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Title: The Shape of Fear
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</PRE>
This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE
<p>Note: I have omitted signature indicators and italicization of the <br>
running heads. In addition, I have made the following changes to the <br>
text: </p>
<p>PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO<br>
</p>
<p> 156 1 where as were as<br>
156 4 mouth mouth.<br>
165 5 Wedgwood Wedgewood<br>
166 9 Wedgwood Wedgewood<br>
167 6 surperfluous superfluous<br>
172 11 every ever<br>
173 17 Bogg Boggs</p>
<h2><br>
THE SHAPE OF FEAR</h2>
<h3>And Other Ghostly Tales</h3>
<h3>BY</h3>
<h3>ELIA WILKINSON PEATTIE</h3>
<p>CONTENTS</p>
<p>THE SHAPE OF FEAR</p>
<p>ON THE NORTHERN ICE</p>
<p>THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST</p>
<p>A SPECTRAL COLLIE</p>
<p>THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT</p>
<p>STORY OF AN OBSTINATE CORPSE</p>
<p>A CHILD OF THE RAIN</p>
<p>THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT</p>
<p>STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT</p>
<p>THE PIANO NEXT DOOR</p>
<p>AN ASTRAL ONION</p>
<p>FROM THE LOOM OF THE DEAD</p>
<p>A GRAMMATICAL GHOST</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h2 align="left">THE SHAPE OF FEAR</h2>
<h2 align="left"> </h2>
<p>TIM O'CONNOR -- who was de- scended from the O'Conors with one N -- <br>
started life as a poet and an enthusiast. His mother had designed him <br>
for the priesthood, and at the age of fifteen, most of his verses had <br>
an ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other, he got into the <br>
newspaper business instead, and became a pessimistic gentleman, with <br>
a literary style of great beauty and an income of modest proportions. <br>
He fell in with men who talked of art for art's sake, -- though what <br>
right they had to speak of art at all nobody knew, -- and little by <br>
little his view of life and love became more or less pro- fane. He <br>
met a woman who sucked his heart's blood, and he knew it and made no <br>
protest; nay, to the great amusement of the fellows who talked of art <br>
for art's sake, he went the length of marrying her. He could not in <br>
decency explain that he had the tra- ditions of fine gentlemen behind <br>
him and so had to do as he did, because his friends might not have <br>
understood. He laughed at the days when he had thought of the priest- <br>
hood, blushed when he ran across any of those tender and exquisite <br>
old verses he had written in his youth, and became addicted to <br>
absinthe and other less peculiar drinks, and to gaming a little to <br>
escape a madness of ennui.</p>
<p><br>
As the years went by he avoided, with more and more scorn, that part <br>
of the world which he denominated Philistine, and con- sorted only <br>
with the fellows who flocked about Jim O'Malley's saloon. He was <br>
pleased with solitude, or with these convivial wits, and with not <br>
very much else beside. Jim O'Malley was a sort of Irish poem, set to <br>
inspiring measure. He was, in fact, a Hibernian M&aelig;cenas, who <br>
knew better than to put bad whiskey before a man of talent, or tell a <br>
trite tale in the presence of a wit. The recountal of his <br>
disquisitions on politics and other cur- rent matters had enabled no <br>
less than three men to acquire national reputations; and a number of <br>
wretches, having gone the way of men who talk of art for art's sake, <br>
and dying in foreign lands, or hospitals, or asylums, having no one <br>
else to be homesick for, had been homesick for Jim O'Malley, and wept <br>
for the sound of his voice and the grasp of his hearty hand.</p>
<p>When Tim O'Connor turned his back upon most of the things he was born <br>
to and took up with the life which he consistently lived till the <br>
unspeakable end, he was unable to get rid of certain peculiarities. <br>
For example, in spite of all his debauchery, he continued to look <br>
like the Beloved Apostle. Notwith- standing abject friendships he <br>
wrote limpid and noble English. Purity seemed to dog his heels, no <br>
matter how violently he attempted to escape from her. He was never so <br>
drunk that he was not an exquisite, and even his creditors, who had <br>
become inured to his deceptions, confessed it was a privilege to meet <br>
so perfect a gentleman. The creature who held him in bondage, body <br>
and soul, actually came to love him for his gentleness, and for some <br>
quality which baffled her, and made her ache with a strange longing <br>
which she could not define. Not that she ever de- fined anything, <br>
poor little beast! She had skin the color of pale gold, and yellow <br>
eyes with brown lights in them, and great plaits of straw-colored <br>
hair. About her lips was a fatal and sensuous smile, which, when it <br>
got hold of a man's imagination, would not let it go, but held to it, <br>
and mocked it till the day of his death. She was the incarnation of <br>
the Eternal Feminine, with all the wifeli- ness and the maternity <br>
left out -- she was ancient, yet ever young, and familiar as joy or <br>
tears or sin.</p>
<p>She took good care of Tim in some ways: fed him well, nursed him back <br>
to reason after a period of hard drinking, saw that he put on <br>
overshoes when the walks were wet, and looked after his money. She <br>
even prized his brain, for she discovered that it was a delicate <br>
little machine which produced gold.<br>
By association with him and his friends, she learned that a number of <br>
apparently useless things had value in the eyes of certain con- <br>
venient fools, and so she treasured the auto- graphs of distinguished <br>
persons who wrote to him -- autographs which he disdainfully tossed <br>
in the waste basket. She was careful with presentation copies from <br>
authors, and she went the length of urging Tim to write a book <br>
himself. But at that he balked.<br>
§ "Write a book!" he cried to her, his gen- tle face suddenly
white <br>
with passion. "Who am I to commit such a profanation?"</p>
<p>She didn't know what he meant, but she had a theory that it was <br>
dangerous to excite him, and so she sat up till midnight to cook a <br>
chop for him when he came home that night.</p>
<p>He preferred to have her sitting up for him, and he wanted every <br>
electric light in their apartments turned to the full. If, by any <br>
chance, they returned together to a dark house, he would not enter <br>
till she touched the button in the hall, and illuminated the room.<br>
Or if it so happened that the lights were turned off in the night <br>
time, and he awoke to find himself in darkness, he shrieked till the <br>
woman came running to his relief, and, with derisive laughter, turned <br>
them on again. But when she found that after these frights he lay <br>
trembling and white in his bed, she began to be alarmed for the <br>
clever, gold-making little machine, and to renew her assiduities, and <br>
to horde more tenaciously than ever, those valu- able curios on which <br>
she some day expected to realize when he was out of the way, and no <br>
longer in a position to object to their barter.</p>
<p>O'Connor's idiosyncrasy of fear was a source of much amusement among <br>
the boys at the office where he worked. They made open sport of it, <br>
and yet, recognizing him for a sensitive plant, and granting that <br>
genius was entitled to whimsicalities, it was their custom when they <br>
called for him after work hours, to permit him to reach the lighted <br>
cor- ridor before they turned out the gas over his desk. This, they <br>
reasoned, was but a slight service to perform for the most enchanting <br>
beggar in the world.</p>
<p>"Dear fellow," said Rick Dodson, who loved him, "is it the Devil
you <br>
expect to see?<br>
And if so, why are you averse? Surely the Devil is not such a bad old <br>
chap."</p>
<p>"You haven't found him so?"</p>
<p>"Tim, by heaven, you know, you ought to explain to me. A citizen of <br>
the world and a student of its purlieus, like myself, ought to know <br>
what there is to know! Now you're a man of sense, in spite of a few <br>
bad habits -- such as myself, for example. Is this fad of yours <br>
madness? -- which would be quite to your credit, -- for gadzooks, I <br>
like a lunatic!<br>
Or is it the complaint of a man who has gath- ered too much data on <br>
the subject of Old Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more <br>
occult, and therefore more interesting?"</p>
<p>"Rick, boy," said Tim, "you're too -- in- quiring!" And
he turned to <br>
his desk with a look of delicate hauteur.</p>
<p>It was the very next night that these two tippling pessimists spent <br>
together talking about certain disgruntled but immortal gentlemen, <br>
who, having said their say and made the world quite uncomfortable, <br>
had now journeyed on to inquire into the nothingness which they <br>
postulated. The dawn was breaking in the muggy east; the bottles were <br>
empty, the cigars burnt out. Tim turned toward his friend with a <br>
sharp breaking of sociable silence.</p>
<p>"Rick," he said, "do you know that Fear has a Shape?"</p>
<p>"And so has my nose!"</p>
<p>"You asked me the other night what I feared. Holy father, I make my <br>
confession to you. What I fear is Fear."</p>
<p>"That's because you've drunk too much -- or not enough.</p>
<p>"'Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring Your winter garment <br>
of repentance fling --'"</p>
<p>"My costume then would be too nebulous for this weather, dear boy. <br>
But it's true what I was saying. I am afraid of ghosts."</p>
<p>"For an agnostic that seems a bit --"</p>
<p>"Agnostic! Yes, so completely an agnostic that I do not even know <br>
that I do not know!<br>
God, man, do you mean you have no ghosts -- no -- no things which <br>
shape themselves?<br>
Why, there are things I have done --"</p>
<p>"Don't think of them, my boy! See, 'night's candles are burnt out, <br>
and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top.'"</p>
<p>Tim looked about him with a sickly smile.<br>
He looked behind him and there was nothing there; stared at the blank <br>
window, where the smoky dawn showed its offensive face, and there was <br>
nothing there. He pushed away the moist hair from his haggard face -- <br>
that face which would look like the blessed St.<br>
John, and leaned heavily back in his chair.</p>
<p>"'Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I,'"<br>
he murmured drowsily, "'it is some meteor which the sun exhales, to <br>
be to thee this night --'"</p>
<p></p>
<br>
The words floated off in languid nothing- ness, and he slept. Dodson <br>
arose preparatory to stretching himself on his couch. But first he <br>
bent over his friend with a sense of tragic appreciation.
<p>"Damned by the skin of his teeth!" he mut- tered. "A little
more, and <br>
he would have gone right, and the Devil would have lost a good <br>
fellow. As it is" -- he smiled with his usual conceited delight in <br>
his own sayings, even when they were uttered in soliloquy -- "he is <br>
merely one of those splendid gentlemen one will meet with in hell." <br>
Then Dodson had a momentary nostalgia for goodness himself, but he <br>
soon overcame it, and stretching him- self on his sofa, he, too, <br>
slept.</p>
<p>That night he and O'Connor went together to hear "Faust" sung, and
<br>
returning to the office, Dodson prepared to write his criti- cism. <br>
Except for the distant clatter of tele- graph instruments, or the <br>
peremptory cries of "copy" from an upper room, the office was still.
<br>
Dodson wrote and smoked his inter- minable cigarettes; O' Connor <br>
rested his head in his hands on the desk, and sat in perfect silence. <br>
He did not know when Dodson fin- ished, or when, arising, and <br>
absent-mindedly extinguishing the lights, he moved to the door with <br>
his copy in his hands. Dodson gathered up the hats and coats as he <br>
passed them where they lay on a chair, and called:</p>
<p>"It is done, Tim. Come, let's get out of this."</p>
<p>There was no answer, and he thought Tim was following, but after he <br>
had handed his criticism to the city editor, he saw he was still <br>
alone, and returned to the room for his friend. He advanced no <br>
further than the doorway, for, as he stood in the dusky cor- ridor <br>
and looked within the darkened room, he saw before his friend a <br>
Shape, white, of perfect loveliness, divinely delicate and pure and <br>
ethereal, which seemed as the embodi- ment of all goodness. From it <br>
came a soft radiance and a perfume softer than the wind when "it <br>
breathes upon a bank of violets stealing and giving odor." Staring at <br>
it, with eyes immovable, sat his friend.</p>
<p>It was strange that at sight of a thing so unspeakably fair, a <br>
coldness like that which comes from the jewel-blue lips of a Muir <br>
crevasse should have fallen upon Dodson, or that it was only by <br>
summoning all the man- hood that was left in him, that he was able to <br>
restore light to the room, and to rush to his friend. When he reached <br>
poor Tim he was stone-still with paralysis. They took him home to the <br>
woman, who nursed him out of that attack -- and later on worried him <br>
into another.</p>
<p>When he was able to sit up and jeer at things a little again, and <br>
help himself to the quail the woman broiled for him, Dodson, sitting <br>
beside him, said:</p>
<p>"Did you call that little exhibition of yours legerdemain, Tim, you <br>
sweep? Or are you really the Devil's bairn?"</p>
<p>"It was the Shape of Fear," said Tim, quite seriously.</p>
<p>"But it seemed mild as mother's milk."</p>
<p>"It was compounded of the good I might have done. It is that which I <br>
fear."</p>
<p>He would explain no more. Later -- many months later -- he died <br>
patiently and sweetly in the madhouse, praying for rest. The little <br>
beast with the yellow eyes had high mass cele- brated for him, which, <br>
all things considered, was almost as pathetic as it was amusing.</p>
<p>Dodson was in Vienna when he heard of it.</p>
<p>"Sa, sa!" cried he. "I wish it wasn't so dark in the tomb! What
do <br>
you suppose Tim is looking at?"</p>
<p>As for Jim O'Malley, he was with diffi- culty kept from illuminating <br>
the grave with electricity.</p>
<p>ON THE NORTHERN ICE</p>
<p>THE winter nights up at Sault Ste.<br>
Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way. The silence which <br>
rests upon the solitude appears to be white also. Even sound has been <br>
included in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the still white <br>
frost, all things seem to be oblit- erated. The stars have a poignant <br>
brightness, but they belong to heaven and not to earth, and between <br>
their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the ebon ether in <br>
vast, liquid billows.</p>
<p>In such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is actually <br>
peopled. It seems as if it might be the dark of the day after Cain <br>
killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's re- mainder was huddled in <br>
affright away from the awful spaciousness of Creation.</p>
<p>The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay -- bent on a <br>
pleasant duty -- he laughed to himself, and said that he did not at <br>
all object to being the only man in the world, so long as the world <br>
remained as un- speakably beautiful as it was when he buckled on his <br>
skates and shot away into the solitude.<br>
He was bent on reaching his best friend in time to act as groomsman, <br>
and business had delayed him till time was at its briefest. So he <br>
journeyed by night and journeyed alone, and when the tang of the <br>
frost got at his blood, he felt as a spirited horse feels when it <br>
gets free of bit and bridle. The ice was as glass, his skates were <br>
keen, his frame fit, and his venture to his taste! So he laughed, and <br>
cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water. He could hear <br>
the whistling of the air as he cleft it.</p>
<p>As he went on and on in the black stillness, he began to have <br>
fancies. He imagined him- self enormously tall -- a great Viking of <br>
the Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love.<br>
And that reminded him that he had a love -- though, indeed, that <br>
thought was always present with him as a background for other <br>
thoughts. To be sure, he had not told her that she was his love, for <br>
he had seen her only a few times, and the auspicious occasion had not <br>
yet presented itself. She lived at Echo Bay also, and was to be the <br>
maid of honor to his friend's bride -- which was one more reason why <br>
he skated almost as swiftly as the wind, and why, now and then, he <br>
let out a shout of exultation.</p>
<p>The one cloud that crossed Hagadorn's sun of expectancy was the <br>
knowledge that Marie Beaujeu's father had money, and that Marie lived <br>
in a house with two stories to it, and wore otter skin about her <br>
throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went <br>
sledding. Moreover, in the locket in which she treasured a bit of her <br>
dead mother's hair, there was a black pearl as big as a pea.<br>
These things made it difficult -- perhaps im- possible -- for Ralph <br>
Hagadorn to say more than, "I love you." But that much he meant to
<br>
say though he were scourged with chagrin for his temerity.</p>
<p>This determination grew upon him as he swept along the ice under the <br>
starlight.<br>
Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed eager to <br>
reassure him. He was sorry he could not skim down that avenue of <br>
light which flowed from the love-star, but he was forced to turn his <br>
back upon it and face the black northeast.</p>
<p>It came to him with a shock that he was not alone. His eyelashes were <br>
frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, so at first he <br>
thought it might be an illusion. But when he had rubbed his eyes <br>
hard, he made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white <br>
skater in fluttering garments who sped over the ice as fast as ever <br>
werewolf went.</p>
<p>He called aloud, but there was no answer.<br>
He shaped his hands and trumpeted through them, but the silence was <br>
as before -- it was complete. So then he gave chase, setting his <br>
teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm young muscles. But go <br>
however he would, the white skater went faster. After a time, as he <br>
glanced at the cold gleam of the north star, he perceived that he was <br>
being led from his direct path. For a moment he hesitated, wondering <br>
if he would not better keep to his road, but his weird companion <br>
seemed to draw him on irresistibly, and finding it sweet to follow, <br>
he followed.</p>
<p>Of course it came to him more than once in that strange pursuit, that <br>
the white skater was no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes men see <br>
curious things when the hoar frost is on the earth. Hagadorn's own <br>
father -- to hark no further than that for an instance!<br>
-- who lived up there with the Lake Superior Indians, and worked in <br>
the copper mines, had welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter night, <br>
who was gone by morning, leaving wolf tracks on the snow! Yes, it was <br>
so, and John Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any <br>
day -- if he were alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were, <br>
is melted now!)</p>
<p>Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the <br>
ice flushed pink at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into the <br>
cold heavens, she was gone, and Haga- dorn was at his destination. <br>
The sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, <br>
and as Hagadorn took off his skates and glanced carelessly lakeward, <br>
he beheld a great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves showing blue <br>
and hungry between white fields.<br>
Had he rushed along his intended path, watching the stars to guide <br>
him, his glance turned upward, all his body at magnificent momentum, <br>
he must certainly have gone into that cold grave.</p>
<p>How wonderful that it had been sweet to follow the white skater, and <br>
that he followed!</p>
<p>His heart beat hard as he hurried to his friend's house. But he <br>
encountered no wed- ding furore. His friend met him as men meet in <br>
houses of mourning.</p>
<p>"Is this your wedding face?" cried Haga- dorn. "Why, man, starved
as <br>
I am, I look more like a bridegroom than you!"</p>
<p>"There's no wedding to-day!"</p>
<p>"No wedding! Why, you're not --"</p>
<p>"Marie Beaujeu died last night --"</p>
<p>"Marie --"</p>
<p>"Died last night. She had been skating in the afternoon, and she came
<br>
home chilled and wandering in her mind, as if the frost had got in it <br>
somehow. She grew worse and worse, and all the time she talked of <br>
you."</p>
<p>"Of me?"</p>
<p>"We wondered what it meant. No one knew you were lovers."</p>
<p>"I didn't know it myself; more's the pity.<br>
At least, I didn't know --"</p>
<p>"She said you were on the ice, and that you didn't know about the big
<br>
breaking-up, and she cried to us that the wind was off shore and the <br>
rift widening. She cried over and over again that you could come in <br>
by the old French creek if you only knew --"</p>
<p>"I came in that way."</p>
<p>"But how did you come to do that? It's out of the path. We thought <br>
perhaps --"</p>
<p>But Hagadorn broke in with his story and told him all as it had come <br>
to pass.</p>
<p>That day they watched beside the maiden, who lay with tapers at her <br>
head and at her feet, and in the little church the bride who might <br>
have been at her wedding said prayers for her friend. They buried <br>
Marie Beaujeu in her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was before the <br>
altar with her, as he had intended from the first! Then at midnight <br>
the lovers who were to wed whispered their vows in the gloom of the <br>
cold church, and walked together through the snow to lay their bridal <br>
wreaths upon a grave.</p>
<p>Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back again to his home. They <br>
wanted him to go by sunlight, but he had his way, and went when Venus <br>
made her bright path on the ice.</p>
<p></p>
<p><br>
The truth was, he had hoped for the com- panionship of the white <br>
skater. But he did not have it. His only companion was the wind. The <br>
only voice he heard was the bay- ing of a wolf on the north shore. <br>
The world was as empty and as white as if God had just created it, <br>
and the sun had not yet colored nor man defiled it. </p>
<p> </p>
<h2>THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST</h2>
<p>THE first time one looked at Els- beth, one was not prepossessed.<br>
She was thin and brown, her nose turned slightly upward, her toes <br>
went in just a perceptible degree, and her hair was perfectly <br>
straight. But when one looked longer, one perceived that she was a <br>
charming little creature. The straight hair was as fine as silk, and <br>
hung in funny little braids down her back; there was not a flaw in <br>
her soft brown skin, and her mouth was tender and shapely. But her <br>
particular charm lay in a look which she habitually had, of seeming <br>
to know curious things -- such as it is not allotted to ordinary <br>
persons to know.<br>
One felt tempted to say to her:</p>
<p></p>
<p> </p>
<p></p>
<p><br>
"What are these beautiful things which you know, and of which others <br>
are ignorant?<br>
What is it you see with those wise and pel- lucid eyes? Why is it <br>
that everybody loves you?"</p>
<p>Elsbeth was my little godchild, and I knew her better than I knew any <br>
other child in the world. But still I could not truthfully say that I <br>
was familiar with her, for to me her spirit was like a fair and <br>
fragrant road in the midst of which I might walk in peace and joy, <br>
but where I was continually to discover something new. The last time <br>
I saw her quite well and strong was over in the woods where she had <br>
gone with her two little brothers and her nurse to pass the hottest <br>
weeks of summer. I followed her, foolish old creature that I was, <br>
just to be near her, for I needed to dwell where the sweet aroma of <br>
her life could reach me.</p>
<p>One morning when I came from my room, limping a little, because I am <br>
not so young as I used to be, and the lake wind works havoc with me, <br>
my little godchild came dancing to me singing:</p>
<p>"Come with me and I'll show you my places, my places, my places!"</p>
<p>Miriam, when she chanted by the Red Sea might have been more <br>
exultant, but she could not have been more bewitching. Of course I <br>
knew what "places" were, because I had once been a little girl <br>
myself, but unless you are acquainted with the real meaning of <br>
"places," it would be useless to try to ex- plain. Either you know
<br>
"places" or you do not -- just as you understand the meaning of <br>
poetry or you do not. There are things in the world which cannot be <br>
taught.</p>
<p>Elsbeth's two tiny brothers were present, and I took one by each hand <br>
and followed her. No sooner had we got out of doors in the woods than <br>
a sort of mystery fell upon the world and upon us. We were cautioned <br>
to move silently, and we did so, avoiding the crunching of dry twigs.</p>
<p>"The fairies hate noise," whispered my little godchild, her eyes
<br>
narrowing like a cat's.</p>
<p>"I must get my wand first thing I do," she said in an awed undertone.
<br>
"It is useless to try to do anything without a wand."</p>
<p>The tiny boys were profoundly impressed, and, indeed, so was I. I <br>
felt that at last, I should, if I behaved properly, see the fairies, <br>
which had hitherto avoided my materialistic gaze. It was an <br>
enchanting moment, for there appeared, just then, to be nothing <br>
commonplace about life.</p>
<p>There was a swale near by, and into this the little girl plunged. I <br>
could see her red straw hat bobbing about among the tall rushes, and <br>
I wondered if there were snakes.</p>
<p>"Do you think there are snakes?" I asked one of the tiny boys.</p>
<p>"If there are," he said with conviction, "they won't dare hurt
her."</p>
<p>He convinced me. I feared no more.<br>
Presently Elsbeth came out of the swale. In her hand was a brown <br>
"cattail," perfectly full and round. She carried it as queens carry
<br>
their sceptres -- the beautiful queens we dream of in our youth.</p>
<p>"Come," she commanded, and waved the sceptre in a fine manner. So
we <br>
followed, each tiny boy gripping my hand tight. We were all three a <br>
trifle awed. Elsbeth led us into a dark underbrush. The branches, as <br>
they flew back in our faces, left them wet with dew. A wee path, made <br>
by the girl's dear feet, guided our footsteps. Perfumes of elderberry <br>
and wild cucumber scented the air. A bird, frightened from its nest, <br>
made frantic cries above our heads. The under- brush thickened. <br>
Presently the gloom of the hemlocks was over us, and in the midst of <br>
the shadowy green a tulip tree flaunted its leaves. Waves boomed and <br>
broke upon the shore below. There was a growing dampness as we went <br>
on, treading very lightly. A little green snake ran coquettishly from <br>
us. A fat and glossy squirrel chattered at us from a safe height, <br>
stroking his whiskers with a com- plaisant air.</p>
<p>At length we reached the "place." It was a circle of velvet grass,
<br>
bright as the first blades of spring, delicate as fine sea-ferns.<br>
The sunlight, falling down the shaft between the hemlocks, flooded it <br>
with a softened light and made the forest round about look like deep <br>
purple velvet. My little godchild stood in the midst and raised her <br>
wand impressively.</p>
<p>"This is my place," she said, with a sort of wonderful gladness in
<br>
her tone. "This is where I come to the fairy balls. Do you see them?"</p>
<p>"See what?" whispered one tiny boy.</p>
<p>"The fairies."</p>
<p>There was a silence. The older boy pulled at my skirt.</p>
<p>"Do YOU see them?" he asked, his voice trembling with expectancy.</p>
<p>"Indeed," I said, "I fear I am too old and wicked to see fairies,
and <br>
yet -- are their hats red?"</p>
<p>"They are," laughed my little girl. "Their hats are red, and
as small <br>
-- as small!" She held up the pearly nail of her wee finger to give <br>
us the correct idea.</p>
<p>"And their shoes are very pointed at the toes?"</p>
<p>"Oh, very pointed!"</p>
<p>"And their garments are green?"</p>
<p>"As green as grass."</p>
<p>"And they blow little horns?"</p>
<p>"The sweetest little horns!"</p>
<p>"I think I see them," I cried.</p>
<p>"We think we see them too," said the tiny boys, laughing in perfect
<br>
glee.</p>
<p>"And you hear their horns, don't you?" my little godchild asked <br>
somewhat anxiously.</p>
<p>"Don't we hear their horns?" I asked the tiny boys.</p>
<p>"We think we hear their horns," they cried.<br>
"Don't you think we do?"</p>
<p>"It must be we do," I said. "Aren't we very, very happy?"</p>
<p>We all laughed softly. Then we kissed each other and Elsbeth led us <br>
out, her wand high in the air.</p>
<p>And so my feet found the lost path to Arcady.</p>
<p>The next day I was called to the Pacific coast, and duty kept me <br>
there till well into December. A few days before the date set for my <br>
return to my home, a letter came from Elsbeth's mother.</p>
<p>"Our little girl is gone into the Unknown,"<br>
she wrote -- "that Unknown in which she seemed to be forever trying <br>
to pry. We knew she was going, and we told her. She was quite brave, <br>
but she begged us to try some way to keep her till after Christmas. <br>
'My presents are not finished yet,' she made moan.<br>
'And I did so want to see what I was going to have. You can't have a <br>
very happy Christ- mas without me, I should think. Can you arrange to <br>
keep me somehow till after then?' We could not 'arrange' either with <br>
God in heaven or science upon earth, and she is gone."</p>
<p>She was only my little godchild, and I am an old maid, with no <br>
business fretting over children, but it seemed as if the medium of <br>
light and beauty had been taken from me.<br>
Through this crystal soul I had perceived whatever was loveliest. <br>
However, what was, was! I returned to my home and took up a course of <br>
Egyptian history, and determined to concern myself with nothing this <br>
side the Ptolemies.</p>
<p>Her mother has told me how, on Christmas eve, as usual, she and <br>
Elsbeth's father filled the stockings of the little ones, and hung <br>
them, where they had always hung, by the fire- place. They had little <br>
heart for the task, but they had been prodigal that year in their <br>
expenditures, and had heaped upon the two tiny boys all the treasures <br>
they thought would appeal to them. They asked them- selves how they <br>
could have been so insane previously as to exercise economy at <br>
Christ- mas time, and what they meant by not getting Elsbeth the <br>
autoharp she had asked for the year before.</p>
<p>"And now --" began her father, thinking of harps. But he could not
<br>
complete this sentence, of course, and the two went on pas- sionately <br>
and almost angrily with their task.<br>
There were two stockings and two piles of toys. Two stockings only, <br>
and only two piles of toys! Two is very little!</p>
<p>They went away and left the darkened room, and after a time they <br>
slept -- after a long time. Perhaps that was about the time the tiny <br>
boys awoke, and, putting on their little dressing gowns and bed <br>
slippers, made a dash for the room where the Christmas things were <br>
always placed. The older one carried a candle which gave out a feeble <br>
light. The other followed behind through the silent house. They were <br>
very impatient and eager, but when they reached the door of the <br>
sitting-room they stopped, for they saw that another child was before <br>
them.</p>
<p>It was a delicate little creature, sitting in her white night gown, <br>
with two rumpled funny braids falling down her back, and she seemed <br>
to be weeping. As they watched, she arose, and putting out one <br>
slender finger as a child does when she counts, she made sure over <br>
and over again -- three sad times -- that there were only two <br>
stockings and two piles of toys! Only those and no more.</p>
<p>The little figure looked so familiar that the boys started toward it, <br>
but just then, putting up her arm and bowing her face in it, as <br>
Elsbeth had been used to do when she wept or was offended, the little <br>
thing glided away and went out. That's what the boys said.<br>
It went out as a candle goes out.</p>
<p>They ran and woke their parents with the tale, and all the house was <br>
searched in a wonderment, and disbelief, and hope, and tumult! But <br>
nothing was found. For nights they watched. But there was only the <br>
silent house. Only the empty rooms. They told the boys they must have <br>
been mistaken. But the boys shook their heads.</p>
<p>"We know our Elsbeth," said they. "It was our Elsbeth, cryin'
'cause <br>
she hadn't no stockin' an' no toys, and we would have given her all <br>
ours, only she went out -- jus' went out!"</p>
<p>Alack!</p>
<p>The next Christmas I helped with the little festival. It was none of <br>
my affair, but I asked to help, and they let me, and when we were all <br>
through there were three stockings and three piles of toys, and in <br>
the largest one was all the things that I could think of that my dear <br>
child would love. I locked the boys' chamber that night, and I slept <br>
on the divan in the parlor off the sitting-room. I slept but little, <br>
and the night was very still -- so wind- less and white and still <br>
that I think I must have heard the slightest noise. Yet I heard none. <br>
Had I been in my grave I think my ears would not have remained more <br>
unsaluted.</p>
<p>Yet when daylight came and I went to un- lock the boys' bedchamber <br>
door, I saw that the stocking and all the treasures which I had <br>
bought for my little godchild were gone.<br>
There was not a vestige of them remaining!</p>
<p>Of course we told the boys nothing. As for me, after dinner I went <br>
home and buried myself once more in my history, and so inter- ested <br>
was I that midnight came without my knowing it. I should not have <br>
looked up at all, I suppose, to become aware of the time, had it not <br>
been for a faint, sweet sound as of a child striking a stringed <br>
instrument. It was so delicate and remote that I hardly heard it, but <br>
so joyous and tender that I could not but listen, and when I heard it <br>
a second time it seemed as if I caught the echo of a child's laugh. <br>
At first I was puzzled.<br>
Then I remembered the little autoharp I had placed among the other <br>
things in that pile of vanished toys. I said aloud:</p>
<p></p>
<p><br>
"Farewell, dear little ghost. Go rest.<br>
Rest in joy, dear little ghost. Farewell, farewell."</p>
<p>That was years ago, but there has been silence since. Elsbeth was <br>
always an obe- dient little thing.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>A SPECTRAL COLLIE</h2>
<p>WILLIAM PERCY CECIL happened to be a younger son, so he left home -- <br>
which was England -- and went to Kansas to ranch it. Thousands of <br>
younger sons do the same, only their des- tination is not invariably <br>
Kansas.</p>
<p>An agent at Wichita picked out Cecil's farm for him and sent the <br>
deeds over to Eng- land before Cecil left. He said there was a house <br>
on the place. So Cecil's mother fitted him out for America just as <br>
she had fitted out another superfluous boy for Africa, and parted <br>
from him with an heroic front and big agonies of mother-ache which <br>
she kept to herself.</p>
<p><br>
The boy bore up the way a man of his blood ought, but when he went <br>
out to the kennel to see Nita, his collie, he went to pieces somehow, <br>
and rolled on the grass with her in his arms and wept like a booby. <br>
But the remarkable part of it was that Nita wept too, big, hot dog <br>
tears which her master wiped away. When he went off she howled like a <br>
hungry baby, and had to be switched before she would give any one a <br>
night's sleep.</p>
<p>When Cecil got over on his Kansas place he fitted up the shack as <br>
cosily as he could, and learned how to fry bacon and make soda <br>
biscuits. Incidentally, he did farming, and sunk a heap of money, <br>
finding out how not to do things. Meantime, the Americans laughed at <br>
him, and were inclined to turn the cold shoulder, and his <br>
compatriots, of whom there were a number in the county, did not prove <br>
to his liking. They consoled themselves for their exiled state in <br>
fashions not in keeping with Cecil's traditions. His homesickness <br>
went deeper than theirs, per- haps, and American whiskey could not <br>
make up for the loss of his English home, nor flir- tations with the <br>
gay American village girls quite compensate him for the loss of his <br>
English mother. So he kept to himself and had nostalgia as some men <br>
have consumption.</p>
<p>At length the loneliness got so bad that he had to see some living <br>
thing from home, or make a flunk of it and go back like a cry baby. <br>
He had a stiff pride still, though he sobbed himself to sleep more <br>
than one night, as many a pioneer has done before him. So he wrote <br>
home for Nita, the collie, and got word that she would be sent. <br>
Arrangements were made for her care all along the line, and she was <br>
properly boxed and shipped.</p>
<p>As the time drew near for her arrival, Cecil could hardly eat. He was <br>
too excited to apply himself to anything. The day of her expected <br>
arrival he actually got up at five o'clock to clean the house and <br>
make it look as fine as possible for her inspection. Then he hitched <br>
up and drove fifteen miles to get her. The train pulled out just <br>
before he reached the station, so Nita in her box was waiting for him <br>
on the platform. He could see her in a queer way, as one sees the <br>
purple centre of a revolving circle of light; for, to tell the truth, <br>
with the long ride in the morn- ing sun, and the beating of his <br>
heart, Cecil was only about half-conscious of anything.<br>
He wanted to yell, but he didn't. He kept himself in hand and lifted <br>
up the sliding side of the box and called to Nita, and she came out.</p>
<p>But it wasn't the man who fainted, though he might have done so, <br>
being crazy home- sick as he was, and half-fed and overworked while <br>
he was yet soft from an easy life. No, it was the dog! She looked at <br>
her master's face, gave one cry of inexpressible joy, and fell over <br>
in a real feminine sort of a faint, and had to be brought to like any <br>
other lady, with camphor and water and a few drops of spirit down her <br>
throat. Then Cecil got up on the wagon seat, and she sat beside him <br>
with her head on his arm, and they rode home in absolute silence, <br>
each feeling too much for speech. After they reached home, however, <br>
Cecil showed her all over the place, and she barked out her ideas in <br>
glad sociability.</p>
<p>After that Cecil and Nita were inseparable.<br>
She walked beside him all day when he was out with the cultivator, or <br>
when he was mow- ing or reaping. She ate beside him at table and <br>
slept across his feet at night. Evenings when he looked over the <br>
Graphic from home, or read the books his mother sent him, that he <br>
might keep in touch with the world, Nita was beside him, patient, but <br>
jealous.<br>
Then, when he threw his book or paper down and took her on his knee <br>
and looked into her pretty eyes, or frolicked with her, she fairly <br>
laughed with delight.</p>
<p>In short, she was faithful with that faith of which only a dog is <br>
capable -- that unques- tioning faith to which even the most loving <br>
women never quite attain.</p>
<p>However, Fate was annoyed at this perfect friendship. It didn't give <br>
her enough to do, and Fate is a restless thing with a horrible <br>
appetite for variety. So poor Nita died one day mysteriously, and <br>
gave her last look to Cecil as a matter of course; and he held her <br>
paws till the last moment, as a stanch friend should, and laid her <br>
away decently in a pine box in the cornfield, where he could be <br>
shielded from public view if he chose to go there now and then and <br>
sit beside her grave.</p>
<p>He went to bed very lonely, indeed, the first night. The shack seemed <br>
to him to be removed endless miles from the other habi- tations of <br>
men. He seemed cut off from the world, and ached to hear the cheerful <br>
little barks which Nita had been in the habit of giving him by way of <br>
good night. Her ami- able eye with its friendly light was missing, <br>
the gay wag of her tail was gone; all her ridiculous ways, at which <br>
he was never tired of laughing, were things of the past.</p>
<p>He lay down, busy with these thoughts, yet so habituated to Nita's <br>
presence, that when her weight rested upon his feet, as usual, he <br>
felt no surprise. But after a mo- ment it came to him that as she was <br>
dead the weight he felt upon his feet could not be hers. And yet, <br>
there it was, warm and com- fortable, cuddling down in the familiar <br>
way.<br>
He actually sat up and put his hand down to the foot of the bed to <br>
discover what was there. But there was nothing there, save the <br>
weight. And that stayed with him that night and many nights after.</p>
<p>It happened that Cecil was a fool, as men will be when they are <br>
young, and he worked too hard, and didn't take proper care of him- <br>
self; and so it came about that he fell sick with a low fever. He <br>
struggled around for a few days, trying to work it off, but one morn- <br>
ing he awoke only to the consciousness of absurd dreams. He seemed to <br>
be on the sea, sailing for home, and the boat was tossing and <br>
pitching in a weary circle, and could make no headway. His heart was <br>
burning with impatience, but the boat went round and round in that <br>
endless circle till he shrieked out with agony.</p>
<p>The next neighbors were the Taylors, who lived two miles and a half <br>
away. They were awakened that morning by the howling of a dog before <br>
their door. It was a hideous sound and would give them no peace. So <br>
Charlie Taylor got up and opened the door, discovering there an <br>
excited little collie.</p>
<p>"Why, Tom," he called, "I thought Cecil's collie was dead!"</p>
<p>"She is," called back Tom.</p>
<p>"No, she ain't neither, for here she is, shakin' like an aspin, and a
<br>
beggin' me to go with her. Come out, Tom, and see."</p>
<p>It was Nita, no denying, and the men, per- plexed, followed her to <br>
Cecil's shack, where they found him babbling.</p>
<p>But that was the last of her. Cecil said he never felt her on his <br>
feet again. She had performed her final service for him, he said.<br>
The neighbors tried to laugh at the story at first, but they knew the <br>
Taylors wouldn't take the trouble to lie, and as for Cecil, no one <br>
would have ventured to chaff him.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT</h2>
<p>BART FLEMING took his bride out to his ranch on the plains when she <br>
was but seventeen years old, and the two set up housekeeping in three <br>
hundred and twenty acres of corn and rye.<br>
Off toward the west there was an unbroken sea of tossing corn at that <br>
time of the year when the bride came out, and as her sewing window <br>
was on the side of the house which faced the sunset, she passed a <br>
good part of each day looking into that great rustling mass, <br>
breathing in its succulent odors and listening to its sibilant <br>
melody. It was her picture gallery, her opera, her spectacle, and, <br>
being sensible, -- or perhaps, being merely happy, -- she made the <br>
most of it.</p>
<p><br>
When harvesting time came and the corn was cut, she had much <br>
entertainment in dis- covering what lay beyond. The town was east, <br>
and it chanced that she had never rid- den west. So, when the rolling <br>
hills of this newly beholden land lifted themselves for her <br>
contemplation, and the harvest sun, all in an angry and sanguinary <br>
glow sank in the veiled horizon, and at noon a scarf of golden vapor <br>
wavered up and down along the earth line, it was as if a new world <br>
had been made for her. Sometimes, at the coming of a storm, a <br>
whip-lash of purple cloud, full of electric agility, snapped along <br>
the western horizon.</p>
<p>"Oh, you'll see a lot of queer things on these here plains," her
<br>
husband said when she spoke to him of these phenomena. "I guess what <br>
you see is the wind."</p>
<p>"The wind!" cried Flora. "You can't see the wind, Bart."</p>
<p>"Now look here, Flora," returned Bart, with benevolent emphasis,
<br>
"you're a smart one, but you don't know all I know about this here <br>
country. I've lived here three mortal years, waitin' for you to git <br>
up out of your mother's arms and come out to keep me company, and I <br>
know what there is to know. Some things out here is queer -- so queer <br>
folks wouldn't believe 'em unless they saw. An' some's so pig-headed <br>
they don't believe their own eyes. As for th' wind, if you lay down <br>
flat and squint toward th' west, you can see it blowin' along near <br>
th' ground, like a big ribbon; an' sometimes it's th' color of air, <br>
an' sometimes it's silver an' gold, an' some- times, when a storm is <br>
comin', it's purple."</p>
<p>"If you got so tired looking at the wind, why didn't you marry some <br>
other girl, Bart, instead of waiting for me?"</p>
<p>Flora was more interested in the first part of Bart's speech than in <br>
the last.</p>
<p>"Oh, come on!" protested Bart, and he picked her up in his arms and
<br>
jumped her toward the ceiling of the low shack as if she were a <br>
little girl -- but then, to be sure, she wasn't much more.</p>
<p>Of all the things Flora saw when the corn was cut down, nothing <br>
interested her so much as a low cottage, something like her own, <br>
which lay away in the distance. She could not guess how far it might <br>
be, because dis- tances are deceiving out there, where the alti- tude <br>
is high and the air is as clear as one of those mystic balls of glass <br>
in which the sallow mystics of India see the moving shadows of the <br>
future.</p>
<p>She had not known there were neighbors so near, and she wondered for <br>
several days about them before she ventured to say any- thing to Bart <br>
on the subject. Indeed, for some reason which she did not attempt to <br>
ex- plain to herself, she felt shy about broaching the matter. <br>
Perhaps Bart did not want her to know the people. The thought came to <br>
her, as naughty thoughts will come, even to the best of persons, that <br>
some handsome young men might be "baching" it out there by <br>
themselves, and Bart didn't wish her to make their acquaintance. Bart <br>
had flattered her so much that she had actually begun to think <br>
herself beautiful, though as a matter of fact she was only a nice <br>
little girl with a lot of reddish-brown hair, and a bright pair of <br>
reddish-brown eyes in a white face.</p>
<p>"Bart," she ventured one evening, as the sun, at its fiercest, rushed
<br>
toward the great black hollow of the west, "who lives over there in <br>
that shack?"</p>
<p>She turned away from the window where she had been looking at the <br>
incarnadined disk, and she thought she saw Bart turn pale.<br>
But then, her eyes were so blurred with the glory she had been gazing <br>
at, that she might easily have been mistaken.</p>
<p>"I say, Bart, why don't you speak? If there's any one around to <br>
associate with, I should think you'd let me have the benefit of their <br>
company. It isn't as funny as you think, staying here alone days and <br>
days."</p>
<p>"You ain't gettin' homesick, be you, sweet- heart?" cried Bart, <br>
putting his arms around her. "You ain't gettin' tired of my society, <br>
be yeh?"</p>
<p>It took some time to answer this question in a satisfactory manner, <br>
but at length Flora was able to return to her original topic.</p>
<p>"But the shack, Bart! Who lives there, anyway?"</p>
<p>"I'm not acquainted with 'em," said Bart, sharply. "Ain't them
<br>
biscuits done, Flora?"</p>
<p>Then, of course, she grew obstinate.</p>
<p>"Those biscuits will never be done, Bart, till I know about that <br>
house, and why you never spoke of it, and why nobody ever comes down <br>
the road from there. Some one lives there I know, for in the mornings <br>
and at night I see the smoke coming out of the chimney."</p>
<p>"Do you now?" cried Bart, opening his eyes and looking at her with
<br>
unfeigned inter- est. "Well, do you know, sometimes I've fancied I <br>
seen that too?"</p>
<p>"Well, why not," cried Flora, in half anger.<br>
"Why shouldn't you?"</p>
<p>"See here, Flora, take them biscuits out an' listen to me. There <br>
ain't no house there.<br>
Hello! I didn't know you'd go for to drop the biscuits. Wait, I'll <br>
help you pick 'em up.<br>
By cracky, they're hot, ain't they? What you puttin' a towel over 'em <br>
for? Well, you set down here on my knee, so. Now you look over at <br>
that there house. You see it, don't yeh? Well, it ain't there! No! I <br>
saw it the first week I was out here. I was jus' half dyin', thinkin' <br>
of you an' wonderin' why you didn't write. That was the time you was <br>
mad at me. So I rode over there one day -- lookin' up company, so t' <br>
speak -- and there wa'n't no house there. I spent all one Sunday <br>
lookin' for it. Then I spoke to Jim Geary about it.<br>
He laughed an' got a little white about th' gills, an' he said he <br>
guessed I'd have to look a good while before I found it. He said that <br>
there shack was an ole joke."</p>
<p>"Why -- what --"</p>
<p>"Well, this here is th' story he tol' me.<br>
He said a man an' his wife come out here t' live an' put up that <br>
there little place. An' she was young, you know, an' kind o' skeery, <br>
and she got lonesome. It worked on her an' worked on her, an' one day <br>
she up an' killed the baby an' her husband an' herself. Th' folks <br>
found 'em and buried 'em right there on their own ground. Well, about <br>
two weeks after that, th' house was burned down. Don't know how. <br>
Tramps, maybe. Anyhow, it burned. At least, I guess it burned!"</p>
<p>"You guess it burned!"</p>
<p>"Well, it ain't there, you know."</p>
<p>"But if it burned the ashes are there."</p>
<p>"All right, girlie, they're there then. Now let's have tea."</p>
<p>This they proceeded to do, and were happy and cheerful all evening, <br>
but that didn't keep Flora from rising at the first flush of dawn and <br>
stealing out of the house. She looked away over west as she went to <br>
the barn and there, dark and firm against the horizon, stood the <br>
little house against the pellucid sky of morn- ing. She got on <br>
Ginger's back -- Ginger being her own yellow broncho -- and set off <br>
at a hard pace for the house. It didn't appear to come any nearer, <br>
but the objects which had seemed to be beside it came closer into <br>
view, and Flora pressed on, with her mind steeled for anything. But <br>
as she approached the poplar windbreak which stood to the north of <br>
the house, the little shack waned like a shadow before her. It faded <br>
and dimmed before her eyes.</p>
<p>She slapped Ginger's flanks and kept him going, and she at last got <br>
him up to the spot.<br>
But there was nothing there. The bunch grass grew tall and rank and <br>
in the midst of it lay a baby's shoe. Flora thought of picking it up, <br>
but something cold in her veins withheld her. Then she grew angry, <br>
and set Ginger's head toward the place and tried to drive him over <br>
it. But the yellow broncho gave one snort of fear, gathered himself <br>
in a bunch, and then, all tense, leaping muscles, made for home as <br>
only a broncho can.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>STORY OF AN OBSTINATE CORPSE</h2>
<p>VIRGIL HOYT is a photographer's assistant up at St. Paul, and enjoys <br>
his work without being consumed by it. He has been in search of the <br>
picturesque all over the West and hundreds of miles to the north, in <br>
Canada, and can speak three or four Indian dialects and put a canoe <br>
through the rapids. That is to say, he is a man of adventure, and no <br>
dreamer.<br>
He can fight well and shoot better, and swim so as to put up a <br>
winning race with the Ind- ian boys, and he can sit in the saddle all <br>
day and not worry about it to-morrow.</p>
<p><br>
Wherever he goes, he carries a camera.</p>
<p>"The world," Hoyt is in the habit of say- ing to those who sit with
<br>
him when he smokes his pipe, "was created in six days to be pho- <br>
tographed. Man -- and particularly woman -- was made for the same <br>
purpose. Clouds are not made to give moisture nor trees to cast <br>
shade. They have been created in order to give the camera obscura <br>
something to do."</p>
<p>In short, Virgil Hoyt's view of the world is whimsical, and he likes <br>
to be bothered neither with the disagreeable nor the mysteri- ous. <br>
That is the reason he loathes and detests going to a house of <br>
mourning to photograph a corpse. The bad taste of it offends him, but <br>
above all, he doesn't like the necessity of shouldering, even for a <br>
few moments, a part of the burden of sorrow which belongs to some one <br>
else. He dislikes sorrow, and would willingly canoe five hundred <br>
miles up the cold Canadian rivers to get rid of it.<br>
Nevertheless, as assistant photographer, it is often his duty to do <br>
this very kind of thing.</p>
<p>Not long ago he was sent for by a rich Jew- ish family to photograph <br>
the remains of the mother, who had just died. He was put out, but he <br>
was only an assistant, and he went.<br>
He was taken to the front parlor, where the dead woman lay in her <br>
coffin. It was evident to him that there was some excitement in the <br>
household, and that a discussion was going on.<br>
But Hoyt said to himself that it didn't con- cern him, and he <br>
therefore paid no attention to it.</p>
<p>The daughter wanted the coffin turned on end in order that the corpse <br>
might face the camera properly, but Hoyt said he could over- come the <br>
recumbent attitude and make it ap- pear that the face was taken in <br>
the position it would naturally hold in life, and so they went out <br>
and left him alone with the dead.</p>
<p>The face of the deceased was a strong and positive one, such as may <br>
often be seen among Jewish matrons. Hoyt regarded it with some <br>
admiration, thinking to himself that she was a woman who had known <br>
what she wanted, and who, once having made up her mind, would prove <br>
immovable. Such a character appealed to Hoyt. He reflected that he <br>
might have married if only he could have found a woman with strength <br>
of character sufficient to disagree with him. There was a strand of <br>
hair out of place on the dead woman's brow, and he gently pushed it <br>
back. A bud lifted its head too high from among the roses on her <br>
breast and spoiled the contour of the chin, so he broke it off. He <br>
remembered these things later with keen distinctness, and that his <br>
hand touched her chill face two or three times in the making of his <br>
arrangements.</p>
<p>Then he took the impression, and left the house.</p>
<p>He was busy at the time with some railroad work, and several days <br>
passed before he found opportunity to develop the plates. He took <br>
them from the bath in which they had lain with a number of others, <br>
and went energeti- cally to work upon them, whistling some very saucy <br>
songs he had learned of the guide in the Red River country, and <br>
trying to forget that the face which was presently to appear was that <br>
of a dead woman. He had used three plates as a precaution against <br>
accident, and they came up well. But as they devel- oped, he became <br>
aware of the existence of something in the photograph which had not <br>
been apparent to his eye in the subject. He was irritated, and <br>
without attempting to face the mystery, he made a few prints and laid <br>
them aside, ardently hoping that by some chance they would never be <br>
called for.</p>
<p>However, as luck would have it, -- and Hoyt's luck never had been <br>
good, -- his em- ployer asked one day what had become of those <br>
photographs. Hoyt tried to evade making an answer, but the effort was <br>
futile, and he had to get out the finished prints and exhibit them. <br>
The older man sat staring at them a long time.</p>
<p>"Hoyt," he said, "you're a young man, and very likely you have
never <br>
seen anything like this before. But I have. Not exactly the same <br>
thing, perhaps, but similar phenomena have come my way a number of <br>
times since I went in the business, and I want to tell you there are <br>
things in heaven and earth not dreamt of --"</p>
<p>"Oh, I know all that tommy-rot," cried Hoyt, angrily, "but when
<br>
anything happens I want to know the reason why and how it is done."</p>
<p>"All right," answered his employer, "then you might explain
why and <br>
how the sun rises."</p>
<p>But he humored the young man sufficiently to examine with him the <br>
baths in which the plates were submerged, and the plates them- <br>
selves. All was as it should be; but the mys- tery was there, and <br>
could not be done away with.</p>
<p>Hoyt hoped against hope that the friends of the dead woman would <br>
somehow forget about the photographs; but the idea was un- <br>
reasonable, and one day, as a matter of course, the daughter appeared <br>
and asked to see the pictures of her mother.</p>
<p>"Well, to tell the truth," stammered Hoyt, "they didn't come
out <br>
quite -- quite as well as we could wish."</p>
<p>"But let me see them," persisted the lady.<br>
"I'd like to look at them anyhow."</p>
<p>"Well, now," said Hoyt, trying to be soothing, as he believed it
was <br>
always best to be with women, -- to tell the truth he was an <br>
ignoramus where women were concerned, -- "I think it would be better <br>
if you didn't look at them. There are reasons why --"<br>
he ambled on like this, stupid man that he was, till the lady <br>
naturally insisted upon see- ing the pictures without a moment's <br>
delay.</p>
<p>So poor Hoyt brought them out and placed them in her hand, and then <br>
ran for the water pitcher, and had to be at the bother of bath- ing <br>
her forehead to keep her from fainting.</p>
<p>For what the lady saw was this: Over face and flowers and the head of <br>
the coffin fell a thick veil, the edges of which touched the floor in <br>
some places. It covered the feat- ures so well that not a hint of <br>
them was visible.</p>
<p>"There was nothing over mother's face!"<br>
cried the lady at length.</p>
<p>"Not a thing," acquiesced Hoyt. "I know, because I had occasion
to <br>
touch her face just before I took the picture. I put some of her hair <br>
back from her brow."</p>
<p>"What does it mean, then?" asked the lady.</p>
<p>"You know better than I. There is no ex- planation in science. <br>
Perhaps there is some in -- in psychology."</p>
<p>"Well," said the young woman, stammer- ing a little and coloring,
<br>
"mother was a good woman, but she always wanted her own way, and she <br>
always had it, too."</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"And she never would have her picture taken. She didn't admire her <br>
own appear- ance. She said no one should ever see a picture of her."</p>
<p>"So?" said Hoyt, meditatively. "Well, she's kept her word, hasn't
<br>
she?"</p>
<p>The two stood looking at the photographs for a time. Then Hoyt <br>
pointed to the open blaze in the grate.</p>
<p>"Throw them in," he commanded. "Don't let your father see them
-- <br>
don't keep them yourself. They wouldn't be agreeable things to keep."</p>
<p>"That's true enough," admitted the lady.<br>
And she threw them in the fire. Then Vir- gil Hoyt brought out the <br>
plates and broke them before her eyes.</p>
<p>And that was the end of it -- except that Hoyt sometimes tells the <br>
story to those who sit beside him when his pipe is lighted.</p>
<p>A CHILD OF THE RAIN</p>
<p>IT was the night that Mona Meeks, the dressmaker, told him she didn't <br>
love him. He couldn't believe it at first, because he had so long <br>
been accustomed to the idea that she did, and no matter how rough the <br>
weather or how irascible the passengers, he felt a song in his heart <br>
as he punched transfers, and rang his bell punch, and signalled the <br>
driver when to let people off and on.</p>
<p>Now, suddenly, with no reason except a woman's, she had changed her <br>
mind. He dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just before time for <br>
the night shift, and to give her two red apples he had been saving <br>
for her.<br>
She looked at the apples as if they were in- visible and she could <br>
not see them, and stand- ing in her disorderly little dressmaking <br>
parlor, with its cuttings and scraps and litter of fab- rics, she <br>
said:</p>
<p>"It is no use, John. I shall have to work here like this all my life <br>
-- work here alone.<br>
For I don't love you, John. No, I don't. I thought I did, but it is a <br>
mistake."</p>
<p>"You mean it?" asked John, bringing up the words in a great gasp.</p>
<p>"Yes," she said, white and trembling and putting out her hands as
if <br>
to beg for his mercy. And then -- big, lumbering fool -- he turned <br>
around and strode down the stairs and stood at the corner in the <br>
beating rain waiting for his car. It came along at length, <br>
spluttering on the wet rails and spitting out blue fire, and he took <br>
his shift after a gruff "Good night" to Johnson, the man he relieved.</p>
<p>He was glad the rain was bitter cold and drove in his face fiercely. <br>
He rejoiced at the cruelty of the wind, and when it hustled <br>
pedestrians before it, lashing them, twisting their clothes, and <br>
threatening their equilib- rium, he felt amused. He was pleased at <br>
the chill in his bones and at the hunger that tortured him. At least, <br>
at first he thought it was hunger till he remembered that he had just <br>
eaten. The hours passed confusedly.<br>
He had no consciousness of time. But it must have been late, -- near <br>
midnight, -- judging by the fact that there were few per- sons <br>
visible anywhere in the black storm, when he noticed a little figure <br>
sitting at the far end of the car. He had not seen the child when she <br>
got on, but all was so curious and wild to him that evening -- he <br>
himself seemed to himself the most curious and the wildest of all <br>
things -- that it was not surpris- ing that he should not have <br>
observed the little creature.</p>
<p>She was wrapped in a coat so much too large that it had become frayed <br>
at the bottom from dragging on the pavement. Her hair hung in unkempt <br>
stringiness about her bent shoulders, and her feet were covered with <br>
old arctics, many sizes too big, from which the soles hung loose.</p>
<p>Beside the little figure was a chest of dark wood, with curiously <br>
wrought hasps. From this depended a stout strap by which it could be <br>
carried over the shoulders. John Billings stared in, fascinated by <br>
the poor little thing with its head sadly drooping upon its breast, <br>
its thin blue hands relaxed upon its lap, and its whole attitude so <br>
suggestive of hunger, loneliness, and fatigue, that he made up his <br>
mind he would collect no fare from it.</p>
<p>"It will need its nickel for breakfast," he said to himself. "The
<br>
company can stand this for once. Or, come to think of it, I might <br>
celebrate my hard luck. Here's to the brotherhood of failures!" And <br>
he took a nickel from one pocket of his great-coat and dropped it in <br>
another, ringing his bell punch to record the transfer.</p>
<p>The car plunged along in the darkness, and the rain beat more <br>
viciously than ever in his face. The night was full of the rushing <br>
sound of the storm. Owing to some change of tem- perature the glass <br>
of the car became obscured so that the young conductor could no <br>
longer see the little figure distinctly, and he grew anxious about <br>
the child.</p>
<p>"I wonder if it's all right," he said to him- self. "I never
saw <br>
living creature sit so still."</p>
<p>He opened the car door, intending to speak with the child, but just <br>
then something went wrong with the lights. There was a blue and green <br>
flickering, then darkness, a sudden halt- ing of the car, and a great <br>
sweep of wind and rain in at the door. When, after a moment, light <br>
and motion reasserted themselves, and Billings had got the door <br>
together, he turned to look at the little passenger. But the car was <br>
empty.</p>
<p>It was a fact. There was no child there -- not even moisture on the <br>
seat where she had been sitting.</p>
<p>"Bill," said he, going to the front door and addressing the driver,
<br>
"what became of that little kid in the old cloak?"</p>
<p>"I didn't see no kid," said Bill, crossly.<br>
"For Gawd's sake, close the door, John, and git that draught off my <br>
back."</p>
<p>"Draught!" said John, indignantly, "where's the draught?"</p>
<p>"You've left the hind door open," growled Bill, and John saw him
<br>
shivering as a blast struck him and ruffled the fur on his bear-skin <br>
coat. But the door was not open, and yet John had to admit to himself <br>
that the car seemed filled with wind and a strange coldness.</p>
<p>However, it didn't matter. Nothing mat- tered! Still, it was as well <br>
no doubt to look under the seats just to make sure no little <br>
crouching figure was there, and so he did.<br>
But there was nothing. In fact, John said to himself, he seemed to be <br>
getting expert in finding nothing where there ought to be some- <br>
thing.</p>
<p>He might have stayed in the car, for there was no likelihood of more <br>
passengers that evening, but somehow he preferred going out where the <br>
rain could drench him and the wind pommel him. How horribly tired he <br>
was! If there were only some still place away from the blare of the <br>
city where a man could lie down and listen to the sound of the sea or <br>
the storm -- or if one could grow suddenly old and get through with <br>
the bother of living -- or if --</p>
<p>The car gave a sudden lurch as it rounded a curve, and for a moment <br>
it seemed to be a mere chance whether Conductor Billings would stay <br>
on his platform or go off under those fire-spitting wheels. He caught <br>
in- stinctively at his brake, saved himself, and stood still for a <br>
moment, panting.</p>
<p>"I must have dozed," he said to himself.</p>
<p>Just then, dimly, through the blurred win- dow, he saw again the <br>
little figure of the child, its head on its breast as before, its <br>
blue hands lying in its lap and the curious box beside it. John <br>
Billings felt a coldness beyond the coldness of the night run through <br>
his blood. Then, with a half-stifled cry, he threw back the door, and <br>
made a desperate spring at the corner where the eerie thing sat.</p>
<p>And he touched the green carpeting on the seat, which was quite dry <br>
and warm, as if no dripping, miserable little wretch had ever <br>
crouched there.</p>
<p>He rushed to the front door.</p>
<p>"Bill," he roared, "I want to know about that kid."</p>
<p>"What kid?"</p>
<p>"The same kid! The wet one with the old coat and the box with iron <br>
hasps! The one that's been sitting here in the car!"</p>
<p>Bill turned his surly face to confront the young conductor.</p>
<p>"You've been drinking, you fool," said he.<br>
"Fust thing you know you'll be reported."</p>
<p>The conductor said not a word. He went slowly and weakly back to his <br>
post and stood there the rest of the way leaning against the end of <br>
the car for support. Once or twice he muttered:</p>
<p>"The poor little brat!" And again he said, "So you didn't love
me <br>
after all!"</p>
<p>He never knew how he reached home, but he sank to sleep as dying men <br>
sink to death.<br>
All the same, being a hearty young man, he was on duty again next day <br>
but one, and again the night was rainy and cold.</p>
<p>It was the last run, and the car was spin- ning along at its limit, <br>
when there came a sudden soft shock. John Billings knew what that <br>
meant. He had felt something of the kind once before. He turned sick <br>
for a moment, and held on to the brake. Then he summoned his courage <br>
and went around to the side of the car, which had stopped.<br>
Bill, the driver, was before him, and had a limp little figure in his <br>
arms, and was carry- ing it to the gaslight. John gave one look and <br>
cried:</p>
<p>"It's the same kid, Bill! The one I told you of!"</p>
<p>True as truth were the ragged coat dangling from the pitiful body, <br>
the little blue hands, the thin shoulders, the stringy hair, the big <br>
arctics on the feet. And in the road not far off was the curious <br>
chest of dark wood with iron hasps.</p>
<p>"She ran under the car deliberate!" cried Bill. "I yelled to
her, but <br>
she looked at me and ran straight on!"</p>
<p>He was white in spite of his weather-beaten skin.</p>
<p>"I guess you wasn't drunk last night after all, John," said he.</p>
<p>"You -- you are sure the kid is -- is there?"<br>
gasped John.</p>
<p>"Not so damned sure!" said Bill.</p>
<p>But a few minutes later it was taken away in a patrol wagon, and with <br>
it the little box with iron hasps.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT</h2>
<p>THEY called it the room of the Evil Thought. It was really the pleas- <br>
antest room in the house, and when the place had been used as the <br>
rectory, was the minister's study. It looked out on a mournful clump <br>
of larches, such as may often be seen in the old-fash- ioned yards in <br>
Michigan, and these threw a tender gloom over the apartment.</p>
<p>There was a wide fireplace in the room, and it had been the young <br>
minister's habit to sit there hours and hours, staring ahead of him <br>
at the fire, and smoking moodily. The replenishing of the fire and of <br>
his pipe, it was said, would afford him occupation all the day long, <br>
and that was how it came about that his parochial duties were <br>
neglected so that, little by little, the people became dis- satisfied <br>
with him, though he was an eloquent young man, who could send his <br>
congregation away drunk on his influence. However, the calmer pulsed <br>
among his parish began to whisper that it was indeed the influence of <br>
the young minister and not that of the Holy Ghost which they felt, <br>
and it was finally decided that neither animal magnetism nor <br>
hypnotism were good substitutes for religion.<br>
And so they let him go.</p>
<p><br>
The new rector moved into a smart brick house on the other side of <br>
the church, and gave receptions and dinner parties, and was <br>
punctilious about making his calls. The people therefore liked him <br>
very much -- so much that they raised the debt on the church and <br>
bought a chime of bells, in their enthu- siasm. Every one was lighter <br>
of heart than under the ministration of the previous rector.<br>
A burden appeared to be lifted from the com- munity. True, there were <br>
a few who con- fessed the new man did not give them the food for <br>
thought which the old one had done, but, then, the former rector had <br>
made them uncomfortable! He had not only made them conscious of the <br>
sins of which they were already guilty, but also of those for which <br>
they had the latent capacity. A strange and fatal man, whom women <br>
loved to their sor- row, and whom simple men could not under- stand! <br>
It was generally agreed that the parish was well rid of him.</p>
<p>"He was a genius," said the people in commiseration. The word was
an <br>
uncom- plimentary epithet with them.</p>
<p>When the Hanscoms moved in the house which had been the old rectory, <br>
they gave Grandma Hanscom the room with the fire- place. Grandma was <br>
well pleased. The roaring fire warmed her heart as well as her chill <br>
old body, and she wept with weak joy when she looked at the larches, <br>
because they reminded her of the house she had lived in when she was <br>
first married. All the forenoon of the first day she was busy putting <br>
things away in bureau drawers and closets, but by afternoon she was <br>
ready to sit down in her high-backed rocker and enjoy the comforts of <br>
her room.</p>
<p>She nodded a bit before the fire, as she usually did after luncheon, <br>
and then she awoke with an awful start and sat staring before her <br>
with such a look in her gentle, filmy old eyes as had never been <br>
there before.<br>
She did not move, except to rock slightly, and the Thought grew and <br>
grew till her face was disguised as by some hideous mask of tragedy.</p>
<p>By and by the children came pounding at the door.</p>
<p>"Oh, grandma, let us in, please. We want to see your new room, and <br>
mamma gave us some ginger cookies on a plate, and we want to give <br>
some to you."</p>
<p>The door gave way under their assaults, and the three little ones <br>
stood peeping in, wait- ing for permission to enter. But it did not <br>
seem to be their grandma -- their own dear grandma -- who arose and <br>
tottered toward them in fierce haste, crying:</p>
<p>"Away, away! Out of my sight! Out of my sight before I do the thing I
<br>
want to do!<br>
Such a terrible thing! Send some one to me quick, children, children! <br>
Send some one quick!"</p>
<p>They fled with feet shod with fear, and their mother came, and <br>
Grandma Hanscom sank down and clung about her skirts and sobbed:</p>
<p>"Tie me, Miranda. Make me fast to the bed or the wall. Get some one <br>
to watch me.<br>
For I want to do an awful thing!"</p>
<p>They put the trembling old creature in bed, and she raved there all <br>
the night long and cried out to be held, and to be kept from doing <br>
the fearful thing, whatever it was -- for she never said what it was.</p>
<p>The next morning some one suggested tak- ing her in the sitting-room <br>
where she would be with the family. So they laid her on the sofa, <br>
hemmed around with cushions, and before long she was her quiet self <br>
again, though exhausted, naturally, with the tumult of the previous <br>
night. Now and then, as the children played about her, a shadow crept <br>
over her face -- a shadow as of cold remem- brance -- and then the <br>
perplexed tears followed.</p>
<p>When she seemed as well as ever they put her back in her room. But <br>
though the fire glowed and the lamp burned, as soon as ever she was <br>
alone they heard her shrill cries ring- ing to them that the Evil <br>
Thought had come again. So Hal, who was home from col- lege, carried <br>
her up to his room, which she seemed to like very well. Then he went <br>
down to have a smoke before grandma's fire.</p>
<p>The next morning he was absent from break- fast. They thought he <br>
might have gone for an early walk, and waited for him a few min- <br>
utes. Then his sister went to the room that looked upon the larches, <br>
and found him dressed and pacing the floor with a face set and stern. <br>
He had not been in bed at all, as she saw at once. His eyes were <br>
bloodshot, his face stricken as if with old age or sin or -- but she <br>
could not make it out. When he saw her he sank in a chair and covered <br>
his face with his hands, and between the trembling fingers she could <br>
see drops of perspiration on his forehead.</p>
<p>"Hal!" she cried, "Hal, what is it?"</p>
<p>But for answer he threw his arms about the little table and clung to <br>
it, and looked at her with tortured eyes, in which she fancied she <br>
saw a gleam of hate. She ran, screaming, from the room, and her <br>
father came and went up to him and laid his hands on the boy's <br>
shoulders. And then a fearful thing hap- pened. All the family saw <br>
it. There could be no mistake. Hal's hands found their way with <br>
frantic eagerness toward his father's throat as if they would choke <br>
him, and the look in his eyes was so like a madman's that his father <br>
raised his fist and felled him as he used to fell men years before in <br>
the college fights, and then dragged him into the sitting- room and <br>
wept over him.</p>
<p>By evening, however, Hal was all right, and the family said it must <br>
have been a fever, -- perhaps from overstudy, -- at which Hal cov- <br>
ertly smiled. But his father was still too anxious about him to let <br>
him out of his sight, so he put him on a cot in his room, and thus it <br>
chanced that the mother and Grace con- cluded to sleep together <br>
downstairs.</p>
<p>The two women made a sort of festival of it, and drank little cups of <br>
chocolate before the fire, and undid and brushed their brown braids, <br>
and smiled at each other, understand- ingly, with that sweet <br>
intuitive sympathy which women have, and Grace told her mother a <br>
number of things which she had been waiting for just such an <br>
auspicious oc- casion to confide.</p>
<p>But the larches were noisy and cried out with wild voices, and the <br>
flame of the fire grew blue and swirled about in the draught <br>
sinuously, so that a chill crept upon the two.<br>
Something cold appeared to envelop them -- such a chill as pleasure <br>
voyagers feel when a berg steals beyond Newfoundland and glows blue <br>
and threatening upon their ocean path.</p>
<p>Then came something else which was not cold, but hot as the flames of <br>
hell -- and they saw red, and stared at each other with mad- dened <br>
eyes, and then ran together from the room and clasped in close <br>
embrace safe beyond the fatal place, and thanked God they had not <br>
done the thing that they dared not speak of -- the thing which <br>
suddenly came to them to do.</p>
<p>So they called it the room of the Evil Thought. They could not <br>
account for it.<br>
They avoided the thought of it, being healthy and happy folk. But <br>
none entered it more.<br>
The door was locked.</p>
<p>One day, Hal, reading the paper, came across a paragraph concerning <br>
the young min- ister who had once lived there, and who had thought <br>
and written there and so influenced the lives of those about him that <br>
they remem- bered him even while they disapproved.</p>
<p>"He cut a man's throat on board ship for Australia," said he, "and
<br>
then he cut his own, without fatal effect -- and jumped overboard, <br>
and so ended it. What a strange thing!"</p>
<p>Then they all looked at one another with subtle looks, and a shadow <br>
fell upon them and stayed the blood at their hearts.</p>
<p>The next week the room of the Evil Thought was pulled down to make <br>
way for a pansy bed, which is quite gay and innocent, and blooms all <br>
the better because the larches, with their eternal murmuring, have <br>
been laid low and carted away to the sawmill.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT</h2>
<p>THERE had always been strange stories about the house, but it was a <br>
sensible, comfortable sort of a neighborhood, and people took pains <br>
to say to one another that there was nothing in these tales -- of <br>
course not!<br>
Absolutely nothing! How could there be?<br>
It was a matter of common remark, however, that considering the <br>
amount of money the Nethertons had spent on the place, it was curious <br>
they lived there so little. They were nearly always away, -- up North <br>
in the sum- mer and down South in the winter, and over to Paris or <br>
London now and then, -- and when they did come home it was only to <br>
entertain a number of guests from the city. The place was either <br>
plunged in gloom or gayety. The old gardener who kept house by <br>
himself in the cottage at the back of the yard had things much his <br>
own way by far the greater part of the time.</p>
<p><br>
Dr. Block and his wife lived next door to the Nethertons, and he and <br>
his wife, who were so absurd as to be very happy in each other's <br>
company, had the benefit of the beau- tiful yard. They walked there <br>
mornings when the leaves were silvered with dew, and even- ings they <br>
sat beside the lily pond and listened for the whip-poor-will. The <br>
doctor's wife moved her room over to that side of the house which <br>
commanded a view of the yard, and thus made the honeysuckles and <br>
laurel and clematis and all the masses of tossing greenery her own. <br>
Sitting there day after day with her sewing, she speculated about the <br>
mystery which hung impalpably yet undeniably over the house.</p>
<p>It happened one night when she and her husband had gone to their <br>
room, and were congratulating themselves on the fact that he had no <br>
very sick patients and was likely to enjoy a good night's rest, that <br>
a ring came at the door.</p>
<p>"If it's any one wanting you to leave home," warned his wife, "you
<br>
must tell them you are all worn out. You've been disturbed every <br>
night this week, and it's too much!"</p>
<p>The young physician went downstairs. At the door stood a man whom he <br>
had never seen before.</p>
<p>"My wife is lying very ill next door," said the stranger, "so
ill <br>
that I fear she will not live till morning. Will you please come to <br>
her at once?"</p>
<p>"Next door?" cried the physician. "I didn't know the Nethertons
were <br>
home!"</p>
<p>"Please hasten," begged the man. "I must go back to her. Follow
as <br>
quickly as you can."</p>
<p>The doctor went back upstairs to complete his toilet.</p>
<p>"How absurd," protested his wife when she heard the story. "There
is <br>
no one at the Nethertons'. I sit where I can see the front door, and <br>
no one can enter without my know- ing it, and I have been sewing by <br>
the window all day. If there were any one in the house, the gardener <br>
would have the porch lantern lighted. It is some plot. Some one has <br>
designs on you. You must not go."</p>
<p>But he went. As he left the room his wife placed a revolver in his <br>
pocket.</p>
<p>The great porch of the mansion was dark, but the physician made out <br>
that the door was open, and he entered. A feeble light came from the <br>
bronze lamp at the turn of the stairs, and by it he found his way, <br>
his feet sinking noiselessly in the rich carpets. At the head of the <br>
stairs the man met him. The doctor thought himself a tall man, but <br>
the stranger topped him by half a head. He motioned the physician to <br>
follow him, and the two went down the hall to the front room. The <br>
place was flushed with a rose-colored glow from several lamps. On a <br>
silken couch, in the midst of pillows, lay a woman dying with <br>
consumption. She was like a lily, white, shapely, graceful, with <br>
feeble yet charming movements. She looked at the doctor ap- <br>
pealingly, then, seeing in his eyes the in- voluntary verdict that <br>
her hour was at hand, she turned toward her companion with a glance <br>
of anguish. Dr. Block asked a few questions. The man answered them, <br>
the woman remaining silent. The physician ad- ministered something <br>
stimulating, and then wrote a prescription which he placed on the <br>
mantel-shelf.</p>
<p>"The drug store is closed to-night," he said, "and I fear the
<br>
druggist has gone home.<br>
You can have the prescription filled the first thing in the morning, <br>
and I will be over before breakfast."</p>
<p>After that, there was no reason why he should not have gone home. <br>
Yet, oddly enough, he preferred to stay. Nor was it professional <br>
anxiety that prompted this delay.<br>
He longed to watch those mysterious per- sons, who, almost oblivious <br>
of his presence, were speaking their mortal farewells in their <br>
glances, which were impassioned and of un- utterable sadness.</p>
<p>He sat as if fascinated. He watched the glitter of rings on the <br>
woman's long, white hands, he noted the waving of light hair about <br>
her temples, he observed the details of her gown of soft white silk <br>
which fell about her in voluminous folds. Now and then the man gave <br>
her of the stimulant which the doc- tor had provided; sometimes he <br>
bathed her face with water. Once he paced the floor for a moment till <br>
a motion of her hand quieted him.</p>
<p>After a time, feeling that it would be more sensible and considerate <br>
of him to leave, the doctor made his way home. His wife was awake, <br>
impatient to hear of his experiences.<br>
She listened to his tale in silence, and when he had finished she <br>
turned her face to the wall and made no comment.</p>
<p>"You seem to be ill, my dear," he said.<br>
"You have a chill. You are shivering."</p>
<p>"I have no chill," she replied sharply.<br>
"But I -- well, you may leave the light burning."</p>
<p>The next morning before breakfast the doc- tor crossed the dewy sward <br>
to the Netherton house. The front door was locked, and no one <br>
answered to his repeated ringings. The old gardener chanced to be <br>
cutting the grass near at hand, and he came running up.</p>
<p>"What you ringin' that door-bell for, doc- tor?" said he. "The
folks <br>
ain't come home yet. There ain't nobody there."</p>
<p>"Yes, there is, Jim. I was called here last night. A man came for me <br>
to attend his wife. They must both have fallen asleep that the bell <br>
is not answered. I wouldn't be sur- prised to find her dead, as a <br>
matter of fact.<br>
She was a desperately sick woman. Perhaps she is dead and something <br>
has happened to him. You have the key to the door, Jim.<br>
Let me in."</p>
<p>But the old man was shaking in every limb, and refused to do as he <br>
was bid.</p>
<p>"Don't you never go in there, doctor,"<br>
whispered he, with chattering teeth. "Don't you go for to 'tend no <br>
one. You jus' come tell me when you sent for that way. No, I ain't <br>
goin' in, doctor, nohow. It ain't part of my duties to go in. That's <br>
been stipulated by Mr. Netherton. It's my business to look after the <br>
garden."</p>
<p>Argument was useless. Dr. Block took the bunch of keys from the old <br>
man's pocket and himself unlocked the front door and entered.<br>
He mounted the steps and made his way to the upper room. There was no <br>
evidence of occupancy. The place was silent, and, so far as living <br>
creature went, vacant. The dust lay over everything. It covered the <br>
delicate damask of the sofa where he had seen the dying woman. It <br>
rested on the pillows. The place smelled musty and evil, as if it had <br>
not been used for a long time. The lamps of the room held not a drop <br>
of oil.</p>
<p>But on the mantel-shelf was the prescrip- tion which the doctor had <br>
written the night before. He read it, folded it, and put it in his <br>
pocket.</p>
<p>As he locked the outside door the old gar- dener came running to him.</p>
<p>"Don't you never go up there again, will you?" he pleaded, "not
<br>
unless you see all the Nethertons home and I come for you myself.<br>
You won't, doctor?"</p>
<p>"No," said the doctor.</p>
<p>When he told his wife she kissed him, and said:</p>
<p>"Next time when I tell you to stay at home, you must stay!"</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>THE PIANO NEXT DOOR</h2>
<p>BABETTE had gone away for the summer; the furniture was in its summer <br>
linens; the curtains were down, and Babette's husband, John Boyce, <br>
was alone in the house. It was the first year of his marriage, and he <br>
missed Babette. But then, as he often said to him- self, he ought <br>
never to have married her. He did it from pure selfishness, and <br>
because he was determined to possess the most illusive, tantalizing, <br>
elegant, and utterly unmoral little creature that the sun shone upon. <br>
He wanted her because she reminded him of birds, and flowers, and <br>
summer winds, and other exqui- site things created for the <br>
delectation of mankind. He neither expected nor desired her to think. <br>
He had half-frightened her into marrying him, had taken her to a poor <br>
man's home, provided her with no society such as she had been <br>
accustomed to, and he had no reasonable cause of complaint when she <br>
answered the call of summer and flitted away, like a butterfly in the <br>
morning sunshine, to the place where the flowers grew.</p>
<p><br>
He wrote to her every evening, sitting in the stifling, ugly house, <br>
and poured out his soul as if it were a libation to a goddess.<br>
She sometimes answered by telegraph, some- times by a perfumed note. <br>
He schooled him- self not to feel hurt. Why should Babette write? <br>
Does a goldfinch indict epistles; or a humming-bird study <br>
composition; or a glancing, red-scaled fish in summer shallows <br>
consider the meaning of words?</p>
<p>He knew at the beginning what Babette was -- guessed her limitations <br>
-- trembled when he buttoned her tiny glove -- kissed her dainty <br>
slipper when he found it in the closet after she was gone -- thrilled <br>
at the sound of her laugh, or the memory of it! That was all.<br>
A mere case of love. He was in bonds.<br>
Babette was not. Therefore he was in the city, working overhours to <br>
pay for Babette's pretty follies down at the seaside. It was quite <br>
right and proper. He was a grub in the furrow; she a lark in the <br>
blue. Those had always been and always must be their relative <br>
positions.</p>
<p>Having attained a mood of philosophic calm, in which he was prepared <br>
to spend his evenings alone -- as became a grub -- and to await with <br>
dignified patience the return of his wife, it was in the nature of an <br>
inconsist- ency that he should have walked the floor of the dull <br>
little drawing-room like a lion in cage. It did not seem in keeping <br>
with the position of superior serenity which he had assumed, that, <br>
reading Babette's notes, he should have raged with jealousy, or that, <br>
in the loneliness of his unkempt chamber, he should have stretched <br>
out arms of longing.<br>
Even if Babette had been present, she would only have smiled her gay <br>
little smile and co- quetted with him. She could not understand.<br>
He had known, of course, from the first mo- ment, that she could not <br>
understand! And so, why the ache, ache, ache of the heart!<br>
Or WAS it the heart, or the brain, or the soul?</p>
<p>Sometimes, when the evenings were so hot that he could not endure the <br>
close air of the house, he sat on the narrow, dusty front porch and <br>
looked about him at his neighbors. The street had once been smart and <br>
aspiring, but it had fallen into decay and dejection. Pale young men, <br>
with flurried-looking wives, seemed to Boyce to occupy most of the <br>
houses. Some- times three or four couples would live in one house. <br>
Most of these appeared to be child- less. The women made a pretence <br>
at fashion- able dressing, and wore their hair elaborately in <br>
fashions which somehow suggested board- ing-houses to Boyce, though <br>
he could not have told why. Every house in the block needed fresh <br>
paint. Lacking this renovation, the householders tried to make up for <br>
it by a display of lace curtains which, at every window, swayed in <br>
the smoke-weighted breeze.<br>
Strips of carpeting were laid down the front steps of the houses <br>
where the communities of young couples lived, and here, evenings, the <br>
inmates of the houses gathered, committing mild extravagances such as <br>
the treating of each other to ginger ale, or beer, or ice-cream.</p>
<p>Boyce watched these tawdry makeshifts at sociability with bitterness <br>
and loathing. He wondered how he could have been such a fool as to <br>
bring his exquisite Babette to this neighborhood. How could he expect <br>
that she would return to him? It was not reason- able. He ought to go <br>
down on his knees with gratitude that she even condescended to write <br>
him.</p>
<p>Sitting one night till late, -- so late that the fashionable young <br>
wives with their husbands had retired from the strips of stair <br>
carpeting, -- and raging at the loneliness which ate at his heart <br>
like a cancer, he heard, softly creep- ing through the windows of the <br>
house adjoin- ing his own, the sound of comfortable mel- ody.</p>
<p>It breathed upon his ear like a spirit of consolation, speaking of <br>
peace, of love which needs no reward save its own sweetness, of <br>
aspiration which looks forever beyond the thing of the hour to find <br>
attainment in that which is eternal. So insidiously did it whis- per <br>
these things, so delicately did the simple and perfect melodies creep <br>
upon the spirit -- that Boyce felt no resentment, but from the first <br>
listened as one who listens to learn, or as one who, fainting on the <br>
hot road, hears, far in the ferny deeps below, the gurgle of a <br>
spring.</p>
<p>Then came harmonies more intricate: fair fabrics of woven sound, in <br>
the midst of which gleamed golden threads of joy; a tapestry of <br>
sound, multi-tinted, gallant with story and achievement, and <br>
beautiful things. Boyce, sitting on his absurd piazza, with his knees <br>
jambed against the balustrade, and his chair back against the <br>
dun-colored wall of his house, seemed to be walking in the cathedral <br>
of the redwood forest, with blue above him, a vast hymn in his ears, <br>
pungent perfume in his nostrils, and mighty shafts of trees lifting <br>
themselves to heaven, proud and erect as pure men before their Judge. <br>
He stood on a mountain at sunrise, and saw the marvels of the <br>
amethystine clouds below his feet, heard an eternal and white <br>
silence, such as broods among the everlasting snows, and saw an eagle <br>
winging for the sun. He was in a city, and away from him, diverging <br>
like the spokes of a wheel, ran thronging streets, and to his sense <br>
came the beat, beat, beat of the city's heart.<br>
He saw the golden alchemy of a chosen race; saw greed transmitted to <br>
progress; saw that which had enslaved men, work at last to their <br>
liberation; heard the roar of mighty mills, and on the streets all <br>
the peoples of earth walking with common purpose, in fealty and <br>
understanding. And then, from the swelling of this concourse of great <br>
sounds, came a diminuendo, calm as philosophy, and from that, <br>
nothingness.</p>
<p>Boyce sat still for a long time, listening to the echoes which this <br>
music had awakened in his soul. He retired, at length, content, but <br>
determined that upon the morrow he would watch -- the day being <br>
Sunday -- for the musician who had so moved and taught him.</p>
<p>He arose early, therefore, and having pre- pared his own simple <br>
breakfast of fruit and coffee, took his station by the window to <br>
watch for the man. For he felt convinced that the exposition he had <br>
heard was that of a masculine mind. The long, hot hours of the <br>
morning went by, but the front door of the house next to his did not <br>
open.</p>
<p>"These artists sleep late," he complained.<br>
Still he watched. He was too much afraid of losing him to go out for <br>
dinner. By three in the afternoon he had grown impatient. He went to <br>
the house next door and rang the bell. There was no response. He <br>
thun- dered another appeal. An old woman with a cloth about her head <br>
answered the door.<br>
She was very deaf, and Boyce had difficulty in making himself <br>
understood.</p>
<p>"The family is in the country," was all she would say. "The
family <br>
will not be home till September."</p>
<p>"But there is some one living here?"<br>
shouted Boyce.</p>
<p>"_I_ live here," she said with dignity, put- ting back a wisp of
<br>
dirty gray hair behind her ear. "It is my house. I sublet to the <br>
family."</p>
<p>"What family?"</p>
<p>But the old creature was not communica- tive.</p>
<p>"The family that lives here," she said.</p>
<p>"Then who plays the piano in this house?"<br>
roared Boyce. "Do you?"</p>
<p>He thought a shade of pallor showed itself on her ash-colored cheeks. <br>
Yet she smiled a little at the idea of her playing.</p>
<p>"There is no piano," she said, and she put an enigmatical emphasis
to <br>
the words.</p>
<p>"Nonsense," cried Boyce, indignantly. "I heard a piano being
played <br>
in this very house for hours last night!"</p>
<p>"You may enter," said the old woman, with an accent more vicious
than <br>
hospitable.</p>
<p>Boyce almost burst into the drawing-room.<br>
It was a dusty and forbidding place, with ugly furniture and gaudy <br>
walls. No piano nor any other musical instrument stood in it. The <br>
intruder turned an angry and baffled face to the old woman, who was <br>
smiling with ill- concealed exultation.</p>
<p>"I shall see the other rooms," he an- nounced. The old woman did
not <br>
appear to be surprised at his impertinence.</p>
<p>"As you please," she said.</p>
<p>So, with the hobbling creature, with her bandaged head, for a guide, <br>
he explored every room of the house, which being identical with his <br>
own, he could do without fear of leaving any apartment unentered. But <br>
no piano did he find!</p>
<p>"Explain," roared Boyce at length, turning upon the leering old hag
<br>
beside him. "Ex- plain! For surely I heard music more beau- tiful <br>
than I can tell."</p>
<p>"I know nothing," she said. "But it is true I once had a lodger
who <br>
rented the front room, and that he played upon the piano. I am poor <br>
at hearing, but he must have played well, for all the neighbors used <br>
to come in front of the house to listen, and sometimes they applauded <br>
him, and some- times they were still. I could tell by watching their <br>
hands. Sometimes little chil- dren came and danced. Other times young <br>
men and women came and listened. But the young man died. The <br>
neighbors were angry.<br>
They came to look at him and said he had starved to death. It was no <br>
fault of mine.<br>
I sold his piano to pay his funeral ex- penses -- and it took every <br>
cent to pay for them too, I'd have you know. But since then, <br>
sometimes -- still, it must be non- sense, for I never heard it -- <br>
folks say that he plays the piano in my room. It has kept me out of <br>
the letting of it more than once. But the family doesn't seem to mind <br>
-- the family that lives here, you know. They will be back in <br>
September. Yes."</p>
<p>Boyce left her nodding her thanks at what he had placed in her hand, <br>
and went home to write it all to Babette -- Babette who would laugh <br>
so merrily when she read it!</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>AN ASTRAL ONION</h2>
<p>WHEN Tig Braddock came to Nora Finnegan he was red-headed and <br>
freckled, and, truth to tell, he re- mained with these features to <br>
the end of his life -- a life prolonged by a lucky, if somewhat <br>
improbable, incident, as you shall hear.</p>
<p>Tig had shuffled off his parents as saurians, of some sorts, do their <br>
skins. During the temporary absence from home of his mother, who was <br>
at the bridewell, and the more ex- tended vacation of his father, <br>
who, like Vil- lon, loved the open road and the life of it, Tig, who <br>
was not a well-domesticated animal, wandered away. The humane society <br>
never heard of him, the neighbors did not miss him, and the law took <br>
no cognizance of this detached citizen -- this lost pleiad. Tig would <br>
have sunk into that melancholy which is attendant upon hunger, -- the <br>
only form of despair which babyhood knows, -- if he had not wandered <br>
across the path of Nora Finne- gan. Now Nora shone with steady <br>
brightness in her orbit, and no sooner had Tig entered her <br>
atmosphere, than he was warmed and com- forted. Hunger could not live <br>
where Nora was. The basement room where she kept house was redolent <br>
with savory smells; and in the stove in her front room -- which was <br>
also her bedroom -- there was a bright fire glowing when fire was <br>
needed.</p>
<p><br>
Nora went out washing for a living. But she was not a poor <br>
washerwoman. Not at all.<br>
She was a washerwoman triumphant. She had perfect health, an enormous <br>
frame, an abounding enthusiasm for life, and a rich abundance of <br>
professional pride. She be- lieved herself to be the best washer of <br>
white clothes she had ever had the pleasure of knowing, and the value <br>
placed upon her ser- vices, and her long connection with certain <br>
families with large weekly washings, bore out this estimate of <br>
herself -- an estimate which she never endeavored to conceal.</p>
<p>Nora had buried two husbands without being unduly depressed by the <br>
fact. The first hus- band had been a disappointment, and Nora winked <br>
at Providence when an accident in a tunnel carried him off -- that is <br>
to say, carried the husband off. The second husband was not so much <br>
of a disappointment as a sur- prise. He developed ability of a <br>
literary order, and wrote songs which sold and made him a small <br>
fortune. Then he ran away with another woman. The woman spent his <br>
fort- une, drove him to dissipation, and when he was dying he came <br>
back to Nora, who re- ceived him cordially, attended him to the end, <br>
and cheered his last hours by singing his own songs to him. Then she <br>
raised a headstone recounting his virtues, which were quite numerous, <br>
and refraining from any reference to those peculiarities which had <br>
caused him to be such a surprise.</p>
<p>Only one actual chagrin had ever nibbled at the sound heart of Nora <br>
Finnegan -- a cruel chagrin, with long, white teeth, such as rodents <br>
have! She had never held a child to her breast, nor laughed in its <br>
eyes; never bathed the pink form of a little son or daughter; never <br>
felt a tugging of tiny hands at her voluminous calico skirts! Nora <br>
had burnt many candles before the statue of the blessed Virgin <br>
without remedying this deplor- able condition. She had sent up <br>
unavailing prayers -- she had, at times, wept hot tears of longing <br>
and loneliness. Sometimes in her sleep she dreamed that a wee form, <br>
warm and exquisitely soft, was pressed against her firm body, and <br>
that a hand with tiniest pink nails crept within her bosom. But as <br>
she reached out to snatch this delicious little creature closer, she <br>
woke to realize a barren woman's grief, and turned herself in anguish <br>
on her lonely pillow.</p>
<p>So when Tig came along, accompanied by two curs, who had faithfully <br>
followed him from his home, and when she learned the details of his <br>
story, she took him in, curs and all, and, having bathed the three of <br>
them, made them part and parcel of her home. This was after the <br>
demise of the second husband, and at a time when Nora felt that she <br>
had done all a woman could be expected to do for Hymen.</p>
<p>Tig was a preposterous baby. The curs were preposterous curs. Nora <br>
had always been afflicted with a surplus amount of laughter -- <br>
laughter which had difficulty in attaching itself to anything, owing <br>
to the lack of the really comic in the surroundings of the poor. But <br>
with a red-headed and freckled baby boy and two trick dogs in the <br>
house, she found a good and sufficient excuse for her hilarity, and <br>
would have torn the cave where echo lies with her mirth, had that <br>
cave not been at such an immeasurable dis- tance from the crowded <br>
neighborhood where she lived.</p>
<p>At the age of four Tig went to free kinder- garten; at the age of six <br>
he was in school, and made three grades the first year and two the <br>
next. At fifteen he was graduated from the high school and went to <br>
work as errand boy in a newspaper office, with the fixed de- <br>
termination to make a journalist of himself.</p>
<p>Nora was a trifle worried about his morals when she discovered his <br>
intellect, but as time went on, and Tig showed no devotion for any <br>
woman save herself, and no consciousness that there were such things <br>
as bad boys or saloons in the world, she began to have con- fidence. <br>
All of his earnings were brought to her. Every holiday was spent with <br>
her. He told her his secrets and his aspirations. He admitted that he <br>
expected to become a great man, and, though he had not quite decided <br>
upon the nature of his career, -- saving, of course, the makeshift of <br>
journalism, -- it was not unlikely that he would elect to be a <br>
novelist like -- well, probably like Thackeray.</p>
<p>Hope, always a charming creature, put on her most alluring smiles for <br>
Tig, and he made her his mistress, and feasted on the light of her <br>
eyes. Moreover, he was chap- eroned, so to speak, by Nora Finnegan, <br>
who listened to every line Tig wrote, and made a mighty applause, and <br>
filled him up with good Irish stew, many colored as the coat of <br>
Joseph, and pungent with the inimitable perfume of "the rose of the <br>
cellar." Nora Finnegan understood the onion, and used it lovingly.<br>
She perceived the difference between the use and abuse of this <br>
pleasant and obvious friend of hungry man, and employed it with <br>
enthu- siasm, but discretion. Thus it came about that whoever ate of <br>
her dinners, found the meals of other cooks strangely lacking in <br>
savor, and remembered with regret the soups and stews, the broiled <br>
steaks, and stuffed chickens of the woman who appreciated the onion.</p>
<p>When Nora Finnegan came home with a cold one day, she took it in such <br>
a jocular fashion that Tig felt not the least concern about her, and <br>
when, two days later, she died of pneumonia, he almost thought, at <br>
first, that it must be one of her jokes. She had departed with <br>
decision, such as had charac- terized every act of her life, and had <br>
made as little trouble for others as possible. When she was dead the <br>
community had the oppor- tunity of discovering the number of her <br>
friends. Miserable children with faces which revealed two generations <br>
of hunger, homeless boys with vicious countenances, miserable wrecks <br>
of humanity, women with bloated faces, came to weep over Nora's bier, <br>
and to lay a flower there, and to scuttle away, more abjectly lonely <br>
than even sin could make them. If the cats and the dogs, the sparrows <br>
and horses to which she had shown kindness, could also have attended <br>
her funeral, the procession would have been, from a point of numbers, <br>
one of the most imposing the city had ever known. Tig used up all <br>
their sav- ings to bury her, and the next week, by some peculiar <br>
fatality, he had a falling out with the night editor of his paper, <br>
and was discharged.<br>
This sank deep into his sensitive soul, and he swore he would be an <br>
underling no longer -- which foolish resolution was directly trace- <br>
able to his hair, the color of which, it will be recollected, was <br>
red.</p>
<p>Not being an underling, he was obliged to make himself into something <br>
else, and he recurred passionately to his old idea of be- coming a <br>
novelist. He settled down in Nora's basement rooms, went to work on a <br>
battered type-writer, did his own cooking, and occasionally pawned <br>
something to keep him in food. The environment was calcu- lated to <br>
further impress him with the idea of his genius.</p>
<p>A certain magazine offered an alluring prize for a short story, and <br>
Tig wrote one, and rewrote it, making alterations, revisions, an- <br>
notations, and interlineations which would have reflected credit upon <br>
Honor&eacute; Balzac himself. Then he wrought all together, with <br>
splendid brevity and dramatic force, -- Tig's own words, -- and <br>
mailed the same. He was convinced he would get the prize. He was just <br>
as much convinced of it as Nora Finne- gan would have been if she had <br>
been with him.</p>
<p>So he went about doing more fiction, tak- ing no especial care of <br>
himself, and wrapt in rosy dreams, which, not being warm enough for <br>
the weather, permitted him to come down with rheumatic fever.</p>
<p>He lay alone in his room and suffered such torments as the condemned <br>
and rheumatic know, depending on one of Nora's former friends to come <br>
in twice a day and keep up the fire for him. This friend was aged <br>
ten, and looked like a sparrow who had been in a cyclone, but <br>
somewhere inside his bones was a wit which had spelled out devotion.<br>
He found fuel for the cracked stove, some- how or other. He brought <br>
it in a dirty sack which he carried on his back, and he kept warmth <br>
in Tig's miserable body. Moreover, he found food of a sort -- cold, <br>
horrible bits often, and Tig wept when he saw them, remembering the <br>
meals Nora had served him.</p>
<p>Tig was getting better, though he was con- scious of a weak heart and <br>
a lamenting stomach, when, to his amazement, the Spar- row ceased to <br>
visit him. Not for a moment did Tig suspect desertion. He knew that <br>
only something in the nature of an act of Providence, as the <br>
insurance companies would designate it, could keep the little bundle <br>
of bones away from him. As the days went by, he became convinced of <br>
it, for no Sparrow came, and no coal lay upon the hearth. The <br>
basement window fortunately looked toward the south, and the pale <br>
April sunshine was beginning to make itself felt, so that the tem- <br>
perature of the room was not unbearable. But Tig languished; sank, <br>
sank, day by day, and was kept alive only by the conviction that the <br>
letter announcing the award of the thousand- dollar prize would <br>
presently come to him.<br>
One night he reached a place, where, for hunger and dejection, his <br>
mind wandered, and he seemed to be complaining all night to Nora of <br>
his woes. When the chill dawn came, with chittering of little birds <br>
on the dirty pavement, and an agitation of the scrawny willow <br>
"pussies," he was not able to lift his hand to his head. The window
<br>
before his sight was but "a glimmering square." He said to himself
<br>
that the end must be at hand. Yet it was cruel, cruel, with fame and <br>
fortune so near! If only he had some food, he might summon strength <br>
to rally -- just for a little while! Impossible that he should die! <br>
And yet without food there was no choice.</p>
<p>Dreaming so of Nora's dinners, thinking how one spoonful of a stew <br>
such as she often compounded would now be his salvation, he became <br>
conscious of the presence of a strong perfume in the room. It was so <br>
familiar that it seemed like a sub-consciousness, yet he found no <br>
name for this friendly odor for a bewildered minute or two. Little by <br>
little, however, it grew upon him, that it was the onion -- that <br>
fragrant and kindly bulb which had attained its apotheosis in the <br>
cuisine of Nora Finnegan of sacred memory. He opened his languid <br>
eyes, to see if, mayhap, the plant had not attained some more <br>
palpable mate- rialization.</p>
<p>Behold, it was so! Before him, in a brown earthen dish, -- a most <br>
familiar dish, -- was an onion, pearly white, in placid seas of <br>
gravy, smoking and delectable. With unexpected strength he raised <br>
himself, and reached for the dish, which floated before him in a halo <br>
made by its own steam. It moved toward him, offered a spoon to his <br>
hand, and as he ate he heard about the room the rustle of Nora <br>
Finnegan's starched skirts, and now and then a faint, faint echo of <br>
her old-time laugh -- such an echo as one may find of the sea in the <br>
heart of a shell.</p>
<p>The noble bulb disappeared little by little before his voracity, and <br>
in contentment greater than virtue can give, he sank back upon his <br>
pillow and slept.</p>
<p>Two hours later the postman knocked at the door, and receiving no <br>
answer, forced his way in. Tig, half awake, saw him enter with no <br>
surprise. He felt no surprise when he put a letter in his hand <br>
bearing the name of the magazine to which he had sent his short <br>
story.<br>
He was not even surprised, when, tearing it open with suddenly alert <br>
hands, he found within the check for the first prize -- the check he <br>
had expected.</p>
<p>All that day, as the April sunlight spread itself upon his floor, he <br>
felt his strength grow.<br>
Late in the afternoon the Sparrow came back, paler, and more bony <br>
than ever, and sank, breathing hard, upon the floor, with his sack of <br>
coal.</p>
<p>"I've been sick," he said, trying to smile.<br>
"Terrible sick, but I come as soon as I could."</p>
<p>"Build up the fire," cried Tig, in a voice so strong it made the
<br>
Sparrow start as if a stone had struck him. "Build up the fire, and <br>
forget you are sick. For, by the shade of Nora Finnegan, you shall be <br>
hungry no more!"</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>FROM THE LOOM OF THE DEAD</h2>
<p>WHEN Urda Bjarnason tells a tale all the men stop their talking to <br>
lis- ten, for they know her to be wise with the wisdom of the old <br>
people, and that she has more learning than can be got even from the <br>
great schools at Reykjavik.<br>
She is especially prized by them here in this new country where the <br>
Icelandmen are settled -- this America, so new in letters, where the <br>
people speak foolishly and write unthinking books. So the men who <br>
know that it is given to the mothers of earth to be very wise, stop <br>
their six part singing, or their jangles about the free-thinkers, and <br>
give attentive ear when Urda Bjarnason lights her pipe and begins her <br>
tale.</p>
<p><br>
She is very old. Her daughters and sons are all dead, but her <br>
granddaughter, who is most respectable, and the cousin of a phy- <br>
sician, says that Urda is twenty-four and a hundred, and there are <br>
others who say that she is older still. She watches all that the <br>
Iceland people do in the new land; she knows about the building of <br>
the five villages on the North Dakota plain, and of the founding of <br>
the churches and the schools, and the tilling of the wheat farms. She <br>
notes with sus- picion the actions of the women who bring home webs <br>
of cloth from the store, instead of spinning them as their mothers <br>
did before them; and she shakes her head at the wives who run to the <br>
village grocery store every fortnight, imitating the wasteful <br>
American women, who throw butter in the fire faster than it can be <br>
turned from the churn.</p>
<p>She watches yet other things. All winter long the white snows reach <br>
across the gently rolling plains as far as the eye can behold.<br>
In the morning she sees them tinted pink at the east; at noon she <br>
notes golden lights flashing across them; when the sky is gray -- <br>
which is not often -- she notes that they grow as ashen as a face <br>
with the death shadow on it.<br>
Sometimes they glitter with silver-like tips of ocean waves. But at <br>
these things she looks only casually. It is when the blue shadows <br>
dance on the snow that she leaves her corner behind the iron stove, <br>
and stands before the window, resting her two hands on the stout bar <br>
of her cane, and gazing out across the waste with eyes which age has <br>
restored after four decades of decrepitude.</p>
<p>The young Icelandmen say:</p>
<p>"Mother, it is the clouds hurrying across the sky that make the dance
<br>
of the shadows."</p>
<p>"There are no clouds," she replies, and points to the jewel-like
blue <br>
of the arching sky.</p>
<p>"It is the drifting air," explains Fridrik Halldersson, he who has
<br>
been in the North- ern seas. "As the wind buffets the air, it looks <br>
blue against the white of the snow.<br>
'Tis the air that makes the dancing shadows."</p>
<p>But Urda shakes her head, and points with her dried finger, and those <br>
who stand beside her see figures moving, and airy shapes, and <br>
contortions of strange things, such as are seen in a beryl stone.</p>
<p>"But Urda Bjarnason," says Ingeborg Chris- tianson, the pert young
<br>
wife with the blue- eyed twins, "why is it we see these things only <br>
when we stand beside you and you help us to the sight?"</p>
<p>"Because," says the mother, with a steel- blue flash of her old eyes,
<br>
"having eyes ye will not see!" Then the men laugh. They like to hear
<br>
Ingeborg worsted. For did she not jilt two men from Gardar, and one <br>
from Mountain, and another from Winnipeg?</p>
<p>Not even Ingeborg can deny that Mother Urda tells true things.</p>
<p>"To-day," says Urda, standing by the little window and watching the
<br>
dance of the shadows, "a child breathed thrice on a farm at the West, <br>
and then it died."</p>
<p>The next week at the church gathering, when all the sledges stopped <br>
at the house of Urda's granddaughter, they said it was so -- that <br>
John Christianson's wife Margaret never heard the voice of her son, <br>
but that he breathed thrice in his nurse's arms and died.</p>
<p>"Three sledges run over the snow toward Milton," says Urda; "all
are <br>
laden with wheat, and in one is a stranger. He has with him a strange <br>
engine, but its purpose I do not know."</p>
<p>Six hours later the drivers of three empty sledges stop at the house.</p>
<p>"We have been to Milton with wheat," they say, "and Christian
Johnson <br>
here, carried a photographer from St. Paul."</p>
<p>Now it stands to reason that the farmers like to amuse themselves <br>
through the silent and white winters. And they prefer above all <br>
things to talk or to listen, as has been the fashion of their race <br>
for a thousand years.<br>
Among all the story-tellers there is none like Urda, for she is the <br>
daughter and the grand- daughter and the great-granddaughter of <br>
story- tellers. It is given to her to talk, as it is given to John <br>
Thorlaksson to sing -- he who sings so as his sledge flies over the <br>
snow at night, that the people come out in the bitter air from their <br>
doors to listen, and the dogs put up their noses and howl, not liking <br>
music.</p>
<p>In the little cabin of Peter Christianson, the husband of Urda's <br>
granddaughter, it some- times happens that twenty men will gather <br>
about the stove. They hang their bear-skin coats on the wall, put <br>
their fur gauntlets underneath the stove, where they will keep warm, <br>
and then stretch their stout, felt-covered legs to the wood fire. The <br>
room is fetid; the coffee steams eternally on the stove; and from her <br>
chair in the warmest corner Urda speaks out to the listening men, who <br>
shake their heads with joy as they hear the pure old Icelandic flow <br>
in sweet rhythm from between her lips. Among the many, many tales she <br>
tells is that of the dead weaver, and she tells it in the simplest <br>
language in all the world -- language so simple that even great <br>
scholars could find no simpler, and the children crawling on the <br>
floor can understand.</p>
<p>"Jon and Loa lived with their father and mother far to the north of <br>
the Island of Fire, and when the children looked from their win- dows <br>
they saw only wild scaurs and jagged lava rocks, and a distant, deep <br>
gleam of the sea. They caught the shine of the sea through an <br>
eye-shaped opening in the rocks, and all the long night of winter it <br>
gleamed up at them, like the eye of a dead witch. But when it <br>
sparkled and began to laugh, the children danced about the hut and <br>
sang, for they knew the bright summer time was at hand. Then their <br>
father fished, and their mother was gay.<br>
But it is true that even in the winter and the darkness they were <br>
happy, for they made fish- ing nets and baskets and cloth together, <br>
-- Jon and Loa and their father and mother, -- and the children were <br>
taught to read in the books, and were told the sagas, and given <br>
instruction in the part singing.</p>
<p>"They did not know there was such a thing as sorrow in the world, for
<br>
no one had ever mentioned it to them. But one day their mother died. <br>
Then they had to learn how to keep the fire on the hearth, and to <br>
smoke the fish, and make the black coffee. And also they had to learn <br>
how to live when there is sorrow at the heart.</p>
<p>"They wept together at night for lack of their mother's kisses, and <br>
in the morning they were loath to rise because they could not see her <br>
face. The dead cold eye of the sea watching them from among the lava <br>
rocks made them afraid, so they hung a shawl over the window to keep <br>
it out. And the house, try as they would, did not look clean and <br>
cheerful as it had used to do when their mother sang and worked about <br>
it.</p>
<p>"One day, when a mist rested over the eye of the sea, like that which
<br>
one beholds on the eyes of the blind, a greater sorrow came to them, <br>
for a stepmother crossed the thres- hold. She looked at Jon and Loa, <br>
and made complaint to their father that they were still very small <br>
and not likely to be of much use.<br>
After that they had to rise earlier than ever, and to work as only <br>
those who have their growth should work, till their hearts cracked <br>
for weariness and shame. They had not much to eat, for their <br>
stepmother said she would trust to the gratitude of no other woman's <br>
child, and that she believed in lay- ing up against old age. So she <br>
put the few coins that came to the house in a strong box, and bought <br>
little food. Neither did she buy the children clothes, though those <br>
which their dear mother had made for them were so worn that the warp <br>
stood apart from the woof, and there were holes at the elbows and <br>
little warmth to be found in them anywhere.</p>
<p>"Moreover, the quilts on their beds were too short for their growing <br>
length, so that at night either their purple feet or their thin <br>
shoulders were uncovered, and they wept for the cold, and in the <br>
morning, when they crept into the larger room to build the fire, they <br>
were so stiff they could not stand straight, and there was pain at <br>
their joints.</p>
<p>"The wife scolded all the time, and her brow was like a storm <br>
sweeping down from the Northwest. There was no peace to be had in the <br>
house. The children might not repeat to each other the sagas their <br>
mother had taught them, nor try their part singing, nor make little <br>
doll cradles of rushes. Always they had to work, always they were <br>
scolded, always their clothes grew thinner.</p>
<p>"'Stepmother,' cried Loa one day, -- she whom her mother had called <br>
the little bird, -- 'we are a-cold because of our rags. Our mother <br>
would have woven blue cloth for us and made it into garments.'</p>
<p>"'Your mother is where she will weave no cloth!' said the stepmother,
<br>
and she laughed many times.</p>
<p>"All in the cold and still of that night, the stepmother wakened, and
<br>
she knew not why.<br>
She sat up in her bed, and knew not why.<br>
She knew not why, and she looked into the room, and there, by the <br>
light of a burning fish's tail -- 'twas such a light the folk used in <br>
those days -- was a woman, weaving. She had no loom, and shuttle she <br>
had none. All with her hands she wove a wondrous cloth. Stoop- ing <br>
and bending, rising and swaying with motions beautiful as those the <br>
Northern Lights make in a midwinter sky, she wove a cloth. The warp <br>
was blue and mystical to see, the woof was white, and shone with its <br>
whiteness, so that of all the webs the step- mother had ever seen, <br>
she had seen none like to this.</p>
<p>"Yet the sight delighted her not, for beyond the drifting web, and <br>
beyond the weaver she saw the room and furniture -- aye, saw them <br>
through the body of the weaver and the drift- ing of the cloth. Then <br>
she knew -- as the haunted are made to know -- that 'twas the mother <br>
of the children come to show her she could still weave cloth. The <br>
heart of the stepmother was cold as ice, yet she could not move to <br>
waken her husband at her side, for her hands were as fixed as if they <br>
were crossed on her dead breast. The voice in her was silent, and her <br>
tongue stood to the roof of her mouth.</p>
<p>"After a time the wraith of the dead mother moved toward her -- the <br>
wraith of the weaver moved her way -- and round and about her body <br>
was wound the shining cloth.<br>
Wherever it touched the body of the step- mother, it was as hateful <br>
to her as the touch of a monster out of sea-slime, so that her flesh <br>
crept away from it, and her senses swooned.</p>
<p>"In the early morning she awoke to the voices of the children, <br>
whispering in the inner room as they dressed with half-frozen <br>
fingers. Still about her was the hateful, beau- tiful web, filling <br>
her soul with loathing and with fear. She thought she saw the task <br>
set for her, and when the children crept in to light the fire -- very <br>
purple and thin were their little bodies, and the rags hung from them <br>
-- she arose and held out the shining cloth, and cried:</p>
<p>"'Here is the web your mother wove for you. I will make it into <br>
garments!' But even as she spoke the cloth faded and fell into <br>
nothingness, and the children cried:</p>
<p>"'Stepmother, you have the fever!'</p>
<p>"And then:</p>
<p>"'Stepmother, what makes the strange light in the room?'</p>
<p>"That day the stepmother was too weak to rise from her bed, and the <br>
children thought she must be going to die, for she did not scold as <br>
they cleared the house and braided their baskets, and she did not <br>
frown at them, but looked at them with wistful eyes.</p>
<p>"By fall of night she was as weary as if she had wept all the day, <br>
and so she slept. But again she was awakened and knew not why.<br>
And again she sat up in her bed and knew not why. And again, not <br>
knowing why, she looked and saw a woman weaving cloth. All that had <br>
happened the night before happened this night. Then, when the morning <br>
came, and the children crept in shivering from their beds, she arose <br>
and dressed herself, and from her strong box she took coins, and bade <br>
her husband go with her to the town.</p>
<p>"So that night a web of cloth, woven by one of the best weavers in <br>
all Iceland, was in the house; and on the beds of the children were <br>
blankets of lamb's wool, soft to the touch and fair to the eye. After <br>
that the children slept warm and were at peace; for now, when they <br>
told the sagas their mother had taught them, or tried their part <br>
songs as they sat together on their bench, the stepmother was silent. <br>
For she feared to chide, lest she should wake at night, not knowing <br>
why, and see the mother's wraith."</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>A GRAMMATICAL GHOST</h2>
<p>THERE was only one possible ob- jection to the drawing-room, and that <br>
was the occasional presence of Miss Carew; and only one pos- sible <br>
objection to Miss Carew. And that was, that she was dead.</p>
<p>She had been dead twenty years, as a matter of fact and record, and <br>
to the last of her life sacredly preserved the treasures and <br>
traditions of her family, a family bound up -- as it is quite <br>
unnecessary to explain to any one in good society -- with all that is <br>
most venerable and heroic in the history of the Republic.<br>
Miss Carew never relaxed the proverbial hos- pitality of her house, <br>
even when she remained its sole representative. She continued to <br>
preside at her table with dignity and state, and to set an example of <br>
excessive modesty and gentle decorum to a generation of restless <br>
young women.</p>
<p><br>
It is not likely that having lived a life of such irreproachable <br>
gentility as this, Miss Carew would have the bad taste to die in any <br>
way not pleasant to mention in fastidious society. She could be <br>
trusted to the last, not to outrage those friends who quoted her as <br>
an exemplar of propriety. She died very un- obtrusively of an <br>
affection of the heart, one June morning, while trimming her rose <br>
trellis, and her lavender-colored print was not even rumpled when she <br>
fell, nor were more than the tips of her little bronze slippers <br>
visible.</p>
<p>"Isn't it dreadful," said the Philadelphians, "that the property
<br>
should go to a very, very distant cousin in Iowa or somewhere else on <br>
the frontier, about whom nobody knows any- thing at all?"</p>
<p>The Carew treasures were packed in boxes and sent away into the Iowa <br>
wilderness; the Carew traditions were preserved by the His- torical <br>
Society; the Carew property, standing in one of the most umbrageous <br>
and aristo- cratic suburbs of Philadelphia, was rented to all manner <br>
of folk -- anybody who had money enough to pay the rental -- and <br>
society entered its doors no more.</p>
<p>But at last, after twenty years, and when all save the oldest <br>
Philadelphians had forgotten Miss Lydia Carew, the very, very distant <br>
cousin appeared. He was quite in the prime of life, and so agreeable <br>
and unassuming that nothing could be urged against him save his <br>
patronymic, which, being Boggs, did not commend itself to the <br>
euphemists. With him were two maiden sisters, ladies of excellent <br>
taste and manners, who restored the Carew china to its ancient <br>
cabinets, and replaced the Carew pictures upon the walls, with ad- <br>
ditions not out of keeping with the elegance of these heirlooms. <br>
Society, with a magna- nimity almost dramatic, overlooked the name of <br>
Boggs -- and called.</p>
<p>All was well. At least, to an outsider all seemed to be well. But, in <br>
truth, there was a certain distress in the old mansion, and in the <br>
hearts of the well-behaved Misses Boggs.<br>
It came about most unexpectedly. The sis- ters had been sitting <br>
upstairs, looking out at the beautiful grounds of the old place, and <br>
marvelling at the violets, which lifted their heads from every <br>
possible cranny about the house, and talking over the cordiality <br>
which they had been receiving by those upon whom they had no claim, <br>
and they were filled with amiable satisfaction. Life looked <br>
attractive.<br>
They had often been grateful to Miss Lydia Carew for leaving their <br>
brother her fortune.<br>
Now they felt even more grateful to her. She had left them a Social <br>
Position -- one, which even after twenty years of desuetude, was fit <br>
for use.</p>
<p>They descended the stairs together, with arms clasped about each <br>
other's waists, and as they did so presented a placid and pleasing <br>
sight. They entered their drawing-room with the intention of brewing <br>
a cup of tea, and drinking it in calm sociability in the twilight.<br>
But as they entered the room they became aware of the presence of a <br>
lady, who was already seated at their tea-table, regarding their old <br>
Wedgewood with the air of a con- noisseur.</p>
<p>There were a number of peculiarities about this intruder. To begin <br>
with, she was hatless, quite as if she were a habitu&eacute; of the <br>
house, and was costumed in a prim lilac-colored lawn of the style of <br>
two decades past. But a greater peculiarity was the resemblance this <br>
lady bore to a faded daguerrotype. If looked at one way, she was <br>
perfectly discern- ible; if looked at another, she went out in a sort <br>
of blur. Notwithstanding this compara- tive invisibility, she exhaled <br>
a delicate per- fume of sweet lavender, very pleasing to the nostrils <br>
of the Misses Boggs, who stood look- ing at her in gentle and <br>
unprotesting surprise.</p>
<p>"I beg your pardon," began Miss Pru- dence, the younger of the Misses
<br>
Boggs, "but --"</p>
<p>But at this moment the Daguerrotype be- came a blur, and Miss <br>
Prudence found her- self addressing space. The Misses Boggs were <br>
irritated. They had never encountered any mysteries in Iowa. They <br>
began an im- patient search behind doors and porti&egrave;res, and <br>
even under sofas, though it was quite absurd to suppose that a lady <br>
recognizing the merits of the Carew Wedgewood would so far forget <br>
herself as to crawl under a sofa.</p>
<p>When they had given up all hope of dis- covering the intruder, they <br>
saw her standing at the far end of the drawing-room critically <br>
examining a water-color marine. The elder Miss Boggs started toward <br>
her with stern decision, but the little Daguerrotype turned with a <br>
shadowy smile, became a blur and an imperceptibility.</p>
<p>Miss Boggs looked at Miss Prudence Boggs.</p>
<p>"If there were ghosts," she said, "this would be one."</p>
<p>"If there were ghosts," said Miss Prudence Boggs, "this would
be the <br>
ghost of Lydia Carew."</p>
<p>The twilight was settling into blackness, and Miss Boggs nervously <br>
lit the gas while Miss Prudence ran for other tea-cups, preferring, <br>
for reasons superfluous to mention, not to drink out of the Carew <br>
china that evening.</p>
<p>The next day, on taking up her embroidery frame, Miss Boggs found a <br>
number of old- fashioned cross-stitches added to her Ken- sington. <br>
Prudence, she knew, would never have degraded herself by taking a <br>
cross-stitch, and the parlor-maid was above taking such a liberty. <br>
Miss Boggs mentioned the incident that night at a dinner given by an <br>
ancient friend of the Carews.</p>
<p>"Oh, that's the work of Lydia Carew, with- out a doubt!" cried the
<br>
hostess. "She visits every new family that moves to the house, but <br>
she never remains more than a week or two with any one."</p>
<p>"It must be that she disapproves of them,"<br>
suggested Miss Boggs.</p>
<p>"I think that's it," said the hostess. "She doesn't like their
china, <br>
or their fiction."</p>
<p>"I hope she'll disapprove of us," added Miss Prudence.</p>
<p>The hostess belonged to a very old Philadel- phian family, and she <br>
shook her head.</p>
<p>"I should say it was a compliment for even the ghost of Miss Lydia <br>
Carew to approve of one," she said severely.</p>
<p>The next morning, when the sisters entered their drawing-room there <br>
were numerous evi- dences of an occupant during their absence.<br>
The sofa pillows had been rearranged so that the effect of their <br>
grouping was less bizarre than that favored by the Western women; a <br>
horrid little Buddhist idol with its eyes fixed on its abdomen, had <br>
been chastely hidden behind a Dresden shepherdess, as unfit for the <br>
scrutiny of polite eyes; and on the table where Miss Prudence did <br>
work in water colors, after the fashion of the impressionists, lay a <br>
prim and impossible composition representing a moss-rose and a number <br>
of heartsease, col- ored with that caution which modest spinster <br>
artists instinctively exercise.</p>
<p>"Oh, there's no doubt it's the work of Miss Lydia Carew," said Miss
<br>
Prudence, contemptu- ously. "There's no mistaking the drawing of that <br>
rigid little rose. Don't you remember those wreaths and bouquets <br>
framed, among the pictures we got when the Carew pictures were sent <br>
to us? I gave some of them to an orphan asylum and burned up the <br>
rest."</p>
<p>"Hush!" cried Miss Boggs, involuntarily.<br>
"If she heard you, it would hurt her feelings terribly. Of course, I <br>
mean --" and she blushed. "It might hurt her feelings -- but how <br>
perfectly ridiculous! It's impos- sible!"</p>
<p>Miss Prudence held up the sketch of the moss-rose.</p>
<p>"THAT may be impossible in an artistic sense, but it is a palpable <br>
thing."</p>
<p>"Bosh!" cried Miss Boggs.</p>
<p>"But," protested Miss Prudence, "how do you explain it?"</p>
<p>"I don't," said Miss Boggs, and left the room.</p>
<p>That evening the sisters made a point of being in the drawing-room <br>
before the dusk came on, and of lighting the gas at the first hint of <br>
twilight. They didn't believe in Miss Lydia Carew -- but still they <br>
meant to be beforehand with her. They talked with un- wonted vivacity <br>
and in a louder tone than was their custom. But as they drank their <br>
tea even their utmost verbosity could not make them oblivious to the <br>
fact that the perfume of sweet lavender was stealing insidiously <br>
through the room. They tacitly refused to recognize this odor and all <br>
that it indicated, when sud- denly, with a sharp crash, one of the <br>
old Carew tea-cups fell from the tea-table to the floor and was <br>
broken. The disaster was fol- lowed by what sounded like a sigh of <br>
pain and dismay.</p>
<p>"I didn't suppose Miss Lydia Carew would ever be as awkward as that,"
<br>
cried the younger Miss Boggs, petulantly.</p>
<p>"Prudence," said her sister with a stern accent, "please try
not to <br>
be a fool. You brushed the cup off with the sleeve of your dress."</p>
<p>"Your theory wouldn't be so bad," said Miss Prudence, half laughing
<br>
and half crying, "if there were any sleeves to my dress, but, as you <br>
see, there aren't," and then Miss Prudence had something as near <br>
hysterics as a healthy young woman from the West can have.</p>
<p>"I wouldn't think such a perfect lady as Lydia Carew," she ejaculated
<br>
between her sobs, "would make herself so disagreeable!<br>
You may talk about good-breeding all you please, but I call such <br>
intrusion exceedingly bad taste. I have a horrible idea that she <br>
likes us and means to stay with us. She left those other people <br>
because she did not approve of their habits or their grammar. It <br>
would be just our luck to please her."</p>
<p>"Well, I like your egotism," said Miss Boggs.</p>
<p>However, the view Miss Prudence took of the case appeared to be the <br>
right one. Time went by and Miss Lydia Carew still remained.<br>
When the ladies entered their drawing-room they would see the little <br>
lady-like Daguerro- type revolving itself into a blur before one of <br>
the family portraits. Or they noticed that the yellow sofa cushion, <br>
toward which she appeared to feel a peculiar antipathy, had been <br>
dropped behind the sofa upon the floor, or that one of Jane Austen's <br>
novels, which none of the family ever read, had been re- moved from <br>
the book shelves and left open upon the table.</p>
<p>"I cannot become reconciled to it," com- plained Miss Boggs to Miss
<br>
Prudence. "I wish we had remained in Iowa where we belong. Of course <br>
I don't believe in the thing! No sensible person would. But still I <br>
cannot become reconciled."</p>
<p>But their liberation was to come, and in a most unexpected manner.</p>
<p>A relative by marriage visited them from the West. He was a friendly <br>
man and had much to say, so he talked all through dinner, and <br>
afterward followed the ladies to the draw- ing-room to finish his <br>
gossip. The gas in the room was turned very low, and as they entered <br>
Miss Prudence caught sight of Miss Carew, in company attire, sitting <br>
in upright propriety in a stiff-backed chair at the extremity of the <br>
apartment.</p>
<p>Miss Prudence had a sudden idea.</p>
<p>"We will not turn up the gas," she said, with an emphasis intended
to <br>
convey private information to her sister. "It will be more agreeable <br>
to sit here and talk in this soft light."</p>
<p>Neither her brother nor the man from the West made any objection. <br>
Miss Boggs and Miss Prudence, clasping each other's hands, divided <br>
their attention between their corporeal and their incorporeal guests. <br>
Miss Boggs was confident that her sister had an idea, and was willing <br>
to await its development. As the guest from Iowa spoke, Miss Carew <br>
bent a politely attentive ear to what he said.</p>
<p>"Ever since Richards took sick that time,"<br>
he said briskly, "it seemed like he shed all responsibility." (The
<br>
Misses Boggs saw the Daguerrotype put up her shadowy head with a <br>
movement of doubt and apprehension.) "The fact of the matter was, <br>
Richards didn't seem to scarcely get on the way he might have been <br>
expected to." (At this conscienceless split to the infinitive and <br>
misplacing of the preposition, Miss Carew arose trembling per- <br>
ceptibly.) "I saw it wasn't no use for him to count on a quick <br>
recovery --"</p>
<p>The Misses Boggs lost the rest of the sen- tence, for at the <br>
utterance of the double nega- tive Miss Lydia Carew had flashed out, <br>
not in a blur, but with mortal haste, as when life goes out at a <br>
pistol shot!</p>
<p>The man from the West wondered why Miss Prudence should have cried at <br>
so pathetic a part of his story:</p>
<p>"Thank Goodness!"</p>
<p>And their brother was amazed to see Miss Boggs kiss Miss Prudence <br>
with passion and energy.</p>
<p>It was the end. Miss Carew returned no more.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Shape of Fear, by Elia W. <br>
Peattie</h3>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p> </p>
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<p></p>
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<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<PRE>
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