact, as usual, as unvariable, as the home sitting-room +and the "good" hat had once been to Mary Alice. And like Mary Alice, +the Duchess found her happiness in reaching out for something new and +different. The Duchess liked the world that Godmother lived in--the +world of Godmother's lovely mind; and she loved Godmother's +companionship. + +That was how it came about that Mary Alice found herself very often in +exalted society. The exalted personages did not notice her much; but +every once in a while, by remembering the Secret, she got on happy +terms with some of them. + +And at last a very unusual thing happened. The King was coming to +honour the Duke and Duchess with a visit; coming to see one of those +ancient and glorious estates the like of which no king owns, and which +are the pride of all the kingdom. Many sovereigns had stayed at this +splendid old place on England's south coast--a place as famous for its +beauty as for its six hundred years of history; so it was no unusual +thing for it to house a king. The unusual part of it all was Mary +Alice being there. By the King's permission a wonderful house party +was asked to meet him. Godmother couldn't be asked; she had never been +presented, and the King was unaware of her existence. The Duchess +would not have dared to present Godmother's name on the list submitted +to the King. Much less, therefore, would she have dared to present +Mary Alice's. "But----!" said the Duchess, and went on to unfold a +plan. + +If Mary Alice would not mind staying on with the Duchess while +Godmother paid another visit; and if she would not mind having a room +somewhere in a remote wing; and would not mind not being asked to +mingle with the party in any way, she might see something of such +sights as perhaps she would never be able to see otherwise. Mary Alice +was delighted partly because she wanted to see the sights and partly +because the thought of going away from this wonderful place made her +heart ache. So she was moved out of the fine guest suite she and +Godmother had been lodged in, and over to a room in a far wing of the +vast house. From this wing one could look down on to the terraces for +which the love and genius of none other than quaint John +Evelyn--greatest of England's Garden Philosophers--were responsible. +To these terraces the guests would certainly come, and to the +world-famous rose garden into which also Mary Alice could look from her +window in the far wing. But even if she were to see no royalty, she +was grateful for the privilege of staying on a few days longer in this +Paradise by the sea. And not the least delight of her new quarters was +that they were high enough up so that from them she could overlook the +sheltering Ilex-trees which made these marvellous gardens possible so +close to the shore, and see the Channel ships a-sailing--three-masted +schooners laden with wood; fishing-smacks; London barges with their +picturesque red sails bellying in the wind; and an occasional ocean +liner trailing its black smoke across the horizon. What with the sea +and the gardens and the rich history of the place, Mary Alice felt that +she could never tire of it, even if she did not see the King. But it +would be delightful to see him, too. Some day the history of this +splendid old place would include this royal visit; and Mary Alice, who +had read of other such occasions and wished she might have been a mouse +in a corner to witness them--as, for instance, when Queen Elizabeth was +here--now felt the thrill of having that wish come true, in a way; and +so far from feeling "set aside" or slighted, liked her window in the +wing and her participation in the party above any other she might have +had. + +Mary Alice dined, the first night of the house party, with the +Duchess's older children, and then went back to her room to sit at the +window and look down on the terraces where, after a while, some of the +men guests came to smoke. + +It was late, but the twilight still lingered. Mary Alice could not +tell who many of the men were, but she could see the King and she +watched him interestedly as he paced up and down. She had been told +how no one must speak to a king until the king has first spoken to him; +and she felt that at best it must be a dreary business--being a king. + +Presently, though, in the thickening shadows she saw a form that made +her heart stand still. _Could it be_? She was probably +mistaken--madly mistaken--but something in the way a man down there +carried himself made her think of Godmother's little drawing-room in +far-off New York and a man who was "playing the game." But the King +was talking to this man--talking most interestedly, it seemed. She +_must_ be mistaken! + +Nevertheless, when the men had all gone in, she put on a white shawl +and slipped down on to the terrace. She felt as if she must know; and +of course she couldn't ask, for she did not know his name. + +The terraces were deserted, and she paced up and down undisturbed, +trying to assure herself that Godmother would probably have known if he +were in England--his last letter had been from the Far East--and +especially if he were coming here. There were times, as she reminded +herself, when she was continually seeing him; out of every crowd, +suddenly his tall form would seem to emerge; in the loneliness of quiet +places, as by miracle he would seem to be where a moment ago she knew +there was no one. Then a sense of separation would intervene, and for +days she would be given over to the belief that she was never to see +him again. To-night was doubtless just one of the times when, for no +reason that she could understand, he seemed physically near to her. + +She was standing very still in the shadow of an ivy-grown pillar, +looking up at the Pole star and wondering if he in his wanderings might +not be looking at it too, when a man's voice close beside her made her +jump. It was an unfamiliar voice. "Star-gazing?" it said, pleasantly. +She turned, and recognized the King. + +"Yes, Your Majesty," she answered. At first she thought she was going +to be frightened. Then she remembered the Secret, and before she knew +it she was deep in conversation with the King. + +As she talked, a puzzled expression she could not see came into the +King's face. He had a wonderful memory for names, a memory which +seldom failed him; but he couldn't place this girl. And it was dark, +too, so he couldn't see her. But he liked to hear her talk. She had +that rare thing, in his experience, a fresh, sweet view-point. The +bloom of enchantment was still on life for her, and as he drew her out, +he found that she was refreshing him as nothing had done for a weary +while. + +Then, kingly obligation called him indoors to join the throng whose +everlasting sameness palled on him almost unendurably. Something he +said made Mary Alice feel this--made her see, as in a flash, a girl who +had gone home, once, from a party and wept because life was so dull. +She was sorry for the King! + +"I seldom forget a name," he said, "but I--before we go in, won't you +please remind me of yours?" + +Mary Alice laughed. "Your Majesty has never heard my name," she said, +"and I can't go in; I'm not of the party." And she explained. + +"I see," he said. "I shall have to thank the Duchess. I have had a +most refreshing quarter of an hour." + +"I'm glad," said Mary Alice, simply. "I felt afraid, at first--as +nearly everybody does, I suppose. And then I thought how dreadful that +must be--to have every one afraid of you, when you're really a very +nice, gentle person--I mean----! Well, I guess Your Majesty knows what +I mean. And then I remembered my Secret----" + +"Secret?" + +And so, of course, she had to tell. It was rather a long story, hurry +as she would, because the King interrupted with so many questions. +But she wouldn't tell what the Secret was until "the very last thing." + +"Um," said the King, when she had finally divulged it. That was all he +said; but the way he said it made Mary Alice know that the Secret was +right. + + + + +XI + +A MEETING AND A PARTING + +The next day was full of activities which kept the house guests far +afield. But Mary Alice had an exciting day at home; for the King had +spoken to the Duchess about her and asked to have her presented to him +that evening. + +The Duke and Duchess had spent a fortune on the entertainment of their +King; had provided for his beguiling every costly diversion that could +be thought of. But they had not been able to give him anything new, +and they felt that he was enduring the visit amiably rather than +actually enjoying it. It remained, apparently, for the Girl from +Nowhere to give him real pleasure. + +So the Duchess--secretly sympathetic--left orders with her French maid +that Mary Alice was to be made ready to see the King. + +Mary Alice chose the simplest thing that rigorous French maid would +allow and kept as close as possible to her own individual and +unpretending style. But even then, she was a pretty resplendent young +person as she stole timidly down to find the Duchess and be presented +to the King. + +The guests were assembled in the great drawing-room, and Mary Alice was +frightened almost to death when she saw the splendour of the scene and +realized what part she had to play in it. + +Then, in a daze, she was swept forward and presented, and found herself +looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness. So she +smiled back again, and soon forgot the onlookers, answering His +Majesty's kindly questions. + +[Illustration: ". . . found herself looking into eyes that smiled as +with an old friendliness."] + +He turned from her, presently, to speak to some one else, and Mary +Alice caught sight then of a face she knew. For an instant, she stood +staring. For an instant, he stood staring back, as unbelieving as she. + +Then, "You seem to be on friendly terms with His Majesty," he said. +"Have you showed him how to play the game, too?" + +"No," Mary Alice answered, "but I've told him the Secret." + + +As soon as they could, they escaped--those two--out on to the terrace +where the stars were shining thickly overhead. + +"On one of those--those times in New York when we talked together," he +said, "you told me that when something very marvellous had happened to +you and you couldn't believe you were awake, that it was really true, +you asked your Godmother to pinch you. It--er, wouldn't be at all +proper for me to ask you to please pinch me. But if you know any +perfectly proper equivalent, I wish you'd do it." + +"I've pinched myself," she returned, "and it seems I am awake. So I +judge you must be, too." + +"Then how, please----?" + +And she told him. + +"And you don't know yet who I am?" + +"No." + +So he told her. "I warned you it was nothing interesting," he said; +"it is just my work that people are interested in. I don't belong in +there," indicating the great house, "any more than you do. They like +me for a novelty, because I've dared and suffered; and because, as +things turned out, I was in a position to do what they are pleased to +call a great service to the Empire. I wish I liked them better--they +want to be very kind to me, and I was born of them, so they like me the +better for that. But I've been in the wilderness too much--I can't get +used to these strange folk at home." + +"I used to think I couldn't get used to strange folk," Mary Alice +murmured, "but I seem to have got on fairly well for a girl from +Nowhere." + +"Was it the Secret?" + +She nodded. + +"When may I know?" + +"I--I can't tell." + +"You told the King." + +"He seemed to need it so." + +"Don't I need it?" + +"I--I can't tell." + +He seemed discouraged, and as if he did not know what next to say. +They strolled in silence over to where she had been standing the night +before when the King spoke to her. From within the great house came +the entrancingly sweet song of a world-famous soprano engaged to pour +her liquid notes before the King. + +Mary Alice stood very still, drinking it in. When it ceased, she stole +a look up at the bronzed face beside her; the light from a window in +her far wing of the house fell full on that rugged face, and it looked +very stern but also very sad. Mary Alice's heart, which had been +exultant only a short while ago, began suddenly--in one of those +strange revulsions which all hearts know--to ache indefinably. This +hour would probably be like those other brief hours in which he had +shared her life. To-morrow, or next day, he would be gone; and forever +and forever the memory of these moments on the terrace, with the stars +overhead and that exquisite song in their ears, would be coming back to +taunt her unbearably. + +She made up her mind that before he went out of her life again, she +would tell him the Secret; so that at least, wherever he went, however +far from him the rest of her way through life might lie, they would +always have that thought in common; and whenever it came to help him, +as it must, he would think of her. + +Timidly she laid a hand upon his arm. He had been far away, following +the trail of long, long thoughts, and her touch recalled him sharply. + +"What is it?" he asked. + +"I--I want to tell you the Secret." + +"I don't think I want to know," he answered, rather shortly. + +"Why--why----" Mary Alice faltered. Her lips quivered and her eyes +began to fill. "I--I must go in," she said. + +He put out a hand to detain her, but either she did not see it in the +dark, or else she eluded it; for in a moment she was gone, across the +terrace towards the lighted French windows of the rooms of state. + +How she managed to get through those next few minutes until she could +find the Duchess and ask to be excused, Mary Alice never knew. All of +her that was capable of feeling or caring about anything seemed to have +left this part of her that wore the Duchess's lovely white gown and +scarf of silver tissue, and to be out on the dark terrace under the +pale star beams, with a tall young man who spoke bitterly. This girl +in the sheen of white and silver to whom the King was speaking kindly, +was some one unreal and ghostly who acted like a real live girl, but +was not. + +As she hurried along the great corridors towards her room in the far +wing, Mary Alice felt that she could hardly wait to get off these +trappings of state; to get back to her old simple self again and bury +her head in her pillow and cry and cry. She wished with all her heart +for Godmother. But most of all she was sick for home, for Mother, and +the unchanging sitting-room. + +"He" had seemed disappointed to find her here. And she----? Well! she +was sorry she had seen him. In New York, where she had not even known +his name, he had seemed to belong to her, in a way, by right of their +common sympathy and understanding. Here, among all these people who +were his people, who delighted to honour him, he seemed completely lost +to her. . . . + +After a weary while, Mary Alice got up and sat by the window, looking +across to the main part of the great house and wondering which of the +darkened windows was his and if he had dismissed her easily from his +mind and gone comfortably to sleep. The early dawn breeze was blowing +from the sea when she dozed into a brief, dream-troubled sleep. + + + + +XII + +AT OCEAN'S EDGE + +Only the gardeners and a few of the house servants were about when she +went down-stairs, through the still house and out on to the terraces, +towards the sea. She had hung the white and silver finery carefully +away, glad to feel so far divorced from it and all it represented as +she did in her gown of unbleached linen crash which she and Godmother +had made. + +"I'm like Cinderella," she reminded herself as she buttoned the crash +gown, "Godmother and all. Only, her prince loved her when he saw her +in her finery, and mine despised me. I suppose he thought I was a +silly little 'climber' trying to get out of the chimney-corner where I +belong. But I think he owed it to me to let me explain." + +There was a cove on the shore whose shelter she particularly loved; and +she was going thither now, as these bitter reflections filled her mind. +The tide was ebbing, but the thin, slowly-widening line of beach was +wet and she had to pick her way carefully. She was so mindful of her +steps and, under all her mindfulness, so conscious of the ache in her +heart, that she was not noticing much else than the way to pick her +steps; and she had rounded the rocky corner of the cove and was far +into her favoured little nook, when she saw that it was occupied. A +man sat back in its deepest shelter, looking out to sea. He started +when he saw her, and she looked back as if calculating a flight. + +"Please don't go," he begged, rising to greet her. "I was unpardonably +rude to you last night and it has made me very wretched. You have no +right to pardon me, but I hope you won't go away without letting me +tell you how sorry I am." + +"I--it was nothing--I pardon you--I think I understand," said Mary +Alice, weakly. + +He shook his head. "How could you--who are so gentle--understand?" +Mary Alice looked about to protest, but he silenced her with a +commanding gesture. "I've been so much with savages that I've grown +savage in my own ways, it seems. But--it was like this: You taught me +a game, once. It was a charming game and I was glad to learn. But we +could play it only twice, and then I had to go away. And after I went +I--I was always missing the game, always wanting to play again. At +what you called 'candle-lightin' time,' wherever I was--in strange +drawing-rooms, on rushing express trains, on ships plowing the seas, +sitting about camp-fires in the wilderness--I'd always seem to see that +little, dim-lit room in your New York, and you kneeling beside me on +the hearth-rug, with the firelight on your face and hair. I've always +been a lonely chap; but after that I was lonelier than ever; I used to +think I couldn't bear it. Then last night--how shall I tell you how I +felt? I've comforted myself, before, with the dream that some day I +might get back to New York, to that little room at candle-lightin' +time, and find you again, and forget everything in all the world but +that you were there and I was with you, kneeling on the hearth-rug and +making toast for tea. And when I saw you, all white and silver +glitter, talking to the King--the dream was gone. There wasn't any +girl on the hearth-rug in New York; there was only another girl of the +kind that always makes me feel so strange, so ill at ease. It was only +night before last that I learned I am to go away again directly, to the +Far East, for the Government; and I was so happy, for I thought I'd go +the westward way and see you again in New York. Then, suddenly, I +realized that you were gone--not merely from New York, but from the +dream. And I was surprised into rudeness. That's all. But _please_ +forgive me!" + +"I told you I understood," said Mary Alice, "and in a way I did--not +that the--the dream as you call it meant so much to you, but that you +were disappointed to find Cinderella come out of her chimney corner and +talking to the King. I know that when we have a person definitely +placed in our minds, we don't like to have him bob up suddenly in quite +another quarter and in what seems like quite another character." + +"Not if that person has been a kind of--of lode-star to you, and you +have been steering your course by--by her," he said. + +Mary Alice flushed. "Now I think you ought to let _me_ tell," she +began, with downcast eyes. And so she told: how she had come there, +and how she had stayed, like the little mouse under the Queen's chair, +and how glad she was to have seen from a distance a little of this +splendour and great society, and how gladder still to hang her borrowed +white and silver away and be done with it and all it stood for and go +back to her gown of crash and her chimney-corner place in life, "which +I can now see," she added "is the place for dreams and sweet +companionship." + +"And when I get back, will you be there?" he cried, eagerly. + +"When you get back I will be there," she promised. + +After that they sat and talked for long and long, while the blue sea +sparkled in the summer morning sun. When, at length, they rose to go, +there was a light that never shone on land or sea in his face and in +hers. There had been no further promises; only that one: "When you get +back I will be there." But each heart understood the other, and she +rejoiced to wait further declaration of his love until he could, +according to his tender fancy, make it to her as in his "dream come +true." + +On the beach as they strolled back, it was her eyes--shining with a +soft, new radiance--that first caught sight of something; her fancy +that first grasped its significance. "Look!" she cried. In a +bowl-like hollow of a big brown rock, the receding tide had left a +little pool of sea-water. "It's left behind--this bit of the infinite, +unresting sea!" she said. "Who knows what far, far shores it's come +from? And now, here it is, and the great mother-sea's gone off and +left it." + +He smiled tenderly at her sweet whimsy. "The great mother-sea will +come back for it at sundown," he reminded her. + +"Yes--yes"--perhaps it was the coming separation between the two that +made her voice quaver so sympathetically--"the Infinite always comes +back for us. But we don't always remember that it will! This is such +a little bit of the great sea. Maybe it never was left alone before; +maybe it doesn't know how surely the waters that left it behind will +come back for it this evening. Maybe it's--it's lonesome. I--I think +I know how it feels." + +"And I," he said. + +"Next time you feel that way will you remember this brown rock and the +tide that is so surely coming back tonight?" she asked. + +"Indeed I will," he told her. + +"And so will I," she went on. "And I'll try to remember, too, that +perhaps it was put here for us to see and think of when we need +encouragement--just as, I dare say, we are left behind, sometimes, so +that other lonely folk may see us and be reminded that----" She +stopped. + +"That what?" he asked. + +"Why!" she cried, "it's the Secret! The more you live, the more +everything helps you to believe the Secret and to feel the brotherhood +it brings." + +He looked guilty. "I don't deserve to know the Secret," he said, +"after last night. But----" + +"But I am going to tell you," she declared, "so when you're far away +from what you love most, or when you're with people you think are +different from you and do not understand, you can remember----" + +"Yes?" eagerly. + +"Just remember--and you've no idea how it helps until you've +tried--that _everybody's lonesome_. That's the Secret." + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Everybody's Lonesome, by Clara E. 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