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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Accident and Other Stories, by
+Annie Eliot Trumbull
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Christmas Accident and Other Stories
+
+Author: Annie Eliot Trumbull
+
+Release Date: March 11, 2009 [EBook #28307]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT
+
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BY
+ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
+
+
+
+
+A Christmas Accident
+
+
+
+
+STORIES BY
+
+ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
+
+[Illustration: Leaf]
+
+          A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT AND OTHER
+            STORIES. 16mo. Cloth                         $1.00
+
+          ROD'S SALVATION AND OTHER STORIES.
+            16mo. Cloth                                   1.00
+
+          A CAPE COD WEEK. 16mo. Cloth                    1.00
+
+          MISTRESS CONTENT CRADOCK.
+            Cloth. 16mo.                                  1.00
+
+[Illustration: Leaf]
+
+          A. S. BARNES & CO., PUBLISHERS,
+          _New York_.
+
+
+
+
+A Christmas Accident
+
+_And Other Stories_
+
+By
+
+Annie Eliot Trumbull
+
+Author of "White Birches," "A Masque of Culture," etc.
+
+[Illustration: Emblem]
+
+          New York
+          A. S. Barnes and Company
+          1900
+
+
+          _Copyright, 1897_,
+          BY A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY.
+
+
+
+          =University Press:=
+          JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+OF the stories included in this volume, the first originally appeared in
+the _Hartford Courant_; "After--the Deluge," in the _Atlantic Monthly_;
+"Mary A. Twining," in the _Home Maker_; "A Postlude" and "Her Neighbor's
+Landmark," in the _Outlook_; "The 'Daily Morning Chronicle,'" in _The
+New England Magazine_; and "Hearts Unfortified," in _McClure's
+Magazine_. To the courtesy of the editors of these periodicals I am
+indebted for permission to reprint them.
+
+                                                        A. E. T.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+                                              Page
+
+          A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT                   1
+
+          AFTER--THE DELUGE                     32
+
+          MEMOIR OF MARY TWINING                67
+
+          A POSTLUDE                            99
+
+          THE "DAILY MORNING CHRONICLE"        139
+
+          HEARTS UNFORTIFIED                   177
+
+          HER NEIGHBOR'S LANDMARK              210
+
+
+
+
+A Christmas Accident
+
+[Illustration: Leaf]
+
+
+AT first the two yards were as much alike as the two houses, each house
+being the exact copy of the other. They were just two of those little
+red brick dwellings that one is always seeing side by side in the
+outskirts of a city, and looking as if the occupants must be alike too.
+But these two families were quite different. Mr. Gilton, who lived in
+one, was a pretty cross sort of man, and was quite well-to-do, as cross
+people sometimes are. He and his wife lived alone, and they did not have
+much going out and coming in, either. Mrs. Gilton would have liked more
+of it, but she had given up thinking about it, for her husband had said
+so many times that it was women's tomfoolery to want to have people,
+whom you weren't anything to and who weren't anything to you, ringing
+your doorbell all the time and bothering around in your
+dining-room,--which of course it was; and she would have believed it if
+a woman ever did believe anything a man says a great many times.
+
+In the other house there were five children, and, as Mr. Gilton said,
+they made too large a family, and they ought to have gone somewhere
+else. Possibly they would have gone had it not been for the fence; but
+when Mr. Gilton put it up and Mr. Bilton told him it was three inches
+too far on his land, and Mr. Gilton said he could go to law about it,
+expressing the idea forcibly, Mr. Bilton was foolish enough to take his
+advice. The decision went against him, and a good deal of his money went
+with it, for it was a long, teasing lawsuit, and instead of being three
+inches of made ground it might have been three degrees of the Arctic
+Circle for the trouble there was in getting at it. So Mr. Bilton had to
+stay where he was.
+
+It was then that the yards began to take on those little differences
+that soon grew to be very marked. Neither family would plant any vines
+because they would have been certain to heedlessly beautify the other
+side, and consequently the fence, in all its primitive boldness, stood
+out uncompromisingly, and the one or two little bits of trees grew
+carefully on the farther side of the enclosure so as not to be mixed up
+in the trouble at all. But Mr. Gilton's grass was cut smoothly by the
+man who made the fires, while Mr. Bilton only found a chance to cut his
+himself once in two weeks. Then, by and by, Mr. Gilton bought a red
+garden bench and put it under the tree that was nearest to the fence. No
+one ever went out and sat on it, to be sure, but to the Bilton children
+it represented the visible flush of prosperity. Particularly was Cora
+Cordelia wont to peer through the fence and gaze upon that red bench,
+thinking it a charming place in which to play house, ignorant of the
+fact that much of the red paint would have come off on her back. Cora
+Cordelia was the youngest of the five. All the rest had very simple
+names,--John, Walter, Fanny, and Susan,--but when it came to Cora
+Cordelia, luxuries were beginning to get very scarce in the Bilton
+family, and Mrs. Bilton felt that she must make up for it by being
+lavish, in one direction or another. She had wished to name Fanny, Cora,
+and Susan, Cordelia, but she had yielded to her husband, and called one
+after his mother and one after herself, and then gave both her favorite
+names to the youngest of all. Cora Cordelia was a pretty little girl,
+prettier even than both her names put together.
+
+After the red bench came a quicksilver ball, that was put in the middle
+of the yard and reflected all the glory of its owner, albeit in a
+somewhat distorted form. This effort of human ingenuity filled the
+Bilton children with admiration bordering on awe; Cora Cordelia spent
+hours gazing at it, until called in and reproved by her mother for
+admiring so much things she could not afford to have. After this, she
+only admired it covertly.
+
+Small distinctions like these barbed the arrows of contrast and
+comparison and kept the disadvantages of neighborhood ever present.
+
+Then, it was a constant annoyance to have their surnames so much alike.
+Matters were made more unpleasant by mistakes of the butcher, the
+grocer, and so on,--Gilton, 79 Holmes Avenue, was so much like Bilton,
+77 Holmes Avenue. Gilton changed his butcher every time he sent his
+dinner to Bilton; and though the mistakes were generally rectified,
+neither of the two families ever forgot the time the Biltons ate,
+positively ate, the Gilton dinner, under a misapprehension. Mrs. Bilton
+apologized, and Mrs. Gilton boldly told her husband that she was glad
+they'd had it, and she hoped they'd enjoyed it, which only made matters
+worse; and altogether it was a dark day, the only joy of it being that
+fearful one snatched by John, Walter, Susan, Fanny, and Cora Cordelia
+from the undoubted excellence of the roast.
+
+Of course there was an assortment of minor difficulties. The smoke from
+the Biltons' kitchen blew in through the windows of the Giltons'
+sitting-room when the wind was in one direction, and, when it was in the
+other, many of the clothes from the Giltons' clothesline were blown into
+the Biltons' yard, and Fanny, Susan, or Cora Cordelia had to be sent out
+to pick them up and drop them over the fence again, which Mrs. Bilton
+said was very wearing, as of course it must have been. Things like this
+were always happening, but matters reached a climax when it came to the
+dog. It wasn't a large dog, but it was a tiresome one. It got up early
+in the morning and barked. Now we all know that early rising is a good
+thing and honorable among all men, but it is something that ought to be
+done quietly, out of regard to the weaker vessels; and a dog that barks
+between five and seven in the morning, continuously, certainly ought to
+be suppressed, even if it be necessary to use force. Everybody agreed
+with the Biltons about that,--everybody except the Giltons themselves,
+who, by some one of nature's freaks, didn't mind it. Mrs. Bilton often
+said she wished Mrs. Gilton could be a light sleeper for a week and see
+what it was like. So, too, everybody thought that Mr. Bilton had right
+on his side when he complained that this same dog came into his yard,
+being apparently indifferent to any coolness between the estate owners,
+and ran over a bed of geraniums and one thing and another, that was the
+small Bilton offset to the Gilton bench and ball. But when one morning,
+for the first time, that dog remained quiet and restful, and was found
+cold and poisoned, and Mr. Gilton was loud in his accusations of the
+Bilton boys and their father, public opinion wavered for a moment. After
+that accident, no member of either family spoke to any member of the
+other. That was the way matters stood the day before Christmas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was snowing hard, and the afternoon grew dark rapidly, and the
+whirling flakes pursued a blinding career. In spite of that, everybody
+was out doing the last thing. Mrs. Gilton was not, to be sure. Of course
+they would have a big dinner, but even that was all arranged for,
+although the turkey hadn't come and her husband was going to stop and
+see about it on his way home. She shuddered as the possibility of its
+having gone to the Biltons occurred to her. But she didn't believe it
+had,--they hadn't the same butcher any longer. Meanwhile there was so
+little to do. It was too dark to read or sew, and she sat idly at the
+window looking out at the passers and the driving snow. Everybody else
+was in a hurry. She wished she, too, had occasion to hasten down for a
+last purchase, or to light the lamp in order to finish a last bit of
+dainty sewing, as she used to do when she was a girl. She seemed to have
+so few friends now with whom she exchanged Christmas greetings. Was it
+then only for children and youth, this Christmas cheer? And must she
+necessarily have left it behind her with her girlhood? No, she knew
+better than that. She felt that there was a deeper significance in the
+Christmas-tide than can come home to the hearts of children and
+unthoughtfulness, and yet it had grown to be so painfully like other
+days,--an occasion for a little bigger dinner, that was about all. With
+an unconscious sigh she looked across to the Bilton house. Plenty of
+people over there to make merry. Five stockings to hang up. She wished
+she might have sent something in. To be sure, there was the dog, but
+that was some time ago. Very likely the dog would have been dead now,
+anyhow. She felt, herself, that this logic was not irrefutable, but she
+wished she could have sent some paper parcels just the same. So strong
+had this impulse been that she had said to her husband somewhat timidly
+that morning,--
+
+"There are a good many of those Bilton children to get presents for."
+
+"More fools they that get 'em presents, then," he had pleasantly
+replied.
+
+"I don't suppose he has much to buy them with," she continued.
+
+"He had enough to buy poison for my dog," exclaimed her husband, giving
+his newspaper an angry shake.
+
+"I'd almost like to send them in some cheap little toys."
+
+"Well, as long as you don't quite like to, it won't do any harm," he
+said with some violence, laying down his newspaper, and looking at her
+in a manner not to be misunderstood. "But you see that the liking
+doesn't get any farther."
+
+"It's Christmas, you know," said his plucky wife.
+
+"Oh, no, I don't know it!" he replied gruffly. "I haven't fallen over
+forty children a minute in the street with their ridiculous parcels, and
+I haven't had women drop brown-paper bundles that come undone all over
+me when they crowd into the horse car, and I haven't found it impossible
+to get to the shirt-collar counter on account of Christmas novelties!
+Oh, no, I didn't know it was Christmas!"
+
+After that there was really not much to be said, for we all know
+Christmas is dreadfully annoying, and the last thing a man in this sort
+of temper wants to hear about is peace and good will.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that Mrs. Gilton looked over to her neighbors'
+with an envious feeling this dark afternoon, their Christmas cheer was
+not so abounding as it had been in more prosperous times. There was not
+very much money to be spent this year, and they were obliged to give up
+something. Mr. and Mrs. Bilton had decided that it should be the
+Christmas dinner; they would have a simple luncheon, and let all the
+money that could be spared go for the stockings. Each child had its own
+sum to invest for others, and there was still a small amount for the
+older members of the family. That it was a small amount Mrs. Bilton felt
+strongly, as she went from shop to shop. But when she reached home again
+she was somewhat encouraged; there was such an air of joyous expectation
+in the house, and her purchases looked larger now that they were away
+from the glittering counters. Then each of the five children came to her
+separately and confided to her the nothing less than wonderful results
+of judicious bargaining which had enabled them to buy useful and
+beautiful presents for each of the others out of the sums intrusted to
+their care, ranging in amount from the two dollars of John to the fifty
+cents of Cora Cordelia. She felt sure that there were further secrets
+yet; secrets attended by brown paper and string, which she had taken the
+greatest care for the last two weeks not heedlessly to expose,--riddles
+of which the solution lay perilously near her eyes, which would be
+revealed to her astonished gaze the next morning.
+
+She had reason to believe that even Cora Cordelia was making something
+for her, and though it was difficult for her to ignore the fact that it
+was a knit washcloth, she had hitherto avoided absolute certainty on the
+subject. So that altogether it was a pretty cheerful afternoon at the
+Biltons'.
+
+Meanwhile, down in the main street of the city it was a confusing scene.
+It was darker there than where the streets were more open; and although
+there were several daring spirits of that adventurous turn of mind which
+leads people into byways of discovery, who asserted that the street
+lamps were lighted, it was not generally believed. The snow was blowing
+down and up and across, and getting more and more unmanageable under the
+feet of foot passengers every moment. It was cold and windy and blinding
+and crowded, and a good many other disconcerting things, all of which
+Mr. Gilton felt the full force of as he stood on the corner where he had
+just bought his turkey. It was a fine turkey, and had been a good
+bargain, and though he had to carry it home himself, there was nothing
+derogatory in that. If it had been anybody else he would have been
+thrilled with a glow of satisfaction, but Mr. Gilton was long past glows
+of satisfaction--it was years since he had permitted himself to have
+such things.
+
+"Jour--our--nal! fi-i-i-ve cents!" screamed an intermittent newsboy in
+his ear.
+
+"Get out!" replied Mr. Gilton, the uncompromising nature of his
+language being intensified by the fact that he jumped nearly two feet
+from the suddenness of the newsboy's attack. Even the newsboy, inured to
+the short words of an unfriendly world, and usually quite indifferent
+thereto, was impressed by the asperity of the suggestion and moved
+somewhat hastily on. Possibly his cold, wet little existence had been
+rendered morbidly susceptible by the general good feeling of the hour,
+one lady having even spontaneously given him five cents.
+
+After this exchange of amenities Mr. Gilton stepped into his horse car.
+It was crowded, of course, as horse cars that are small and run once in
+half an hour are apt to be, and he had to stand up, and the turkey legs
+stuck out of the brown paper in a very conspicuous way. If Mr. Gilton
+had been anybody else he would have been chaffed about his turkey,
+because to make up for the conveniences that the horse car line did not
+furnish the public, the large-hearted public furnished the horse car
+line with an unusual amount of friendliness. There was almost always
+something going on in these horse cars. Their social privileges were
+quite a feature. To-night they were in unusual force on account of the
+season. But nobody said anything to Mr. Gilton. Only when he jerked the
+bell and stepped off, one stout man with his overcoat collar turned up
+to his ears said, without turning his head:--
+
+"I supposed of course he was going to give the turkey to the conductor."
+
+Everybody laughed in that end of the car except one small old lady in
+the corner, who was a stranger and visiting, and who was left with the
+impression that the gentleman who got off must be a very kind man. It
+was darker and blowier and snowier than when he had left the corner, and
+Mr. Gilton floundered through the unbroken drifts up the little path to
+the door with increasing grudges in his heart against the difficulties
+of Christmas. The lock was off, and he went in slamming the door after
+him. There was no light in the hall, and he murmured loudly against the
+inconvenience.
+
+"Confound it!" he said, "why didn't they light the gas? I'm not one of
+those confounded Biltons; I can afford to pay for what I don't get;"
+and, without pausing to take off his hat and coat, he strode to the
+sitting-room door and flung it open. That was an awful moment. The
+sudden change from the cold and darkness almost blinded him, and
+confirmed the impression that he was the victim of an illusion. The
+sound of many voices, and then the hush of sudden consternation, was in
+his ears. There was a lamp and there was a fire, and there between them
+sat Mr. Bilton on one side and Mrs. Bilton on the other, and round
+about, in various unconventional attitudes, sat four Bilton children.
+And there in the very midst of them, in his heavy overcoat, with snow
+melting on his hat, his beard, and his shoulders, stood Mr. Gilton. The
+unexpected scene, the amazed faces gazing into his, rendered him
+speechless; he wondered vaguely if he were losing his reason. Then, in a
+flush of enlightenment, he realized what had happened; thanks to the
+storm outside, he had come into the wrong house. Naturally his first
+impulse was towards flight, but as his bewildered gaze slipped about the
+room it fell upon five stockings hung against the mantelpiece, and
+stayed there fascinated. Five foolish, limp, expressionless
+stockings,--it was long since he had seen such an unreasonable
+spectacle. Then he recollected himself and looked around him. Perhaps
+even then, if he had made a dash for the door, he might have escaped and
+matters have been none the worse. But in that instant of hesitation
+caused by the sudden sight of those five stockings something dreadful
+occurred. It must be premised that Cora Cordelia did not know Mr. Gilton
+very well by sight, being in the first place small and not noticing,
+and in the second, filled with an unreasoning fear that caused her to
+flee whenever she had seen him approach. This is the only excuse for
+what she did; for while her mother was feebly murmuring, as if in
+extenuation, "We thought it was John coming in," Cora Cordelia clasped
+her hands in delirious delight, and cried aloud, "It's Santa Claus! Oh,
+it's Santa Claus!" Could anything more awful happen to a cross man, a
+very cross man, than to be taken for Santa Claus!
+
+Mr. Gilton looked at Cora Cordelia, and wondered why she had not been
+slaughtered in her cradle.
+
+"And," exclaimed Susan Bilton, with sudden communicative fervor, "he has
+come and brought us a turkey for to-morrow's dinner!"
+
+The truth was that Susan had been coming to the age that is sceptical
+about Santa Claus, but she could not resist this sudden appearance.
+
+No one could appreciate the nonsense of the whole situation better than
+Mr. Gilton; and yet, strangely enough, together with his annoyance was
+mingled a touch of the strange feeling that had dawned upon him first
+when he saw the stockings. To be sure, it only added to his annoyance,
+but it was there. By this time--it was really a very short time--Mrs.
+Bilton had recovered herself and risen, and Mr. Bilton had risen too.
+
+"Hush, children; it is not Santa Claus," she said, "it is Mr. Gilton. We
+are glad to see you, Mr. Gilton;" and she held out her hand to him.
+"Won't you sit down?" She felt that he had come in the Christmas spirit,
+and she was anxious to meet him half-way.
+
+"Yes," said her husband, coming forward, and instantly taking his cue
+from his wife,--for he was really a very nice man,--"we are very glad."
+To be sure, in his manner there was a certain stiffness, for a man
+cannot always change completely in a moment, as a woman can; but Mr.
+Gilton was too perplexed to notice this. In the incomprehensible way
+that one's mind has of clinging to unimportant things at great crises,
+while he was fuming with rage and bothered with this strange feeling
+which was not precisely rage, he was wondering how in the world he was
+going to sit down with that ridiculous turkey, with its ridiculous legs,
+in his arms, and not look more absurd than he did now. In this moment of
+absentmindedness he had mechanically taken Mrs. Bilton's hand and shaken
+it, and after that of course there was nothing to do except to shake Mr.
+Bilton's. Then he began to know it was all up. He had not spoken yet,
+but now he made a frantic effort to save what might be left besides
+honor. "I came--" he began, "I came--came to your house--" There he
+paused a moment, and that unlucky child with that tendency to be
+possessed by one idea, which is characteristic of small and trivial
+minds, and for which she should have been shaken, burst in with, "And
+did the reindeer bring you, and are they outside?"
+
+He almost groaned, so overwhelmed was he by this new idiocy. Reindeer!
+If those overworked, struggling car-horses could have heard that! Then
+Mrs. Bilton, pitying his evident confusion, came to his assistance.
+
+"Don't mind the children, Mr. Gilton," she said, her cheeks flushing,
+and looking very pretty with the excitement of the unusual
+circumstances, "we are glad you came, however you made your way here. I
+think we may thank Christmas Eve for it. Now do take off your overcoat
+and sit down."
+
+Oh, mispraised woman's tact! What complications you may produce! That
+finished it, of course. He sat down. In those few moments that strange
+feeling had grown marvellously stronger. It seemed to be made up of the
+most diverse elements,--a mixture of green wreaths and his own
+childhood, and his mother, and a top he had not thought of for years,
+and the wide fireplace at home, and a stable with a child in it, and a
+picture, in a book he used to read, of a lot of angels in the sky, one
+particular one in the middle, and underneath it some words--what were
+the words? He'd forgotten they had anything to do with Christmas,
+anyway.
+
+"But you _did_ bring us the turkey, didn't you?" said Cora Cordelia,
+helping her mother on.
+
+To do the child justice,--for even Cora Cordelia has a right to demand
+justice,--her manners were corrupted by Christmas expectancy.
+
+"Cora Cordelia, I'm ashamed of you," said Mrs. Bilton.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Gilton, the words wrung from his lips, while beads stood
+on his forehead,--"yes, I brought you the turkey."
+
+"Did you really?" exclaimed Mrs. Bilton, who thought he had all the
+time. "That was very kind of you."
+
+"Will you please take it--take it away?" he said, with that wish to have
+something over which we associate with the dentist. So Mrs. Bilton took
+the turkey and thanked him, and gave it to Fanny, who carried it out to
+the kitchen, and Mr. Gilton gave one last look at its legs as it went
+through the door, feeling that now he must wake up from this nightmare.
+But things only went farther and became more incredible and upsetting,
+only that, strangely enough, that feeling of horror began to wear off,
+and that singular strain of association with all sorts of Christmas
+things to grow stronger. He himself could hardly believe that it was no
+worse, when he found himself seated by the littered table, with Mrs.
+Bilton near and Mr. Bilton over by the fire again, listening to first
+one and then the other, and occasionally letting fall a word himself,
+his conversational powers seeming to thaw out along with the snow on
+his greatcoat. These words themselves were a surprise to him. He was
+quite sure that he started them with a creditable gruffness, but the
+Christmas air mellowed them in a highly unsatisfactory fashion, so that
+they fell on his own ears quite otherwise than as he had meant they
+should sound. Moreover the general tenor of the conversation was
+exceedingly perplexing. It was all about how fine it was of him to come
+this evening, and how they had often regretted the hard feeling, and how
+things always did get exaggerated. Of course he would not have believed
+a word of it, if he had been able to get any grip on the situation, but
+he wasn't, and he just went on assenting to it all as if it were true.
+There came a time when Mr. Bilton cleared his throat, hesitated a
+moment, and then said boldly,--
+
+"I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Gilton, that I had nothing whatever to
+do with the death of your dog." Mr. Gilton felt the ground slipping
+away from under his very feet. That dog had been his piece of
+resistance, as it were. "I wouldn't have poisoned him," went on Mr.
+Bilton, "for a hundred dollars. But," he added, with a queer little
+smile, "I wasn't going to tell you so, you know."
+
+"Of course you wasn't," exclaimed Mr. Gilton, hurriedly, with a touch of
+that unholy excitement that a lapse from grammar imparts.
+
+"We wouldn't any of us," asserted Walter.
+
+"No," said Susan, Fanny, and Cora Cordelia.
+
+Then it came out that the whole family had rather admired the dog than
+otherwise. It was here that John did really come in, his entrance
+sounding very much as had Mr. Gilton's. He nearly fell over when he saw
+the visitor, but he had time to pull himself together, for Cora Cordelia
+had snatched that moment for showing Mr. Gilton her gifts for the
+family, and he was bound hand and foot with helplessness. Then they all
+came and showed him their gifts. While he examined them Mr. and Mrs.
+Bilton carefully averted their eyes and gazed hard at the opposite wall,
+while Cora Cordelia urged him, in stage whispers, not to let them
+suspect. It was pitiable the state to which he was reduced. Of course
+resisting this Christmas enthusiasm was out of the question. To be sure
+it came over him once with startling force, as she showed him a toy
+water-wheel, that went by sand,--which she had purchased for her father
+at a phenomenally low rate because the wheel could not be made to
+go,--that Cora Cordelia was the very child that he had fallen over as
+she came hastening out of a toy-shop with a queerly shaped bundle, the
+day before, and so been further imbittered towards Christmas. Susan had
+purchased a cup and ball for her mother, and as she went out of the room
+for a moment, insisted upon Mr. Gilton's trying to do it and see what
+fun it was. If Mr. Gilton lives to be a hundred he will never forget the
+mingled feelings with which he awkwardly tried to get that senseless
+ball into that idiotic cup. At last he stood up to go--it was after six
+o'clock--and they went with him to the door, and wished him Merry
+Christmas, and sent Merry Christmas to Mrs. Gilton, and said good-night
+several times, and he stumbled on through the snow, this time towards
+his own door. It had stopped snowing as suddenly and quietly as it had
+begun, and the stars had come out. He gazed up at them,--something he
+very rarely did. They seemed a part of Christmas. Just before he turned
+in at his own gate, he looked back at the Bilton house and shook his
+fist at it, but the expression on his face was such that the very same
+newsboy who had accosted him earlier failed utterly to recognize him and
+was emboldened to offer him a paper. He too was pushing his way home
+with two papers left, in a somewhat dispirited way.
+
+"I'll take 'em both," said this singular customer. "Here's a
+quarter--never mind the change. It's Christmas Eve, I believe--" and
+this when he knew perfectly well that a copy of that very same journal
+was waiting for him on his table. The boy looked at his quarter and
+looked again at his customer, and recognized him, and made up his mind
+to buy a couple of hot sausages on the corner, and went on his way
+feeling that there was a new heaven and a new earth. Mrs. Gilton was
+standing at the parlor window, peering out anxiously as he came up the
+path. She was in the hall as he entered.
+
+"Why, Reuben," she said, "I was afraid something had happened."
+
+Goodness gracious! As if something hadn't happened! He turned away to
+hang up his overcoat and tried to speak crossly.
+
+"Well," he said, "I've lost my turkey. That's happened."
+
+"Never mind," said Mrs. Gilton, quickly; "the other one came later, the
+first one, you know--so--so the Biltons didn't get it this time."
+
+"They got the second one, though," said Reuben, hanging up his hat.
+
+"Oh, dear, did they!" said Mrs. Gilton. Then she went on, "Well, I don't
+care if they did, so there! I guess they need it for their Christmas
+dinner."
+
+"No, they don't," said Reuben, turning around and facing her, "because
+they are going to eat part of ours. They are coming in to-morrow to have
+dinner with us,--every one of them!" he asserted more loudly, on account
+of the expression on his wife's face. "Bilton, and his wife, and all the
+five children, down to Cora Cordelia! So we'll have to have something
+for them to eat."
+
+If Mr. Gilton will never forget the cup and ball, Mrs. Gilton will never
+forget that moment. She went all over it in her mind whether she could
+manage him herself to-night, or whether to send Bridget right away then
+for the doctor, and if she hadn't better say a policeman too, and
+whether he could be kept for the future in a private house, or would
+have to be confined in an asylum. She was inclining towards the asylum
+when he, who was going into the sitting-room before her, turned round
+and laughed an odd little laugh. She began to think then that a private
+house would do.
+
+The next day they all dined together, which proved that it was not all a
+Christmas Eve illusion. There is a report in the neighborhood that the
+fence between the houses is to be taken down to make room for a tennis
+court for the Bilton children, but of course this may not be true. It
+would have to be done in the summer, and if the effect of Christmas
+could be depended upon to last into the summer this would be a very
+different sort of world.
+
+
+
+
+After--the Deluge
+
+
+THE sombre tints of Grayhead were slightly suffused by a pink light
+sifting from the west through the clear air. The yachts in the harbor
+lay idly beneath the mellow influences of the passing of the summer
+day,--idly as only sailboats can lie, a bit of loose sail or cordage now
+and then flapping inconsistently in a breath of wind, which seemed to
+come out of the west for no other purpose, and to retire into the east
+afterward, its whole duty done. On board, men were moving about, hanging
+lanterns, making taut here, setting free there, all with an air of utter
+peace and repose such as is found only on placid waterways beneath a
+setting sun. Occasionally an oar dipped in the still water, a hint of
+action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets
+of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it
+climbed, hurried an angular figure,--that of a woman of about fifty
+years, whose tense expression suggested an unrest at variance with the
+keen calmness of that of the other faces about the streets and doorways.
+Not that it was feverish in its intensity; rather, it was an expression
+of resolution, undeviating and persistent, but not sure of sympathy or
+support.
+
+"They've gone down yonder, t'other side of the wharf, Mis' Pember," said
+a middle-aged sea captain, whose interest in his kind had not been
+obliterated by the forced loneliness of northern voyages.
+
+The woman paused and glanced doubtfully down one of the byways that led
+between small, weather-beaten houses and around disconcerting abutments
+to the water, and then forward, straight along the way she had been
+travelling, which led out of the town.
+
+"I'd rather fixed on their going down Point-ways this evening," she
+said.
+
+"Well, they ain't," rejoined Captain Phippeny, with that absence of mere
+rhetoric characteristic of people whose solid work is done otherwise
+than by speech.
+
+Mrs. Pember nodded, at once in acknowledgment and farewell, and, turning
+about, followed the path he had indicated, her gait acquiring a certain
+precipitancy as she went down the rough, stony slope. At the foot of the
+descent she paused again, and looked to the right and left. Captain
+Phippeny was watching her from his vantage ground above. His figure was
+one unmistakably of the seaboard. His trousers were of a singular cut,
+probably after a pattern evolved in all its originality by Mrs.
+Phippeny, her active imagination working towards practical effect. In
+addition, he wore a yellow flannel shirt ribbed with purple, which would
+hopelessly have jaundiced a rose-leaf complexion, but which, having
+exhausted its malignancy without producing any particular effect, ended
+by gently harmonizing with the captain's sandy hair, reddish beard, and
+tanned skin. His mouth was like a badly made buttonhole, which gaped a
+little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot's beak, and his eyes
+were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would
+render his costume absolutely _de rigueur_, he wore a leathern jacket
+with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold
+watch-chain with a dangling horseshoe charm.
+
+"I wonder the old woman don't take a dog with her and trace 'em out, she
+spends so much time on the hunt," he said to himself. "I declare for't,
+it's a sing'lar thing the way she everlastin' does get onto them
+'prentices; ain't old enough to talk about settin' sail by themselves."
+
+His quid of tobacco again resumed its claim to his undivided attention,
+and he leaned back against the fence and waited as idly as the drooping
+sails for a breath of something stirring. By and by it appeared in the
+shape of another old sailor, between whom and himself there was the
+likeness of two peas, save for a slight discrepancy of feature useful
+for purposes of identification.
+
+"You told her where they'd gone, I reckon," he remarked, with a slight
+chuckle, as he too leaned up against the fence and looked out over the
+harbor.
+
+"Yes, I did," replied Captain Phippeny. "I didn't have no call to tell
+her a lie."
+
+"Kinder hard on the young uns," observed the new-comer.
+
+"They ain't ever anythin' as hard on the young uns as on the old uns,"
+asserted Captain Phippeny, "because--well, because they're _young_, I
+guess. That's Chivy's yacht that came in just at sundown, ain't it?"
+
+"Yare. They say she's seen dirty weather since she was here last."
+
+"Has? Well, you can't stay in harbor allers, and git your livin' at the
+same time. She's got toler'ble good men to handle her."
+
+There was a pause. The soft twilight was battening down the hatches of
+the day, to drop into the parlance of the locality.
+
+"Well, I do suppose old Pember warn't an easy shipmate, blow or no
+blow," observed Captain Smart. He was a small, keen-eyed, quickly moving
+old man, seasoned with salt.
+
+"I reckon he warn't. And she thinks she can keep that girl of hers out
+of the same kind of discipline that she had to take,--that's the truth
+of it."
+
+"Cur'ous, ain't it?" ruminated Captain Smart. "A woman's bound to take
+it one way or 'nother; there seems to be more sorts of belayin' pins to
+knock 'em over with than they, any on 'em, kinder cal'late on at first."
+
+"So there be," assented Captain Phippeny.
+
+Near the water, with its fading, rose-colored reflections, not so far
+from the anchored vessels but they might, had they chosen, have spoken
+across to those on board, the monotonous, austere, and yet vaguely soft
+gray of the old town rising behind them against the melting sky, sat
+Mellony Pember and Ira Baldwin.
+
+"If you'd only make up your mind, Mellony," urged the young man.
+
+"I can't, Ira; don't ask me." The young girl's face, which was delicate
+in outline, was troubled, and the sensitive curves of her lips trembled.
+The faded blue of her dress harmonized with the soft tones of the scene;
+her hat lay beside her, an uncurled, articulated ostrich feather
+standing up in it like an exclamation point of brilliant red.
+
+The young man pulled his hat over his eyes and looked over to the
+nearest boat. Mellony glanced at him timidly.
+
+"You see, I'm all she's got," she said.
+
+"I ain't goin' to take you away from her, unless you want to go," he
+replied, without looking at her.
+
+"She thinks I'll be happier if I don't--if I don't marry."
+
+"Happier!"--he paused in scorn--"and she badgerin' you all the time if
+you take a walk with me, and watchin' us as if we were thieves! You
+ain't happy now, are you?"
+
+"No." Mellony's eyes filled, and a sigh caught and became almost a sob.
+
+"Well, I wish she'd give me a try at makin' you happy, that's all." His
+would-be sulkiness softened into a tender sense of injury. Mellony
+twisted her hands together, and looked over beyond the vessels to the
+long, narrow neck of land with its clustering houses, beyond which
+again, unseen, were booming the waves of the Atlantic.
+
+"Oh, if I only knew what to do!" she exclaimed,--"if I only knew what to
+do!"
+
+"I'll tell you what to do, Mellony," he began.
+
+"There's ma, now," she interrupted.
+
+Ira turned quickly and looked over his shoulder. Across the uneven
+ground, straight towards them, came the figure of Mrs. Pember. The
+tenseness of her expression had further yielded to resolution, which had
+in turn taken on a stolidity which declared itself unassailable. No one
+of the three spoke as she seated herself on a bit of timber near them,
+and, folding her hands, waited with the immobility and the apparent
+impartiality of Fate itself. At last Mellony spoke, for of the three she
+was the most acutely sensitive to the situation, and the least capable
+of enduring it silently.
+
+"Which way did you come, ma?" she asked.
+
+"I come down Rosaly's Lane," Mrs. Pember answered. "I met Cap'n
+Phippeny, and he told me you was down here."
+
+"I'm obligated to Cap'n Phippeny," observed Ira, bitterly.
+
+"I dono as he's partickler to have you," remarked Mrs. Pember,
+imperturbably.
+
+There was another silence. Mrs. Pember's voice had a marked sweetness
+when she spoke to her daughter, which it lost entirely when she
+addressed her daughter's companion, but always it was penetrated by the
+timbre of a certain inflexibility.
+
+The shadows grew deeper on the water, the glow-worms of lanterns
+glimmered more sharply, and the softness of the night grew more
+palpable.
+
+"I guess I may as well go back, ma," said Mellony, rising.
+
+"I was wonderin' when you cal'lated on going," remarked her mother, as
+she rose too, more slowly and stiffly, and straightened her decent black
+bonnet.
+
+"I suppose you was afraid Mellony wouldn't get back safe without you
+came after her," broke out Ira.
+
+"I guess I can look after Mellony better than anybody else can, and I
+count on doing it, and doing it right along," she replied.
+
+"Come, ma," said Mellony, impatiently; but she waited a moment and let
+her mother pass her, while she looked back at Ira, who stood, angry and
+helpless, kicking at the rusted timbers.
+
+"Are you coming, too, Ira?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"No," he exclaimed, "I ain't coming! I don't want to go along back with
+your mother and you, as if we weren't old enough to be out by ourselves.
+I might as well be handcuffed, and so might you! If you'll come round
+with me the way we came, and let her go the way she came, I'll go with
+you fast enough."
+
+Mellony's eyes grew wet again, as she looked from him to her mother, and
+again at him. Mrs. Pember had paused, also, and stood a little in
+advance of them. Her stolidity showed no anxiety; she was too sure of
+the result.
+
+"No,"--Mellony's lips framed the words with an accustomed but grievous
+patience,--"I can't to-night, Ira; I must go with ma."
+
+"It's to-night that'll be the last chance there'll be, maybe," he
+muttered, as he flung himself off in the other direction.
+
+The two women walked together up the rough ascent, and turned into
+Rosaly's Lane. Mellony walked wearily, her eyes down, the red feather,
+in its uncurled, unlovely assertiveness, looking more like the oriflamme
+of a forlorn hope than ever. But Mrs. Pember held herself erect, and as
+if she were obliged carefully to repress what might have been the signs
+of an ill-judged triumph.
+
+Ira prolonged his walk beyond the limits of the little gray town, goaded
+by the irritating pricks of resentment. He would bear it no longer, so
+he told himself. Mellony could take him or leave him. He would be a
+laughing-stock not another week, not another day. If Mellony would not
+assert herself against her tyrannical old mother, he would go away and
+leave her! And then he paused, as he had paused so often in the flood of
+his anger, faced by the realization that this was just what Mrs. Pember
+wanted, just what would satisfy her, what she had been waiting
+for,--that he should go away and leave Mellony alone. It was an
+exasperating dilemma, his abdication and her triumph, or his uncertainty
+and her anxiety.
+
+Mellony and her mother passed Captain Phippeny and Captain Smart, who
+still stood talking in the summer evening, the fence continuing to
+supply all the support their stalwart frames needed in this their hour
+of ease. Captain Smart nudged Captain Phippeny as the two figures turned
+the corner of Rosaly's Lane.
+
+"So you found 'em, Mis' Pember," remarked Captain Phippeny. He spoke to
+the mother, but he looked, not without sympathy at the daughter.
+
+"Yes, I found 'em."
+
+"You reckoned on fetchin' only one of 'em home, I take it," said Captain
+Smart.
+
+"I ain't responsible but for one of 'em," replied Mrs. Pember with some
+grimness, but with her eyes averted from Mellony's crimsoning face.
+
+"Come, ma," said Mellony again, and they passed on.
+
+"Mis' Pember is likely enough lookin' woman herself," observed Captain
+Smart; "it's kind of cur'ous she should be so set agen marryin,' just
+_as_ marryin'."
+
+"'Tis so," assented Captain Phippeny, thoughtfully, looking after the
+two women.
+
+Without speaking, Mellony and her mother entered the little house where
+they lived, and the young girl sank down in the stiff, high-backed
+rocker, with its thin calico-covered cushion tied with red braid, that
+stood by the window. Outside, the summer night buzzed and hummed, and
+breathed sweet odors. Mrs. Pember moved about the room, slightly
+altering its arrangements, now and then looking at her daughter half
+furtively, as if waiting for her to speak; but Mellony's head was not
+turned from the open window, and she was utterly silent. At last this
+immobility had a sympathetic effect upon the mother, and she seated
+herself not far from the girl, her hands, with their prominent knuckles
+and shrunken flesh, folded in unaccustomed idleness, and waited, while
+in the room dusk grew to dark. To Mellony the hour was filled with
+suggestions that emphasized and defined her misery. In her not turbulent
+or passionate nature, the acme of its capacity for emotional suffering
+had been reached. Hitherto this suffering had been of the perplexed,
+patient, submissive kind; to-night, the beauty of the softly descending
+gloom, the gentle freedom of the placid harbor, the revolt of her
+usually yielding lover, deepened it into something more acute.
+
+"Mellony," said her mother, with a touch of that timidity which appeared
+only in her speech with her daughter, "did you count on going over to
+the Neck to-morrow, as you promised?"
+
+"I'll never count on doing anything again," said Mellony, in a voice she
+tried to make cold and even, but which vibrated notwithstanding,--"never,
+so long as I live. I'll never think, or plan, or--or speak, if I can
+help it--of what I mean to do. I'll never do anything but just work and
+shut my eyes and--and live, if I've got to!" Her voice broke, and she
+turned her head away from the open window and looked straight before her
+into the shadowed room. Her mother moved uneasily, and her knotted hands
+grasped the arms of the stiff chair in which she sat.
+
+"Mellony," she said again, "you've no call to talk so."
+
+"I've no call to talk at all. I've no place anywhere. I'm not anybody. I
+haven't any life of my own." The keen brutality of the thoughtlessness
+of youth, and its ignoring of all claims but those of its own happiness,
+came oddly from the lips of submissive Mellony. Mrs. Pember quivered
+under it.
+
+"You know you're my girl, Mellony," she answered gently. "You're all
+I've got."
+
+"Yes," the other answered indifferently, "that's all I am,--Mellony
+Pember, Mrs. Pember's girl,--just that."
+
+"Ain't that enough? Ain't that something to be,--all I plan for and work
+for? Ain't that enough for a girl to be?"
+
+Mellony turned her eyes from emptiness, and fixed them upon her mother's
+face, dimly outlined in the vagueness.
+
+"Is that all you've been," she asked, "just somebody's daughter?"
+
+It was as if a heavy weight fell from her lips and settled upon her
+mother's heart. There was a silence. Mellony's eyes, though she could
+not see them, seemed to Mrs. Pember to demand an answer in an
+imperative fashion unlike their usual mildness.
+
+"It's because I've been,--it's because I'd save you from what I have
+been that I--do as I do. You know that," she said.
+
+"I don't want to be saved," returned the other, quickly and sharply.
+
+The older woman was faced by a situation she had never dreamed of,--a
+demand to be allowed to suffer! The guardian had not expected this from
+her carefully shielded charge.
+
+"I want you to have a happy life," she added.
+
+"A happy life!" flashed the girl. "And you're keeping me from any life
+at all! That's what I want,--life, my own life, not what anybody else
+gives me of theirs. Why shouldn't I have what they have, even if it's
+bad now and then? Don't save me in spite of myself! Nobody likes to be
+saved in spite of themselves."
+
+It was a long speech for Mellony. A large moon had risen, and from the
+low horizon sent golden shafts of light almost into the room; it was as
+if the placidity of the night were suddenly penetrated by something more
+glowing. Mellony stood looking down at her mother, like a judge. Mrs.
+Pember gazed at her steadily.
+
+"I'm going to save you, Mellony," she said, her indomitable will making
+her voice harsher than it had been, "whether you want to be saved or
+not. I'm not going to have you marry, and be sworn at and cuffed."
+Mellony moved to protest, but her strength was futility beside her
+mother's at a time like this. "I'm not going to have you slave and grub,
+and get blows for your pains. I'm going to follow you about and set
+wherever you be, whenever you go off with Ira Baldwin, if that'll stop
+it; and if that won't, I'll try some other way,--I know other ways. I'm
+not going to have you marry! I'm going to have you stay along with me!"
+
+With a slight gesture of despair, Mellony turned away. The flash had
+burned itself out. The stronger nature had reasserted itself. Silently,
+feeling her helplessness, frightened at her own rebellion now that it
+was over, she went out of the room to her own smaller one, and closed
+the door.
+
+Mrs. Pember sat silent in her turn, reviewing her daughter's resentment,
+but the matter admitted no modifications in her mind; her duty was
+clear, and her determination had been taken long ago. Neither did she
+fear anything like persistent opposition; she knew her daughter's
+submissive nature well.
+
+Brought up in a country village, an earnest and somewhat apprehensive
+member of the church, Mrs. Pember had married the captain early in life,
+under what she had since grown to consider a systematic illusion
+conceived and maintained by the Evil One, but which was, perhaps, more
+logically due to the disconcerting good looks and decorously restrained
+impetuosity of Captain Pember himself. Possibly he had been the victim
+of an illusion too, not believing that austerity of principle could
+exist with such bright eyes and red cheeks as charmed him in the country
+girl. At least, he never hesitated subsequently, not only to imply, but
+to state baldly, a sense of the existence of injury. Captain Phippeny
+was one of those sailors whom the change of scene, the wide knowledge of
+men and of things, the hardships and dangers of a sea life, broaden and
+render tolerant and somewhat wise. Pember had been brutalized by these
+same things.
+
+The inhabitants of Grayhead were distinguished by the breadth and
+suggestiveness of their profanity, and Captain Pember had been a past
+master of the accomplishment. Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley could have
+been no more discriminating than the local acknowledgment of his
+proficiency in this line. No wonder Mrs. Pember looked back at the ten
+years of her married life with a shudder. With the rigid training of
+her somewhat dogmatic communion still potent, she listened in a
+horrified expectancy, rather actual than figurative, for the heavens to
+strike or the earth to swallow up her nonchalant husband. Nor was this
+all. The weakness for grog, unfortunately supposed to be inherent in a
+nautical existence, was carried by Captain Pember to an extent
+inconsiderate even in the eyes of a seafaring public; and when, under
+its genial influence, he knocked his wife down and tormented Mellony,
+the opinion of this same public declared itself on the side of the
+victims with a unanimity which is not always to be counted upon in such
+cases.
+
+In fact, her married life had, as it were, formalized many hitherto
+somewhat vague details of Mrs. Pember's conception of the place of
+future punishment; and when her husband died in an appropriate and
+indecorous fashion as the result of a brawl, he continued to mitigate
+the relief of the event by leaving in his wife's heart a haunting fear,
+begotten of New England conscientiousness, that perhaps she ought not to
+be so unmistakably glad of it. It was thus that, with Mellony's growth
+from childhood to womanhood, the burning regret for her former unmarried
+state, whose difficulties had been mainly theological, had become a no
+less burning resolve that her child should never suffer as she had
+suffered, but should be guarded from matrimony as from death. That she
+failed to distinguish between individuals, that she failed to see that
+young Baldwin was destitute of those traits which her sharpened vision
+would now have detected in Pember's youth, was both the fault of her
+perceptive qualities and the fruit of her impregnable resolve. She had
+been hurt by Mellony's rebellion, but not influenced by so much as a
+hair's-breadth.
+
+Early one morning, two or three days later, Mrs. Pember, lying awake
+waiting for the light to grow brighter that she might begin her day,
+heard a slight sound outside, of a certain incisiveness out of
+proportion to its volume. With an idleness that visited her only at
+early day-break, she wondered what it was. It was repeated, and this
+time, moved by an insistent curiosity blended with the recognition of
+its probable cause, she rose and looked out of the window which was
+close to the head of her bed. A little pier was a stone's throw from the
+house on that side, at which were moored several boats belonging to the
+fishermen about. It was as she thought; a stooping figure, dim and hazy
+in the morning fog, which blurred the nearest outlines and veiled the
+more distant, was untying one of the boats, and had slipped the oars
+into the rowlocks.
+
+"Going fishing early," she said to herself. "I wonder which of 'em it
+is. They are all alike in this light."
+
+Then she stood and looked out upon the morning world. It would soon be
+sunrise. Meanwhile, the earth was silent, save for the soft rippling of
+the untired waves that scarcely rose and fell in this sheltered harbor;
+the land had been at rest through the short night, but they had climbed
+and lapsed again steadily through its hours; the paling stars would soon
+have faded into the haze. The expectation of the creature waited for the
+manifestation.
+
+Softly the boat floated away from its moorings. It seemed propelled
+without effort, so quietly it slipped through the water. In the bottom
+lay the sail and the nets, a shadowy mass; the boat itself was little
+more than a shadow, as it glided on into the thicker fog which received
+and enveloped it, as into an unknown vague future which concealed and
+yet held promise and welcome.
+
+Mrs. Pember glanced at the clock. It was very early, but to go back to
+bed was hardly worth while. The sun was already beginning to glint
+through the fog. She dressed, and, passing softly the door of the room
+where Mellony slept,--rather fitfully of late,--began to make the fire.
+
+The morning broadened and blazed into the day, and the whole town was
+making ready for its breakfast. Mellony was later than usual,--her
+mother did not hear her moving about, even; but she was unwilling to
+disturb her; she would wait a while longer before calling her. At last,
+however, the conviction of the immorality of late rising could no longer
+be ignored, and she turned the knob of Mellony's door and stepped into
+the room.
+
+She had been mistaken in supposing that Mellony was asleep; the girl
+must have risen early and slipped out, for the room was empty, and Mrs.
+Pember paused, surprised that she had not heard her go. It must have
+been while she was getting kindling-wood in the yard that Mellony had
+left by the street door. And what could she have wanted so early in the
+village?--for to the village she must have gone; she was nowhere about
+the little place, whose flatness dropped, treeless, to the shore. Her
+mother went again to the kitchen, and glanced up and down the waterside.
+There was no one on the little wooden pier, and the boats swung gently
+by its side, their own among them, so Mellony had not gone out in that.
+Yes, she must have gone to the village, and Mrs. Pember opened the front
+door and scanned the wandering little street. It was almost empty; the
+early morning activity of the place was in other directions.
+
+With the vague uneasiness that unaccustomed and unexplained absence
+always produces, but with no actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember went back
+to her work. Mellony had certain mild whims of her own, but it was
+surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed
+unmade; that was not like her studious neatness. With a certain grimness
+Mrs. Pember ate her breakfast alone. Of course no harm had come to
+Mellony, but where was she? Unacknowledged, the shadow of Ira Baldwin
+fell across her wonder. Had Mellony cared so much for him that her
+disappointment had driven her to something wild and fatal? She did not
+ask the question, but her lips grew white and stiff at the faintest
+suggestion of it. Several times she went to the door, meaning to go out,
+and up the street to look for her daughter, but each time something
+withheld her. Instead, with that determination that distinguished her,
+she busied herself with trifling duties. It was quite nine o'clock when
+she saw Captain Phippeny coming up the street. She stood still and
+watched him approach. His gait was more rolling than ever, as he came
+slowly towards her, and he glanced furtively ahead at her house, and
+then dropped his eyes and pretended not to have seen her. She grew
+impatient to have him reach her, but she only pressed her lips together
+and stood the more rigidly still. At last he stood in front of her
+doorstone, his hat in his hand. The yellow shirt and the leathern jacket
+were more succinctly audacious than ever, but doubt and irresolution in
+every turn of his blue eyes and line of his weather-beaten face had
+taken the place of the tolerant kindliness.
+
+"It's a warm mornin', Mis' Pember," he observed, more disconcerted than
+ever by her unsmiling alertness.
+
+"You came a good ways to tell me that, Captain Phippeny."
+
+"Yes, I did. Leastways I didn't," he responded. "I come to tell you
+about--about Mellony."
+
+"What about Mellony, Captain Phippeny?" she demanded, pale, but
+uncompromising. "What have you got to tell me about Mellony Pember?" she
+reiterated as he paused.
+
+"Not Mellony Pember," gasped the captain, a three-cornered smile trying
+to make headway against his embarrassment as he recalled the ancient
+tale of breaking the news to the Widow Smith; "Mellony Baldwin."
+
+"Mellony Baldwin!" repeated Mrs. Pember, stonily, not yet fully
+comprehending.
+
+The captain grew more and more nervous.
+
+"Yes," he proceeded, with the haste of despair, "yes. Mis' Pember, you
+see Mellony--Mellony's married."
+
+"Mellony married!" Strangely enough she had not thought of that. She
+grasped the doorpost for support.
+
+"Yes, she up and married him," went on the captain more blithely. "I
+hardly thought it of Mellony," he added in not unpleasurable reflection,
+"nor yet of Ira."
+
+"Nor I either." Mrs. Pember's lips moved with difficulty. Mellony
+married! The structure reared with tears and prayers, the structure of
+Mellony's happiness, seemed to crumble before her eyes.
+
+"And I was to give you this;" and from the lining of his hat the
+captain drew forth a folded paper.
+
+"Then you knew about it?" said Mrs. Pember, in a flash of cold wrath.
+
+"No, no, I didn't. My daughter's boy brought this to me, and I was to
+tell you they was married. And why they set the job onto me the Lord he
+only knows!" and Captain Phippeny wiped his heated forehead with
+feeling; "but that's all _I_ know."
+
+Slowly, her fingers trembling, she unfolded the note.
+
+"I have married Ira, mother," she read. "He took me away in a boat early
+this morning. It was the only way. I will come back when you want me. If
+I am to be unhappy, I'd rather be unhappy this way. I can't be unhappy
+your way any longer. I'm sorry to go against you, mother; but it's my
+life, after all, not yours,          MELLONY."
+
+As Mrs. Pember's hands fell to her side and the note slipped from her
+fingers, the daily tragedy of her married life seemed to pass before
+her eyes. She saw Captain Pember reel into the house, she shuddered at
+his blasphemy, she felt the sting of the first blow he had given her,
+she cowered as he roughly shook Mellony's little frame by her childish
+arm.
+
+"She'd better be dead!" she murmured. "I wish she was dead."
+
+Captain Phippeny pulled himself together. "No, she hadn't,--no, you
+don't, Mis' Pember," he declared stoutly. "You're making a mistake. You
+don't want to see Mellony dead any more'n I do. She's only got married,
+when all's said and done, and there's a sight of folks gets married and
+none the worse for it. Ira Baldwin ain't any great shakes,--I dono as he
+is; he's kinder light complected and soft spoken,--but he ain't a born
+fool, and that's a good deal, Mis' Pember." He paused impressively, but
+she did not speak. "And he ain't goin' to beat Mellony, either; he ain't
+that sort. I guess Mellony could tackle him, if it came to that,
+anyhow. I tell you, Mis' Pember, there's one thing you don't take no
+reckonin' on,--there's a difference in husbands, there's a ter'ble
+difference in 'em!" Mrs. Pember looked at him vaguely. Why did he go on
+talking? Mellony was married. "Mellony's got one kind, and you--well,"
+he went on, with cautious delicacy, "somehow you got another. I tell you
+it's husbands as makes the difference to a woman when it comes to
+marryin'."
+
+Mrs. Pember stooped, picked up the note, turned and walked into the
+living-room and sat down. She looked about her with that sense of
+unreality that visits us at times. There was the chair in which Mellony
+sat the night of her rebellious outbreak,--Mellony, her daughter, her
+married daughter. Other women talked about their "married daughters"
+easily enough, and she had pitied them; now she would have to talk so,
+too. She felt unutterably lonely. Her household, like her hope, was
+shattered. She looked up and saw that Captain Phippeny had followed her
+in and was standing before her, turning his hat in his brown, tattooed
+hands.
+
+"Mis' Pember," he said, "I thought, mebbe, now Mellony was married,
+you'd be thinkin' of matrimony yourself agen." As Mrs. Pember gazed at
+him dumbly it seemed as if she must all at once have become another
+person. Matrimony had suddenly become domesticated, as it were. Her eyes
+travelled over the horseshoe charm and the long gold chain, as she
+listened, and from pocket to pocket. "And so I wanted to say that I'd
+like to have you think of me, if you was making out the papers for
+another v'yage. The first mate I sailed with, she says to me when she
+died, 'You've been a good husband, Phippeny,' says she. I wouldn't say
+anythin' to you, I wouldn't take the resk, if she hadn't said that to
+me. Mis' Pember, and I'm tellin' it to you now because there's such a
+difference; and I feel kinder encouraged by it to ask you to try me. I'd
+like to have you marry me, Mis' Pember."
+
+It was a long speech, and the captain was near to suffocation when it
+was finished, but he watched her with anxious keenness as he waited for
+her to reply. The stern lines of her mouth relaxed slowly. A brilliant
+red geranium in the window glowed in the sunlight which had just reached
+it. The world was not all dark. The room seemed less lonely with the
+captain in it, as she glanced around it a second time. She scanned his
+face: the buttonhole of a mouth had a kindly twist; he did not look in
+the least like handsome Dick Pember. Mellony had married, and her world
+was in fragments, and something must come after.
+
+"I never heard as you weren't a good husband to Mis' Phippeny," she said
+calmly, "and I dono as anybody'll make any objection if I marry you,
+Captain Phippeny."
+
+
+
+
+Memoir of Mary Twining
+
+
+THE other day I spent several hours in looking over a lot of dusty
+volumes which had fallen to me in the way of inheritance. In the
+somewhat heterogeneous collection I came upon a brief memoir which,
+after a glance within, I laid aside as worthy, at least, of perusal. The
+other books were of little value of any sort--an orthodox commentary, an
+odd volume of a county history, one or two cook-books, a worn and broken
+set of certain standard British authors,--the usual assortment to be
+found in a country farmhouse, whose occupants soon ceased to keep up
+with the times. But this little book seemed to me unusual,--an opinion
+subsequently confirmed by examination. I had long ago discovered the
+fallacy of that tradition of early youth that a memoir is, of necessity,
+dull, and I was in nowise unfavorably affected by the title, "Memoir of
+Mary Twining." There proved to be something to me singularly quaint and
+charming in this little sketch, something fresh and new in this voice
+from bygone years. The subject of the memoir attracted me powerfully,
+both from the simplicity and naturalness of her own words, and the
+freedom and occasional depth of both thought and expression, in a day
+when freedom and thinking for one's self were less the fashion of New
+England maidens than they have since become. Or, it may be that the
+Editor, notwithstanding an occasional stiffness and apparent want of
+sympathy, has so well done his work, has understood so well what to give
+us and what to keep from us, that the reader's interest is skilfully
+fostered from the start. Be this as it may, I have not been able to
+resist the temptation to write, myself, a little of this memoir and its
+subject, to make a little wider, if I may, the public who have been told
+the story of this life. Not that it was an exciting or an eventful one,
+though lived in stirring times, but as I have already said, it seems to
+have a certain charm which should not be left forgotten in country
+garrets or unnoticed in second-hand bookstores. With no further apology
+for this review of it, I shall let the book, as far as possible, speak
+for itself.
+
+Mary Twining was born in Middleport, Massachusetts, June 27, 1757. Her
+father fought with Colonel Washington in the French and Indian War, and
+subsequently under General Washington in a later disturbance. Her mother
+was a granddaughter of one of the early colonial governors. Mary seems
+to have come naturally enough by fine impulses and good breeding.
+
+"It is not," says the conscientious biographer, "from any vain
+Partiality for high-sounding names, or any poor Pretense of good blood,
+which were most out of place in this our Republic, made so by the Genius
+and enduring Fortitude of all classes of Men, that I claim for Mary
+Twining stately Lineage, but that when such Accidents fall in the lives
+of Human Beings, it is not a thing to make light of, but worthy of study
+in its Results. Besides which is General Washington none the less a Good
+Soldier in that he is a Gentleman."
+
+I suspect the traditions of a loyal Englishman had not been wholly
+eradicated from the mind of this biographer by a few years of plebeian
+institutions. With equal truth he goes on, however, to say that what was
+"of an Importance swallowing up the Lesser Matter of Lineage and
+Station, Richard Twining was an upright and a God-fearing man, and Mary,
+his wife, patterned in all things after the Behaviour of her godly
+Ancestor." Either Richard or Mary, his wife, must have something
+"patterned" after a liberal and occasionally self-willed model, else
+whence came the spice of independence in the little Mary's character?
+She was an only child, and only children were probably in the middle of
+the eighteenth very much what they are in the close of the nineteenth
+century,--little beings allowed greater liberties, and burdened with
+heavier accountabilities, than where there are more to divide both.
+There are several incidents told of her childhood, not particularly
+remarkable, perhaps, but showing that her mind and her imagination were
+alive. She was not by any means a precocious child; her mind was but
+little, if at all, in advance of her years. If one may judge from
+detached anecdotes and descriptions, she showed no more than the
+receptivity and quickness natural to a bright and somewhat unusually
+clear intellect. Through all these anecdotes there runs a vein denoting
+what is less common in childhood than a certain precocity,--a keen sense
+of justice. She appears to have reasoned of many things, usually taken
+by childhood for granted, and assented to their results only if they
+seemed to her childishness just. If after life showed her that the
+affairs of this life can be but seldom regulated according to the ideas
+of finite justice, she never seems to have lost a certain fairness of
+judgment and opinion, which is rare in one of her sex and circumstances.
+When five years old, her mother, wishing her to give up a pet doll to a
+little crippled friend, told her that sympathy should suggest her doing
+it; that it was a privilege to make another happy; that it was
+selfishness to prefer her own pleasure of possession to that of another.
+But Mary listened unmoved to these arguments. Nevertheless the struggle
+was not a long one. With a good grace, after a few moments of silence,
+she carried the doll to her unfortunate friend. "Mamma," she said
+soberly, "she shall have it, for it is right that she should. I feel it.
+I shall have many things that she can never have."
+
+For the logic of five years it was no small thing to have settled this
+question in this way. It would take too much time and too much space to
+dwell on the anecdotes of her childhood. Indeed, the biographer does not
+linger on them long himself.
+
+"It is meet," he says, "to speak of these early Years, not from a desire
+to show that there was aught in the Childhood of Mary Twining remarkable
+or unnatural, that should be the Cause of Wonder or Admiration. But the
+rather that there may be evinced the Presence, even in the Germ, of
+certain Qualities of Soundness of Judgment and of Thoughtfulness unusual
+in a Female, which grew with her Growth, and which were in later Years,
+developed into stronger Traits by no unnatural means."
+
+In 1773 she was sent away to a school in which she remained three years,
+varied by occasional visits at home. She made several friends here, and
+here, for the first time, kept a methodical and somewhat extended
+diary. From this diary her biographer makes copious extracts. In fact,
+from this period the memoir is chiefly made up from her several
+journals, in whose continuity there are now and then large gaps, with
+occasional notes. I shall make less copious extracts, principally those
+bearing upon that matter of which we always, more or less consciously,
+seek traces in the lives of individuals, distinguished or obscure, the
+love story. But first for her school life, into which few whispers of
+sentiment penetrated. It was no fashionable boarding-school to which she
+was sent, attended by young ladies whose dreams of what they will soon
+be doing in society monopolize the hours nominally devoted to literature
+and the sciences. An old friend of her mother opened her house to a few
+representatives of those families with whom she was acquainted, where,
+under the best teachers the country afforded, they were trained in such
+acquirements as were prescribed by the canons of the day. On the
+fifteenth of September she says:--
+
+"I have been something more than a week at the good School which my kind
+Parents have chosen for me. There seems, after all, to be little doing
+here. The few exercises in Mathematics, and the selections from the
+works of the most Highly Endowed of the Authors of England appear to me
+to be the most Profitable. As for the matter of Embroidery, I worked
+with Patience, ten years ago, a Sampler which was not considered
+discreditable, and it seems to me that of the multiplying of Stitches
+there is no end, and it were, perhaps, as well to go no farther. My
+daily Practice on the Spinet, may, perhaps, be the means of giving
+Pleasure at some Future Time, but it is the Occasion of but little
+Benefit in the Present, and of the Future can we be never certain."
+
+The question of profitableness of a good many of her employments was
+often in her mind during these three years. She cannot help feeling
+that there are times when it is hard to contentedly fold the hands over
+even the worsted marvels of a "not discreditable" sampler. A year later,
+she says again:--
+
+"More Practice and more Embroidery this afternoon. There are those of my
+Companions who ask nothing better than such unvarying Exercises. In them
+they find room for the employing of their Imagination and their Spirit.
+I wonder if it be so great a Fault in me, that I find them wearying. It
+is not that they are in themselves so distasteful, as it is that there
+seemeth much work waiting to be done, which a woman's Hands might well
+do, were it not reckoned somewhat unseemly."
+
+"Her's was a somewhat restless Soul," says her biographer, "perplexing
+itself with Questions which it was not for her to answer."
+
+Yes, with questions with which many a restless woman's soul has since
+perplexed itself, and which are now only beginning to attain solution.
+It is pleasant to find, in these early times, when we fancy New England
+maidens well content with their spinning and bread-making, hints that
+there were enterprising spirits who thought the prescribed round a too
+narrow one.
+
+She finds some fault with one of her teachers for being too lenient with
+her.
+
+"I received no Reproof," she says, "to-day when I most Richly deserved
+it. A Disturbance in the Hour for Study was entirely of my own making,
+but the Person who is Master at that Hour refused, with Persistence, to
+see it. I made it most evident, but he remarked, with a frown for a less
+Offender, that he should hold Mistress Twining excused. I shall find
+Occasion to address him on this Subject, for if I receive due Credit for
+that which I do that is Well Done, I shall show no unwillingness to bear
+the Brunt of my Superior's Displeasure for what is Ill Done. Moreover, I
+will not have it otherwise."
+
+"It were better," is the brief comment, "it were better had Mary
+Twining shown more Regret for what she herself confesses was ill done,
+rather than that she should take upon herself to correct the Faults of
+those towards whom she was somewhat lacking in Reverence." But it is
+droll enough to fancy the scene--the pretty schoolgirl gravely rebuking
+her delinquent master for the too great partiality her own bright eyes
+had won for her. Poor man! His was no sinecure. To hold rule over a
+parcel of unruly girls, with the graces of one so tugging at his
+heartstrings! His path might at least have been spared the thorn of
+having his fault denounced by the very voice that had done the mischief.
+
+During the last year of her stay she writes less. Did the objectlessness
+of this education of hers pall upon the energy of her nature more and
+more? Or was her woman's heart preparing the way for the answer to this
+restless questioning? It is only now and then that we catch a glimpse of
+this development, which was singularly mature and singularly free from
+restriction.
+
+"I have read many Tales," she says, "how true, in my small Experience, I
+know not, of the aptitude of Women, particularly those young women whose
+characters are in a state of most Imperfect Development, to yield in
+matters essential to their best Happiness to the Opposing Wishes of
+Parents and Guardians. I speak of those Matters, perhaps not the most
+fitting for the Speculations of a but Partially-schooled Maiden--Love,
+and the Choosing of a Husband. While in these matters, as in all others,
+the Wishes of Wise and Fond Parents and Guardians are the only safe
+Guides for a young and Untrained Spirit, there are other Cases where
+Injustice and a Desire to Rule are but slender Grounds for the exercise
+of Authority. I know that my Boldness in this Opinion cannot pass even
+my own mind unchallenged, but when I read of Unwilling Maids forced to
+the very Church Door or Languishing under unmerited sternness, and
+Yielding up their own Happiness, and that of another (though he be a
+Man) into the Hands of an unwise Judge through inability to resist such
+unloving Pressure, my Nature rebels against it. It would seem to me
+cause for a Glad and an Unfaltering Resistance. For a Husband is, after
+all, a Matter for a Maid's own choosing."
+
+"The beaten path," says the biographer, "had ever but little attraction
+for Mary Twining. It had been well had she been less fain to seek
+Opportunity for a Lawful Resistance to Bonds. It seemeth ever to the
+Young that such opportunities are not long in coming."
+
+It was not only from the consciences of the colonial fathers that the
+stirrings of independence went forth. Apparently there was a spirit
+abroad that breathed now and then from the lips of but partially-schooled
+maidens. Still, it is not unruliness, this protest of a young and
+independent spirit against the slavishness now and then upheld in
+certain forms of literature. There is little revolutionary, after all,
+in Mary's sentiment that "a Husband is a matter for a Maid's own
+choosing."
+
+But we must pass over the last few notes of her school life. At nineteen
+she left school forever.
+
+"I am about to leave this little Life of School," she writes, "for a
+larger Life of Home, and mayhap a Taste of that Life which is called of
+the World. And if I be not now, at the age of Nineteen years, equipped
+for the change and able to comport myself with a becoming Discretion and
+Dignity, then such equipment is not to be found within these Four Walls
+or in daily Practice of Music and Mathematics. Which, though I be filled
+with no over-weening Distrust of my own Capabilities, seemeth to my eyes
+of some Doubt and Difference of Opinion."
+
+"On a certain day of June," her biographer goes on to state, "Mistress
+Mary Twining was placed in the Coach which should take her a Two Days'
+Journey to her Father's House. She was in Company with an old and
+Reverend Gentleman of friendly Disposition, who was well known to her
+Father and held in excellent esteem of him. The Fairness of a Maid is
+but a vain Toy, but," declares this most staid biographer, with a
+refreshing candor, "as it is a matter which is not without its effect on
+the Fortunes of many, it is not always to be passed over in the Silence
+which would befit a Sober Pen. Mary Twining's Hair was of a golden
+Colour and wound itself in small, and not always tidy, Rings about her
+Neck and Forehead. Her eyes were of a darker appearance than is common,
+and her Mouth, though not without a certain Winsomeness, gave Promise of
+a Firmness of Opinion and an Independence which was perhaps but a Sign
+of the Times, which her small and shrewdly-set Nose did not deny."
+
+I more than suspect that, disclaim it as he may, our discreet biographer
+was in nowise loath to dwell a little on this vain toy of Mary's
+personal appearance. I even fancy that he was tempted to employ greater
+latitude of expression, which only his stern sense of his
+responsibilities led him to reject, in the description of that
+uncompromising mouth, not to mention the spice of naughtiness involved
+in that nose so "shrewdly set."
+
+Not an unattractive picture in the coach window, this June day, is this
+of Mary Twining, in her big poke bonnet, white kerchief and
+short-waisted gown. And who is this, who, coming at the last moment,
+springs into a vacant place at her side, under the very eyes of the
+reverend old gentleman, her father's friend? The three-cornered hat
+which he doffs with ceremonious courtesy to the fair vision before him,
+the powdered queue, the high boots with jingling spurs, the sword at his
+side, are not unpicturesque items in our nineteenth-century eyes. Were
+they likely to be so in the eyes of this nineteen-year-old maiden just
+out of boarding-school?
+
+"As it happened," says the biographer, "there went down the same day,
+and by the same Coach, one of the young Aids of our General. He was a
+personable Youth, and the Arrangement of the many Fripperies of the
+Costume of a young Gallant did naught to take away from the Face and
+Figure which Providence had accorded him. It were better had he or Mary
+Twining chosen another Time for the Journey."
+
+Neither, probably, did a natural timidity of disposition do aught to
+lessen the impression which a personable young man has it in his power
+in any century to make upon a fair and observing girl. Mary herself
+says:--
+
+"There rode down with us a young gallant of most holiday Appearance, but
+not ignorant withal of the working days of a Soldier. It was not long
+before he had entered into Conversation with Mr. Edwards, who had
+knowledge of the young Man's Parents, from which Conversation I learned
+something of himself, though most modestly told. He would fain have
+opened the Way for me to join in my Guardian's Questioning, but I bore
+in Mind the Unseemliness of an unwarranted Acquaintanceship, and sought
+rather to avoid than to court the Glances which he was not over cautious
+in sending in my Direction."
+
+"A Maid's avoidance," observes the biographer, "of a Youth's Glances, is
+not of that Nature that is the Cutting off of all Hope."
+
+And Fortune, too, was not of so perverse a disposition in this June
+weather as she is sometimes. For, on the second day, when probably
+glances, so conscientiously evaded, had become but the accompaniment of
+spoken words, there was an accident. The coach, as coaches are apt to
+do, was upset, and its occupants "made haste rather as they could than
+as they would," to leave it. In the confusion and tumbling about of
+heavy boxes Mary might have been badly hurt, had not the young gallant,
+quickly springing to his feet, caught her as she was thrown forward by a
+second lurch of the unwieldy thing, and, lifting her up, carried her out
+of the way of falling luggage and struggling horses to a place of
+safety.
+
+"He lifted me as though I had been but a Feather's weight, showing a
+Strength which is indeed Goodly in the Sons of Men," says Mary demurely,
+"and which was most grateful in the Stress and Confusion, and in its
+display most Timely, though perhaps," she adds, with delicious
+frankness, "he was not over ready to put me down that he might hasten
+back to be of further help."
+
+"My Bonnet was awry," she continues, "my Hair in sad confusion, and my
+Face a Milkmaid Red, so that I said with but little Grace, 'Sir, I fear
+you have found me a grievous Weight.' Whereupon he answered me that so
+light was my weight, that his Heart was the Heavier for the Putting of
+me down, which was a Conceit not reasonable but most kindly intended.
+Whereon I thanked him, and he vowed such a Burden would he gladly carry
+to the World's End had he but Leave given."
+
+Another picture not unpleasant to the mind's eye, the overturned coach,
+the esteemed guardian of the youthful beauty delaying a little in its
+immediate neighborhood, perhaps to secure the safety of some precious
+package, the farm laborers in the green adjacent fields dropping their
+tools and running forward to help, the outcry and confusion, and apart,
+in the summer sunshine, the handsome fellow with the flashing sword by
+his side, listening with bent head and admiring eyes to the thanks which
+Mistress Mary, with her untidy hair and lifted eyes, was tendering with
+"but little Grace."
+
+"Such chance meeting of the Sexes," says our astute commentator, "where
+appear what is most commanding in the One and most dependent in the
+Other, are but ill advised. The Uttering of such vain proffers as the
+carrying the Burden of Mary Twining to the World's End, and other
+Foolishness, hath then a Savour of Reality which concealeth the vain
+Delusion."
+
+We have delayed too long over these extracts, and though I am tempted to
+delay yet longer, so quaint is the contrast between Mary Twining's
+youthful and feminine pen and that of her critical biographer, I pass on
+to a time some months after her arrival home. Indeed, she writes little
+in the interval. The coming into a new and wider circle, the adapting
+herself to new conditions, leave her scant time for writing. There is a
+rapid noting of events, for it was an eventful time,--the mention of a
+few distinguished names, and that is all. But in order to follow the
+thread of Mary Twining's romance, we must pause at the account of a ball
+given to one of General Washington's regiments at a time before the
+rigor of war had quenched all thoughts of merry-making. It was not her
+first ball. She had mixed freely in society, and had measured herself
+with the men and women about her,--always an interesting experience to
+the free, unprejudiced and thoughtful girl.
+
+"It was a joyous Scene enough," she writes, "but I myself not quite in
+the Humour for such Junketing. I had a gloomy Fancy that Reason would
+not dismiss, that in these Troublous Times there were Things outside of
+the Ball room Door, striving to enter, which having done, they would
+have proved of singular Inappositeness. None the less I danced with
+those who solicited me in due Form, and gave Heed to little else than
+the manner of the Solicitation. Not that there was Lack of Goodly
+Partners, but I was mindful of nothing beyond the Observance of the
+Courtesies of the Occasion. The only Annoyance of which I was sensible
+was the marked Attention of my Cousin Eustace Fleming, who is but
+recently come into this our Part of the Country, and claimeth
+Relationship. He is a most excellent Young Gentleman, but one who is
+likely to weary me with his over Appreciation of my own Qualities. It is
+but a Sign of my Stubbornness and Unregeneracy of Heart that, in that he
+is most approved and commended of my Parents, he wearieth me the more. I
+was fain to tell him, when he asked me a third Time to join the Dance,
+that there were fairer Maidens in the Hall who would be less loth to
+accord him the Favour, but as this would but have drawn from him a
+laboured compliment to my own Person, I prudently refrained."
+
+It was in the weariness of this very encounter that, looking up, she saw
+approaching her the hero of her adventure in the coach, the impulsive
+youth whose former foolishness had won for him the semi-disapproval of
+our commentator. It seems possible that the gloomy fancies of shadowy
+things outside lightened a little, and the war ceased to be a background
+only for shapes of evil.
+
+"It required not the space of a moment for me to recognize him, though
+his Attire had changed with the Circumstance, but as my Father's Friend,
+Mr. Edwards, had not deemed it of sufficient Importance to mention our
+former Rencontre, it now seemed to me useless to publicly recall that
+Incident. Particularly as being now duly presented to me in the Presence
+of my Parents, and with due Vouchers of his Credit, our Acquaintance
+could make such Progress as we should mutually consider profitable."
+
+Prudent Mistress Mary and delinquent Mr. Edwards!
+
+"After the Cotillion for which he had asked the Honour of my Hand, he
+led me to my Seat, but by a somewhat indirect Route. Upon my remarking
+upon which, he found Occasion to say that all Ways were short to him now
+after traversing the long and difficult one which he had followed that
+he might gain Admission to my Presence. I, laughing, said that my
+Presence were hardly worth such effort in Gaining, and that it was
+generally attained with more Ease, and he, replying with a Grace of
+Manner it were impossible not to remark, said hastily that he was well
+aware that he had found it easier to enter than he should to again
+forsake it."
+
+"And so on with such Vanities," says the biographer, "as pass Current
+with young Men and Maidens in their shortsighted Enjoyment of the
+moment, and with which Mary Twining was but too fain to dally."
+
+Yes, and so on, the old story. For there follow the frequent meetings,
+known and not unapproved of by the watchful parents, the half
+confessions, the vague wonderment, and at last the pledge given and
+received, and Mary Twining became the affianced wife of the handsome
+young officer. All this we trace in her journal, with satiric comments,
+now and then, of the Editor; but it is all so familiar that we will not
+dwell on it, pretty as it is. Only one shadow seems to have fallen on
+the lovers,--that of Mr. Eustace Fleming, the worthy cousin, whose
+importunities in the ball-room so tired the patience of Mistress Mary.
+The parentally favored candidate for Mary's hand, he finds it,
+evidently, too hard to give it up without a struggle. With a lack of
+that wisdom unfortunate lovers find it so hard to supply, he disturbed
+their interviews, forced himself on Mary's society, yet with no
+insolence and no self-betrayal that could lead to an outbreak. He is
+apparently a self-contained, and not a bad man, who finds it impossible
+to see that he is beaten. Of this period I make one or two extracts from
+Mary's journal, and then go on to the end.
+
+"If I once marvelled at the yielding of those weak Women who find it
+easier to relinquish the Happiness that they find in the Love of Those
+bound to them by mutual attraction, than to contest the matter with all
+Dignity, Forbearance, Firmness and Patience, how much the more do I
+marvel now at their Shortsightedness! Were he, whom I gladly call my
+Betrothed, to be the Victim of Oppression or of Malice, it would seem to
+me but the throwing down of the Glove--a challenge to Battle, rather
+than a demand for Submission. Methinks it were not as a Suppliant that I
+should stoop to pick it up. But why talk of fighting, who am a peaceful
+Maid, who would labour, were it but Honourable towards her dear Country,
+to remove the Sound of Battle far from her Lover. For indeed he is more
+ready to fight than am I to have him. He would see an Opportunity to
+strike a Blow in my Cause where is none, so anxious is he to draw his
+Sword in my Behalf. Indeed so excellent an Opinion doth he entertain of
+my Person and my Mind and my Conditions, that he would not be long in
+finding one who should most justly contest the same. Heaven send that he
+may hold to the Opinion and forget the Wish to make Proselytes!
+
+"It would seem that some men were created but as a sort of Makeweight,
+who, without active Hindrance, make it more difficult to row one's Boat
+up the Stream of Life. Of such kind is my Cousin Eustace Fleming. His
+most mistaken Admiration of me (for that in him is a Mistake which in
+Another is but a most fitting and a most reverenced Creed) serves but to
+make a Let and Hindrance where my satisfaction is concerned. I would
+that he could more easily learn the Lesson I have been at such Pains to
+mark out for him."
+
+"It were vain," is the comment on the last passage, "to expect a
+Recognition of sober worth in the Day of Love and Ambition. And
+Mistress Twining, after the manner of her kind, pays but little Heed to
+lasting Affection before the Time comes when it shall be of Use to Her."
+
+The wedding day approaches. Mary Twining does not lose her independence,
+though, woman like, she seems to enjoy losing herself in the love
+lavished upon her. Here and there are passages which show that in the
+warmth of her romance she thinks and judges and acts for herself, as she
+did in her school days. Mary Twining will never merge her individuality
+in that of another, however dear to her.
+
+The entries grow briefer and more infrequent, as the month fixed upon
+for the marriage draws near. It is to be in June,--two years from that
+June when she rode down by coach, in the care of her father's friend.
+
+"The day is fixed for the twenty-seventh of June," is the last entry but
+two in her journal. "Two years ago, Fate gave my Life into his Hands.
+At least, in giving it to him a second Time, Fate and I are at one."
+
+The next entry is a month later. It is simply the statement,--
+
+"May 24th. I have done my Cousin Eustace wrong." Then on--
+
+"July 27th. And I am but twenty-one!"
+
+And June comes and goes, and there is no word on her bridal day, no
+breathings of her new happiness from her ready pen. Is the book closed?
+Yes, but her biographer has a word to say.
+
+"On the twenty-seventh of June, Mary A. Twining became the wife of her
+Cousin Eustace Fleming. Their Betrothal was but a short one, but in the
+eyes of her judicious Parents, there was no unseemly Haste. It had long
+been a cherished wish of their Hearts, and Eustace Fleming was a young
+man of Promise and of rare Discretion."
+
+There it ends. The record of Mary Twining is finished. With Mary
+Fleming he has nothing to do. But where is the girl of ripened
+understanding, of freedom of thought, of directness of purpose? We do
+not know, for our biographer does not tell us. Was there a tragedy, and
+were the details too heart-breaking for even the stoical Editor to
+maintain his critical attitude?
+
+Where is the gallant cavalier with his picturesque devotion, and his
+vain toys of pretty speech and gesture and his fiery and over-weening
+love and admiration for Mistress Mary Twining? He seemed to me a brave
+and loyal sort of young fellow enough. I cannot tell. Put the quaint old
+book back on the shelf, and let her romance rest again. But
+notwithstanding her husband of such promise and rare discretion, I
+cannot help sighing, "Poor Mary Twining!"
+
+Fate and she had a difference, after all. And she was but twenty-one!
+
+
+
+
+A Postlude
+
+
+IT was almost time for the train to leave the station, and the seats
+were filling rapidly. The Irishwoman, with four children so near of a
+size that they seemed to be distinguished only by the variety of eatable
+each one was consuming, had entered the car and deposited her large
+newspaper bundle just inside the door, and driven her flock all into the
+little end seat, where they were stowed uncomfortably, one on top of
+another, gazing stolidly about the car. The young girl from the country
+who had been spending Sunday in town, and who was, consequently,
+somewhat overdressed for Monday morning, was wandering elegantly up and
+down the aisle, losing each possible place for a prospective better one,
+which became impossible before she reached it. The woman with a bag too
+large for her to carry, rested it on the arm of an occupied seat while
+she gazed vaguely about, indifferent to the fact that a crowd of
+impatient travellers of more concrete intentions were being delayed by
+her indecision. Meanwhile, among these disturbers of travel the man with
+a large bag passed rapidly along, found a place, put the bag in the
+rack, seated himself, and took out his newspaper. There is something in
+a man's management of a large travelling-bag in a railway train that
+leads the most unwilling to grudgingly yield him a certain superiority
+of sex.
+
+An exchange of good-bys, low-voiced but with a decided note of hilarity,
+took place at the door, and two women entered the car, one looking back
+and nodding a final smiling farewell before she gave her mind to the
+matter in hand. They were attractive women, of late middle age, perhaps,
+not yet to be called old. One was large, with fine curves, gray bands of
+hair under her autumnal bonnet, and a dignity of bearing which suited
+her ample figure and melodious, rather deep voice; the other was paler,
+more fragile, her light hair only streaked with gray, and her blue eyes
+still shaded with a half-wistful uncertainty of what might be before
+her, which the years had not been able to turn altogether into
+self-confidence.
+
+"You go on, Lucy," said the former, in her full, decided tones, pausing
+at the first vacant seat, "and see if there's a place for us to sit
+together farther down. I'll hold this for one of us. You take up less
+room than I do, you know, and it's easier for you to slip about;" and
+she laughed a little. There was a suggestion of laughter in the eyes and
+around the mouth of each of them. It indicated a subdued exhilaration
+unusual in the setting forth of women of their years and dignity. Lucy
+hesitated a moment, and then moved on somewhat timidly; but she had
+taken only a step when the man near whom they stood rose, and, lifting
+his hat, said: "Allow me, madam, to give you this seat for yourself and
+your friend. I can easily find another."
+
+"Thank you; you are very good," replied the larger of the two women, her
+kindly gray eyes meeting his with an expression that led him to pause
+and put their umbrellas in the rack and depart, wondering what it was
+about some women that made a man always glad to do anything for
+them,--and it didn't make any difference how old they were, either.
+
+"How nice people are!" said the one who had already spoken as they
+settled themselves. "That man, now--there wasn't any need of his doing
+that."
+
+"He seemed to really want to," rejoined Lucy. "People always like to do
+things for you, Mary Leonard, I believe," she added, looking at her
+companion with affectionate admiration.
+
+"I like to hear you talk," returned Mary Leonard, laughing. "If there
+ever was anybody that just went through the world having people do
+things for 'em, it's you, Lucy Eastman, and you know it."
+
+"Oh, but I know so few people," said the other, hastily. "I'm not
+ungrateful--I'm sure I've no call to be; but I know so few people, and
+they've known me all my life; it's not like strangers."
+
+"That hasn't anything to do with it," affirmed Mary Leonard, stoutly;
+"if there were more, it would be the same way. But I will say," she went
+on, "that I never could see why a woman travelling alone should ever
+have any trouble--officials and everybody are so polite about telling
+you the same thing over. I don't know why it is, but I always seem to
+expect the next one I ask to tell me something different about a train;
+and then everybody you meet seems just as pleasant as can be."
+
+"Yes," assented Lucy Eastman, "like that baggageman. Did you notice how
+polite the baggageman was?"
+
+"Notice it! Why, of course I did. And our trunks _were_ late, and it
+was my fault, and so I told him, and he just hurried to pull them around
+and check them, and I was so confused, you know, that I made him check
+the wrong ones twice."
+
+"Well, they were just like ours," said Lucy Eastman, sympathetically.
+
+"Well, they were, weren't they? But of course I ought to have known. And
+he never swore at all. I was dreadfully afraid he'd swear, Lucy."
+
+"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Lucy Eastman, distressed, "what would you have
+done if he'd sworn?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," asserted Mary Leonard, with conviction, "but
+fortunately he didn't."
+
+"He got very warm," said Lucy, reminiscently. "I saw him wiping his brow
+as we came away."
+
+"I don't blame him the least in the world. I think he was a wonderfully
+nice baggageman, for men of that class are so apt to swear when they get
+very warm,--at least, so I've heard. And did you hear--"
+
+"Tickets, ma'am," observed the conductor.
+
+"There, I didn't mean to keep you waiting a minute;" and Mary Leonard
+opened her pocketbook, "but I forgot all about the tickets. Oh, Lucy, I
+gave you the tickets, and I took the checks."
+
+"Yes, to be sure," said Lucy, opening her pocketbook.
+
+"I'll put them in the seat for you, ladies, like this," said the
+conductor, smiling, "and then you won't have any more trouble."
+
+"Oh, yes, thank you," said Lucy Eastman.
+
+"What a nice conductor!" observed Mary Leonard.
+
+"Did I hear what, Mary?--you were telling me something."
+
+"Oh, about the baggageman. I heard him say to his assistant, 'Don't you
+ever git mad with women, Bobby. It ain't no use. If it was always the
+same woman and the same trunk, perhaps you could learn her sometime; but
+it ain't, and you've got to take 'em just as they come, and get rid of
+'em the best way you can--they don't bear instruction.'"
+
+Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman threw back their heads and laughed; it was
+genuine, low, fresh laughter, and a good thing to hear. After that there
+was silence for a few moments as the train sped on its way.
+
+"I declare," said Mary Leonard, at last, "I don't know when I've been in
+the cars before."
+
+"I was just thinking I haven't been in the cars since Sister Eliza died,
+and we all went to the funeral," said Lucy Eastman.
+
+"Why, that's--let me see--eight years ago, isn't it?"
+
+"Eight and a half."
+
+"Well, I'm glad you'll have a pleasanter trip to look back on after
+this."
+
+"So am I; and I am enjoying this--every minute of it. Only there's so
+much to see. Just look at the people looking out of the windows of that
+manufactory! Shouldn't you think they'd roast?"
+
+"Yes, they must be hotter than a fritter such a day as this."
+
+"How long is it since you've been to Englefield, Mary?" asked Lucy
+Eastman, after another pause.
+
+"Why, that's what I meant to tell you. Do you know, after I saw you, and
+we decided to go there for our holiday, I began to think it over, and I
+haven't been there since we went together the last time."
+
+"Why, Mary Leonard! I had an idea you'd been there time and again,
+though you said you hadn't seen the old place for a long time."
+
+"Well, I was surprised myself when I realized it. But the next year my
+cousins all moved away, and I've thought of it over and over, but I
+haven't _been_. I dare say if we'd lived in the same town we'd have
+gone together before this, but we haven't, and there it is."
+
+"That's thirty-five years ago, Mary," said Lucy Eastman, thoughtfully.
+
+"Thirty-five years! I declare, it still makes me jump to hear about
+thirty-five years--just as if I hadn't known all about 'em!" and Mary
+Leonard laughed her comfortable laugh again. "You don't say it's
+thirty-five years, Lucy! I guess you're right, though."
+
+There was a moment's pause, and the laugh died away into a little sigh.
+
+"We didn't think then--we didn't really _think_--we'd ever be talking
+about what happened thirty-five years ago, did we, Lucy? We didn't think
+we'd have interest enough to care."
+
+"No," said Lucy, soberly, "we didn't."
+
+"And I care just as much as I ever did about things," went on the other,
+thoughtfully, "only there seem more doors for satisfaction to come in at
+nowadays. It isn't quite the same sort of satisfaction, perhaps, that
+it used to be, not so pressed down and running over, but there's more of
+it, after all, and it doesn't slip out so easily."
+
+"No, the bottom of things doesn't fall out at once, as it used to, and
+leave nothing in our empty hands."
+
+"That sounds almost sad. Don't you be melancholy, Lucy Eastman."
+
+"I'm not, Mary--I'm not a bit. I'm only remembering that I used to be."
+
+"We used to go to the well with a sieve instead of a pitcher; that's
+really the difference," said Mary Leonard. "We've learned not to be
+wasteful, that's all."
+
+"What fun we used to have," said Lucy, her eyes shining, "visiting your
+cousins!"
+
+"It _was_ fun!" said the other. "Do you remember the husking party at
+the Kendals' barn?"
+
+"Of course I do, and the red ears that that Chickering girl was always
+finding! I think she picked them out on purpose, so that Tom Endover
+would kiss her. It was just like those Chickerings!" There was a gentle
+venom in Lucy Eastman's tones that made Mary Leonard laugh till the
+tears came into her eyes.
+
+"Minnie Chickering wasn't the only girl that Tom Endover kissed, if I
+remember right," she said, with covert intention.
+
+"Well, he put the red ear into my hands himself, and I just husked it
+without thinking anything about it," retorted Lucy Eastman, with spirit.
+
+"Of course you did, of course you did," asseverated Mary Leonard,
+whereupon the other laughed too, but with reservation.
+
+"And do you remember old Miss Pinsett's, where we used to go to act
+charades?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, in the old white house at the foot of the hill, with a
+cupola. She seemed so old; I wonder how old she was?"
+
+"Perhaps we shouldn't think her so old to-day. People used to wear caps
+earlier then than they do now. I think when they were disappointed in
+love they put on caps! Miss Pinsett had been disappointed in love, so
+they said."
+
+"They will have old maids disappointed in love," said Lucy, with some
+asperity. "They will have me--some people--and I never was."
+
+"I know you weren't. But I don't think it's as usual as it was to say
+that about old maids. It's more the fashion now to be disappointed in
+marriage."
+
+There had been several stops at the stations along the road. The day was
+wearing on. Suddenly Lucy Eastman turned to her companion.
+
+"Mary," she said, "let's play we were girls again, and going to
+Englefield just as we used to go--thirty-five years ago. Let's pretend
+that we're going to do the same things and see the same people and have
+the same fun. We're off by ourselves, just you and I, and why shouldn't
+we? We're the same girls, after all," and she smiled apologetically.
+
+"Of course we are. We'll do it," said Mary Leonard, decidedly; "let's
+pretend."
+
+But, having made the agreement, it was not so easy to begin. The stream
+of reminiscence had been checked, and a chasm of thirty-five years is
+not instantly bridged, even in thought.
+
+"I hope they won't meet us at the station," said Mary Leonard, after a
+while, in a matter-of-fact voice. "We know the way so well there is no
+need of it."
+
+"I hope not. I feel just like walking up myself," answered Lucy. "We can
+send our trunks by the man that comes from the hotel, just as usual, and
+it'll be cool walking toward evening."
+
+"I'm glad we put off coming till the fall. The country's beautiful, and
+there isn't so much dust in case we"--she hesitated a moment--"in case
+we go on a picnic."
+
+"Yes," replied Lucy, readily; "to the old fort. I hope we'll have a
+picnic to the old fort. I guess all the girls will like to go. It's just
+the time to take that drive over the hill."
+
+"If we go," said Mary Leonard, slowly and impressively, "you'll have to
+drive with Samuel Hatt."
+
+"Oh, I went with him last time," broke in Lucy, apprehensively. "It's
+your turn."
+
+"But you know I just won't," said Mary Leonard, her eyes sparkling, and
+the dimples that, like Miss Jessie Brown, she had not left off,
+appearing and disappearing. "And somebody _has_ to go with him."
+
+"Perhaps they won't ask him."
+
+"Oh, but they will. They always do, on account of his horses. It
+wouldn't be a picnic without Samuel Hatt."
+
+Just then the train drew up at a small station. Lucy Eastman started as
+she read the name of the place as it passed before her eyes.
+
+"Mary," said she, "this is where Mr. Hatt always used to get on the
+train. There are the Hatt Mills, and he goes up and down every
+day,--don't you remember? And how we were--we are--always afraid we'll
+meet him on the train."
+
+"Of course," said Mary Leonard, leaning forward and scanning the
+platform with its row of idlers and its few travellers. "Well, he isn't
+here now. We are going to escape him this time. But my heart was in my
+mouth! I don't want Samuel Hatt to be the first Englefield person we
+meet."
+
+They looked up with careless curiosity at the people who entered the
+train. There was a little girl with a bunch of common garden flowers
+following close behind a tired-looking woman, who had been, obviously,
+"spending the day;" a florid old gentleman with gold spectacles, who
+revealed a bald head as he removed his hat and used it for a fan,--they
+had seen him hurrying to the platform just before the train moved out;
+a commercial traveller, and a schoolboy.
+
+"No," said Mary Leonard, "he isn't here this time."
+
+The florid old gentleman took a seat in front of them and continued to
+fan himself. The conductor came through the car.
+
+"Warm spell we're having for October, Mr. Hatt," he said, as he punched
+the commutation-ticket that was offered him.
+
+Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman gazed spellbound at the back of Mr. Hatt's
+bald head. They were too amazed to look away from it at each other.
+
+"It--it must be his father," gasped Lucy Eastman. "He looks--a
+little--like him."
+
+"Then it's his father come back!" returned Mary in an impatient whisper.
+"His father died before we ever went to Englefield; and, don't you
+remember, he was always fanning himself?"
+
+Their fascinated gaze left the shiny pink surface of Samuel Hatt's head,
+and their eyes met.
+
+"I hope he won't see us," giggled Lucy.
+
+"I hope not. Let's look the other way."
+
+In a few minutes Mr. Hatt rose slowly and portentously, and, turning,
+made a solemn but wavering way down the car to greet a man who sat just
+across the aisle from Mary Leonard. Both the women avoided his eyes,
+blushing a little and with the fear of untimely mirth about their lips.
+
+As he talked with their neighbor, however, they ventured to look at him,
+and as he turned to go back his slow, deliberate glance fell upon them,
+rested a moment, and, without a flicker of recognition, passed on, and
+he resumed his place.
+
+There was almost a shadow in the eyes that met again, as the women
+turned towards one another.
+
+"I--I know it's funny," said Lucy, a little tremulously, "but I don't
+quite like it that we look to him just as he does to us."
+
+"We have hair on our heads," said Mary Leonard. "But," she added, less
+aggressively, "we needn't have worried about his speaking to us."
+
+"Englefield," shouted the brakeman, and the train rumbled into a covered
+station. Mary Leonard started to her feet, and then paused and looked
+down at her companion. This Englefield! This the quiet little place
+where the man from the hotel consented to look after their trunks while
+their cousins drove them up in the wagon--this noisy station with two or
+three hotel stages and shouting drivers of public carriages!
+
+"Lucy," said she, sitting down again in momentary despair, "we've gone
+back thirty-five years, but we forgot to take Englefield with us!"
+
+It did not take long, however, to adapt themselves to the new
+conditions. They arranged to stay at the inn that was farthest from the
+centre of things, and the drive out restored some of the former look of
+the place. It was near sunset; the road looked pink before them as they
+left the city. The boys had set fire to little piles of early fallen
+leaves along the sides of the streets, and a faint, pungent smoke hung
+about and melted into the twilight, and the flame leaped forth vividly
+now and then from the dusky heaps. As they left the paved city for the
+old inn which modern travel and enterprise had left on the outskirts,
+the sky showed lavender through a mistiness that was hardly palpable
+enough for haze. The browns and reds of the patches of woods in the near
+distance seemed the paler, steadier reproduction of the flames behind
+them. Low on the horizon the clouds lay in purple waves, deepening and
+darkening into brown.
+
+"Mary," said Lucy Eastman, in a low tone, laying her hand on her
+companion's arm, "it's just the way it looked when we came the first
+time of all; do you remember?"
+
+"Remember? It's as if it were yesterday! Oh, Lucy, I don't know about a
+new heaven, but I'm glad, I'm glad it isn't a 'new earth' quite yet!"
+There was a mistiness in the eyes of the women that none of the changes
+they had marked had brought there. They were moved by the sudden sweet
+recognition that seemed sadder than any change.
+
+The next morning they left the house early, that they might have long
+hours in which to hunt up old haunts and renew former associations.
+Again the familiar look of things departed as they wandered about the
+wider, gayer streets. The house in which Mary Leonard's cousins had
+lived had been long in other hands, and the occupants had cut down the
+finest of the old trees to make room for an addition, and a woman whose
+face seemed provokingly foreign to the scene came out with the air of a
+proprietor and entered her carriage as they passed.
+
+At another place which they used to visit on summer afternoons, and
+which had been approached by a little lane, making it seem isolated and
+distant, the beautiful turf had been removed to prepare a bald and
+barren tennis court, and they reached it by an electric car. Even the
+little candy-shop had become a hardware store.
+
+"Of course, when one thinks of the Gibraltars and Jackson balls, it does
+not seem such a revolution," said Mary Leonard; but she spoke forlornly,
+and did not care much for her own joke. It looked almost as if their
+holiday was to be turned into a day of mourning; there was depression in
+the air of the busy, bustling active streets, through which the
+gray-haired women wandered, handsome, alert, attentive, but haunted by
+the sense of familiarity that made things unfamiliar and the knowledge
+of every turn and direction that yet was not knowledge, but ignorance.
+
+"Look here, Lucy Eastman," said Mary Leonard at last, stopping
+decisively in front of what used to be the Baptist Church, but which
+was now a business block and a drug-store where you could get peach
+phosphate, "we can't stand this any longer. Let's get into a carriage
+right away and go to the old fort; that can't have changed much; it used
+to be dismantled, and I don't believe they've had time, with all they've
+done here, to--to mantle it again."
+
+They moved towards a cab-stand--of course it was an added grievance that
+there was a cab-stand--but the wisdom of the prudent is to understand
+his way.
+
+"Mary," said Lucy Eastman, detaining her, "wait a minute. Do you think
+we might--it's a lovely day--and--there's a grocer right there--and
+dinner is late at the hotel"--She checked her incoherence and looked
+wistfully at Mary Leonard.
+
+"Lucy, I think we might do anything, if you don't lose your mind first.
+What is it, for pity's sake, that you want to do?"
+
+"Take our luncheon; we always used to, you know. And we can have a hot
+dinner at the hotel when we come back."
+
+Without replying, Mary Leonard led the way to the grocer's, and they
+bought lavish supplies there and at the bakery opposite. Then they
+called the cab.
+
+"Do you remember, Lucy, we used to have to think twice about calling a
+cab, when we used to travel together, on account of the expense," said
+Mary Leonard, as they waited for it to draw up at the curbstone.
+
+"Yes," answered Lucy; "we don't have to now." And then they both sighed
+a little.
+
+But their smiles returned as they drove into the enclosure of the old
+fort. There they lay in the peaceful sun--the gray stones, the few
+cannon-balls, sunk in the caressing grass, with here and there a rusty
+gun, like a once grim, sharp-tongued, cruel man who has fallen somehow
+into an amiable senility.
+
+"I read an article in one of the magazines about our coast defences,"
+said Lucy Eastman, breathlessly; "how they ought to be strengthened and
+repaired and all, and I was quite excited about it and wanted to give a
+little money towards it, but I wouldn't for anything now, enemy or no
+enemy."
+
+"Nor I, either," said Mary Leonard, after she had dismissed the driver
+with orders to call for them later in the day. They walked on over the
+crisp dry grass, and seated themselves on a bit of the fallen masonry.
+The reaches of the placid river lay before them, and the hum of the
+alert cricket was in their ears. Now and then a bird flew
+surreptitiously from one bush to another, with the stealthy, swift
+motion of flight in autumn, so different from the heedless, fluttering,
+hither-and-yon vagaries of the spring and early summer. The time for
+frivolity is over; the flashes of wings have a purpose now; the
+possibility of cold is in the air, and what is to be done must be done
+quickly.
+
+"We almost always used to come in summer," said Lucy Eastman, "but I
+think it's every bit as pretty in the fall."
+
+"So do I," assented Mary Leonard, as she looked down into a hollow where
+the purple asters grew so thick that in the half-dusk of the shadow they
+looked like magnified snowflakes powdered thickly on the sward. "And it
+hasn't changed an atom," she went on, as her eyes roamed over the
+unevenness of this combination of man's and nature's handiwork. "It's
+just as quiet and disorderly and upset and peaceful as it was then."
+
+"Yes, look up there;" and Lucy Eastman pointed to the higher ramparts,
+on the edge of which the long grass wavered in the wind with the
+glancing uncertainty of a conflagration. "The last time I was here I
+remember saying that that looked like a fire."
+
+After they had eaten their luncheon, which brought with it echoes of
+the laughter which had accompanied the picnic supper eaten in that very
+corner years ago, they seated themselves in a sheltered spot to wait. It
+really seemed as if the old gray walls retained some of the spirit of
+those earlier days, so gentle, so mirth-inspiring was the sunshine that
+warmed them.
+
+"I'm so glad we came," said Mary,--they had both said it before,--as the
+sunny peace penetrated their very souls.
+
+Four o'clock brought the cab, and they drove down the long hills,
+looking back often for a final glimpse of the waving grass and the gray
+stones. As they turned a sharp corner and lost sight of the old fort,
+Mary Leonard glanced furtively at her companion. Her own eyes for the
+second time that day were not quite clear, and she was not sorry to
+detect an added wistfulness in Lucy Eastman's gaze.
+
+"Lucy," said she, and her voice shook a little, "I'm tired."
+
+"So am I," murmured Lucy.
+
+"And I don't ever remember to have been tired after a picnic at the old
+fort before."
+
+"No more do I," said Lucy; and it was a moment before their sadness, as
+usual, trembled into laughter.
+
+"Lucy Eastman," said Mary Leonard, suddenly, "this is the street that
+old Miss Pinsett used to live on--lives on, I mean. What do you say?
+Shall we stop and see Miss Pinsett?" The dimples had come back again,
+and her eyes danced.
+
+Lucy caught her breath.
+
+"Oh, Mary, if only she--" her sentence was left unfinished.
+
+"I'll find out," said Mary Leonard, and put her head out of the window.
+"Driver," she called out, "stop at Miss Pinsett's."
+
+The driver nodded and drove on, and she sank back pleased with her own
+temerity.
+
+The cab stopped in front of the same square white house, with the
+cupola, and the same great trees in the front yard. Mary Leonard and
+Lucy Eastman clasped each other's hands in silent delight as they walked
+up the box-bordered path.
+
+"Tell Miss Pinsett that Lucy Eastman and--and Mary Greenleaf have come
+to see her," they said to the elderly respectable maid. Then they went
+into the dim shaded parlor and waited. There were the old piano and the
+Japanese vases, and the picture of Washington which they had always
+laughed at because he looked as if he were on stilts and could step
+right across the Delaware, and they could hear their hearts beat, for
+there was a rustle outside the door--old Miss Pinsett's gowns always
+rustled--and it opened.
+
+"Why, _girls_!" exclaimed old Miss Pinsett as she glided into the room.
+
+Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman declared, then and afterward, that she
+wasn't a day older than when they said good-by to her thirty-five years
+ago. She wore the same gray curls and the same kind of cap. Also, they
+both declared that this was the climax, and that they should have wept
+aloud if it had not been so evident that to Miss Pinsett there was
+nothing in the meeting but happiness and good fortune, so they did not.
+
+"Why, girls," said old Miss Pinsett again, clasping both their hands,
+"how glad I am to see you, and how well you are both looking!"
+
+Then she insisted on their laying off their things, and they laid them
+off because they always had when she asked them.
+
+"You've grown stout, Mary Greenleaf," said old Miss Pinsett.
+
+"I know I have," she answered, "and I'm not Mary Greenleaf, though I
+sent that name up to you--I'm Mary Leonard."
+
+"I wondered if neither of you were married."
+
+"I'm a widow, Miss Pinsett," said Mary Leonard, soberly. "My husband
+only lived three years."
+
+"Poor girl, poor girl!" said Miss Pinsett, patting her hand, and then
+she looked at the other.
+
+"I'm Lucy Eastman still," she said; "just the same Lucy Eastman."
+
+"And a very good thing to be, too," said Miss Pinsett, nodding her
+delicate old head kindly. "But," and she scanned her face, "but, now
+that I look at you, not quite the same Lucy Eastman--not quite the
+same."
+
+"Older and plainer," she sighed.
+
+"Of all the nonsense!" exclaimed old Miss Pinsett. "You're not quite so
+shy, that's all, my dear."
+
+"I'm shy now," asserted Lucy.
+
+"Very likely, but not quite so shy as you were, for all that. Don't tell
+me! I've a quick eye for changes, and so I can see changes in you two
+when it may be another wouldn't."
+
+Before the excitement of her welcome had been subdued into mere
+gladness, there was a discreet tap at the door, and the respectable
+maid came in with a tray of sherry-glasses and cake. Mary Leonard and
+Lucy Eastman looked at each other brimming over with smiles. It was the
+same kind of cake, and might have been cut off the same loaf.
+
+"Never any cake like yours," said Mary Leonard.
+
+"I remember you like my cake," said old Miss Pinsett, smiling; "take a
+bigger piece, child."
+
+They wanted to know many things about the people and the town, all of
+which Miss Pinsett could tell them.
+
+The shadows grew longer, the room dimmer, and Miss Pinsett had the maid
+throw open the blinds to let in the western sunlight. A shaft of
+illumination fell across one of the Japanese vases, and a dragon
+blinked, and the smooth round head of a mandarin gleamed. There was an
+old-fashioned trumpet-creeper outside the window.
+
+"But we must go," exclaimed Mary Leonard at last, rising and taking up
+her bonnet. "Oh, no, thank you, we must not stay. Miss Pinsett; we are
+going to-morrow, and we are tired with all the pleasure of to-day, and
+we have so much--so much to talk over. We shall talk all night, as we
+used to, I am afraid."
+
+"But before you go, girls," said Miss Pinsett, laying a fragile, white
+slender hand on each, "you must sing for me some of the songs you used
+to sing--you know some very pretty duets."
+
+Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman paused, amazed, and looked into each
+other's faces in dismay. Sing?--had they ever sung duets? They had not
+sung a note for years, except in church.
+
+"But I don't know any songs, Miss Pinsett," stammered Mary Leonard.
+
+"I have forgotten all I ever knew," echoed Lucy Eastman.
+
+"No excuses, now--no excuses! You were always great for excuses, but
+you would always sing for me. I want 'County Guy,' to begin with."
+
+By a common impulse the visitors moved slowly towards the piano; they
+would try, at least, since Miss Pinsett wanted them to. Lucy seated
+herself and struck a few uncertain chords. Possibly the once familiar
+room, Mary Leonard at her side, Miss Pinsett listening in her own
+high-backed chair, the scent of the mignonette in the blue
+bowl--possibly one or all of these things brought back the old tune.
+
+          "Ah, County Guy,
+           The hour is nigh,
+           The sun has left the lea."
+
+The sweet, slender voice floated through the room, and Mary Leonard's
+deeper contralto joined and strengthened it.
+
+"Now, I will have 'Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,'" said Miss Pinsett, quite
+as if it were a matter of course. And they sang "Flow Gently, Sweet
+Afton." It was during the last verse that the parlor door opened
+softly, and a tall, fine-looking man, erect, with beautiful silver
+curling hair, and firm lines about the handsome, clean-shaven mouth,
+appeared on the threshold and stood waiting. As the singing finished,
+Miss Pinsett shook her head at him.
+
+"You were always coming in and breaking up the singing, Tom Endover,"
+she said.
+
+The two women left the piano and came forward.
+
+"You used to know Mary Greenleaf,--she's Mrs. Leonard now,--and Lucy
+Eastman, Tom," she went on.
+
+Apparently Mr. Endover was not heeding the introduction, but was coming
+towards them with instant recognition and outstretched hand. They often
+discussed afterward if he would have known them without Miss Pinsett.
+Mary Leonard thought he would, but Lucy Eastman did not always agree
+with her.
+
+"You don't have to tell me who they are," he said, grasping their hands
+cordially. "Telling Tom Endover who Mary Greenleaf and Lucy Eastman are,
+indeed!" There was a mingling of courteous deference and frank, not to
+be repressed, good comradeship in his manner which was delightful. Mary
+Leonard's dimples came and went, and delicate waves of color flowed and
+ebbed in Lucy Eastman's soft cheeks.
+
+"I'm too old always to remember that there's no telling a United States
+senator anything," retorted Miss Pinsett, with a keen glance from her
+dimmed but penetrating eyes.
+
+"As to that, I don't believe I'd ever have been a United States senator
+if it wasn't for what you've told me, Miss Pinsett," laughed Endover.
+"I'm always coming here to be taken down, Mary," he went on; "she does
+it just as she used to."
+
+Mary Leonard caught her breath a little at the sound of her Christian
+name, but "I didn't know there was any taking you down, Tom Endover,"
+she retorted before she thought; and they all laughed.
+
+They found many things to say in the few minutes longer that they
+stayed, before Mr. Endover took them out and put them in their cab. He
+insisted upon coming the next morning to take them to the station in his
+own carriage, and regretted very much that his wife was out of town, so
+that she could not have the pleasure of meeting his old friends.
+
+"He's just the same, isn't he?" exclaimed Mary Leonard, delightedly, as
+they drove away.
+
+"Yes," assented Lucy Eastman, slowly; "I think he is; and yet he's
+different."
+
+"Oh, yes, he's different," replied Mary Leonard, readily. Both were
+quite unconscious of any discrepancy in their statements as they
+silently thought over the impression he had made. He was the same
+handsome, confident Tom Endover, but there was something gone,--and was
+there not something in its place? Had that gay courtesy, that debonair
+good fellowship, changed into something more finished, but harder and
+more conscious? Was there a suggestion that his old careless charm had
+become a calculated and a clearly appreciated facility? Lucy Eastman did
+not formulate the question, and it did not even vaguely present itself
+to Mary Leonard, so it troubled the pleasure of neither.
+
+"What a day we have had!" they sighed in concert as they drove up again
+to the entrance of the inn.
+
+"Lucy," called Mary Leonard, a little later, from one of their
+connecting rooms to the other, "I'm going to put on my best black net,
+because Tom Endover may call to-night." Then she paused to catch Lucy
+Eastman's prompt reply.
+
+"And I shall put on my lavender lawn, but it'll be just our luck to have
+it Samuel Hatt."
+
+The next morning Mr. Endover called for them, and they were driven to
+the station in his brougham.
+
+He put them on the train, and bought the magazines for them, and waved
+his hand to the car window.
+
+"You know, Lucy," said Mary Leonard, as the train pulled out, "Tom
+Endover always used to come to see us off."
+
+"Of course he did," said Lucy.
+
+"Do you know, I'm rather glad his wife was out of town," went on Mary
+Leonard, after a pause. "I should like to have seen her well enough, but
+you know she wasn't an Englefield girl."
+
+"What can she know about old Englefield!" said Lucy, with mild contempt.
+"I'm very glad she was out of town."
+
+As they left the city behind them, the early morning sun shone forth
+with vivid brilliancy. Against the western sky the buildings stood out
+with a peculiar distinctness, as if the yellow light shining upon them
+was an illumination inherent in themselves, singling them out of the
+landscape, and leaving untouched the cold gray behind them. The lines of
+brick and stone had the clearness and precision of a photograph, and yet
+were idealized, so that in the yellow, mellow, transparent light a tall,
+smoke-begrimed chimney of a distant furnace looked airy and delicate as
+an Italian tower.
+
+
+
+
+The "Daily Morning Chronicle"
+
+
+THE village lay still and silent under the observant sun. The village
+street stretched in one direction down the hill to the two-miles-off
+railway station, and in the other to the large white house with pillared
+portico, from which there was a fine view of the sunset, and beyond
+which it still continued, purposeful but lonely, until it came suddenly
+upon half a dozen houses which turned out to be another village.
+
+Not a man, woman, or child crossed from one house to another; not a dog
+or a cat wandered about in the sunshine. The white houses looked as if
+no one lived in them; the white church, with its sloping approach,
+looked as if no one ever preached in it and no one ever came to it to
+listen. It seemed to Lucyet Stevens, as she sat at the little window of
+the post-office, behind which her official face looked so much more
+important than it ever did anywhere else, as if the village street
+itself were listening for the arrival of the noon mail. For it was
+nearly time for the daily period of almost feverish activity. By and by
+from the station would come Truman Hanks with the leather bag which, in
+village and city alike, is the outward and visible sign of the fidelity
+of the government. It is probable that he will bring it up in a single
+carriage, for though sometimes he takes the two-seated one, in case
+there should be a human arrival who would like to be driven up, this
+possibility was so slight a one at this time of year that it was hardly
+worth considering. Then the village will awake; the two little girls who
+live down below the saw-mill will come up together, confiding on the way
+a secret or two, for which the past twenty-four hours would seem to
+have afforded slender material. Then old John Thomas will come limping
+across from his small house back of the church, to see if there is a
+letter for "her,"--she being his wife, and in occasional communication
+with their daughter in the city. Then the good-looking, roughly clad
+young farmer who takes care of the fine place with the pillared portico
+on the hill will saunter down to see if "the folks have sent any word
+about coming up for the summer." Then Miss Granger, who lives almost
+next door, will throw a shawl over her head and run in to see who has
+letters and, incidentally, if she has any herself; and then one or two
+wagons will draw up in front of the little store, and the men will come
+in for their daily papers.
+
+As Lucyet came around to the daily papers she flushed and looked
+impatiently out of the door down the street. Not that the thought of the
+daily paper had not been all the time in the background of her mind,
+but having allowed her fancy to wander towards the attitude of the
+village and its prospective disturbance, she returned to the imminence
+of the daily paper again with a thrill of emotion. It was not one of the
+metropolitan journals which, as a body, the village subscribed for, nor
+was it one of the more widely known of those issued in smaller cities;
+it was an unpretentious sheet, neither very ably edited nor extensively
+circulated,--the chief spokesman of the nearest county town. But with
+all its limitations, its readers represented to Lucyet the great harsh,
+unknowing, and yet irresistibly attractive public.
+
+It was not the first time that she had thus watched for it with mute
+excitement. Such episodes, though infrequent, had marked her otherwise
+uneventful existence at irregular intervals for more than a year. It
+would be more correct to say that they had altered its entire course;
+that such episodes had given to her life a double character,--one side
+of calmness, secrecy, indifference, and the other of delight,
+absorption, thrilled with a breathless excitement and uncertainty. But
+this time there was a greater than ordinary interest. The verses that
+she had sent last were more ambitious in conception; they had
+description in them, and mental analysis, and several other things which
+very likely she would not have called by their right names, though she
+felt their presence: her other contributions had belonged rather to the
+poetry of comment. She was sure, almost sure, that they had accepted
+these.
+
+Unsophisticated Lucyet never dreamed of enclosing postage for return, so
+she could only breathlessly search the printed page to discover whether
+her lines were there or in the waste-basket. Friday's edition of the
+"Daily Morning Chronicle" was more or less given over to the feeble
+claims of general literature. To-day was Friday. Lucyet glanced through
+her little window--the tastefully disposed corner of which was
+dedicated to the postal service--at the tin of animal crackers, the jar
+of prunes, the suspended bacon, and the box of Spanish licorice, and
+pondered, half contemptuously, half pitifully, on what had been her life
+before she had written poems and sent them to the "Daily Morning
+Chronicle." Then her outlook had seemed scarcely wider than that of the
+animal crackers with their counterfeit vitality; now it seemed extended
+to the horizon of all humanity.
+
+There was the sound of horses' feet coming over the hill. Was it the
+mail wagon? No, it was a heavier vehicle; and the voice of the farmer,
+slow and lumbering as the animals it encouraged, sounded down the
+village street. Over the crest of the hill appeared the summit of a load
+of hay going to the scales in front of the tavern to be weighed. So
+silent were the place and the hour, that it was like a commotion when
+the cart drew up, and the horses were unhitched and weighed, and then
+the load driven on, and the owner and the hotel-keeper exchanged
+observations of a genial nature. Finally the horses and the wagon
+creaked along the hot street down the road which led by the pillared
+white house, and again the village was at peace. Lucyet glanced at the
+clock. Was the mail going to be late this morning? No. The creaking of
+the hay wagon had but just lost itself in the silence, when her quick
+ear caught the rattle of the lighter carriage. Her first impulse was to
+step to the door and wait for it there, but she did not yield to it; she
+would do just as usual, neither more nor less. She would not for worlds
+have Truman Hanks suspect any special interest on her part. He might try
+to find out its cause; and a hot blush enveloped Lucyet as she
+contemplated the possibility of his assigning it to the true one. Only
+one person in all the village knew that Lucyet Stevens wrote poetry.
+
+"Most time for the mail to be gittin' heavy," said Truman, as he handed
+over the limp receptacle; "the summer boarders'll be along now, before
+long."
+
+"Yes, I s'pose they will," answered Lucyet, her fingers trembling as
+they unlocked the bag.
+
+"It's a backward season, though," he went on, watching her.
+
+"Yes, it is uncommon backward; the apple blossoms aren't but just
+beginning to come out."
+
+It seemed to her that there was suspicion in his observation. He leaned
+lazily over the counter, while she took out the mail within the little
+office with its front of letter-boxes.
+
+"This hot spell'll bring 'em out. It's the first _hot_ spell we've
+had."
+
+"Yes," she assented, blushing again, "it will."
+
+She had spoken of the tardy apple blossoms in her poem,--it was entitled
+"Spring." Two or three people, having seen the mail go by, dropped in
+and disposed themselves in various attitudes to wait for it to be
+distributed. She hurried through the work, her fingers tingling to open
+each copy of the newspaper as she laid it in its place. At last it was
+done; the little window which had been shut to produce official
+seclusion was reopened; and the people came up, one by one, without much
+haste, and received the papers and now and then a letter. It did not
+take long; and afterward they stood about and talked and traded a
+little, their papers unopened in their hands. It was not likely that the
+news from outside was going to affect any one of them very much; they
+could wait for it; and reading matter was for careful attention at home,
+not for skimming over in public places.
+
+Lucyet found their indifference phenomenal; they did not know what might
+be waiting for them in the first column of the third page. Was it
+waiting for them? The suspense was almost overwhelming; and yet she did
+not like to open the copy which lay at her disposal until the store was
+empty; she had a nervous feeling that they would all know what she was
+looking for. Slowly the group melted away, till there was no one left
+except the proprietor, who had gone into the back room to look after
+some seed corn, and Silas, the young farmer, who had thrown himself down
+into a chair to read his paper at his leisure, and was not noticing
+Lucyet. Eagerly she opened the printed sheet. She caught her breath in
+the joy of assurance. There it was--"Spring." It stood out as if it were
+printed all in capitals. After a furtive look out at the quiet street,
+where, in a rusty wagon, an old man was just picking up his reins and
+preparing to jog away from the post-office door, and a side glance at
+Silas's broad back over by the farther window, Lucyet read over her own
+lines. How different they looked from the copy in her own distinct,
+formal little handwriting! They had gained something,--but they had
+lost something too. They seemed unabashed, almost declamatory, in their
+sentiment. They had acquired a new and positive importance; it was as if
+the assertions they made had all at once become truths, had ceased to be
+tentative. She read them over again. No, they did not tell it all, all
+that she meant to say; but they brought back the day, and she was glad
+she had written them,--glad with an agitated, inexpressible gladness.
+She would like to know what people said of them; for a moment it seemed
+to her that she would not mind if they knew that she wrote them.
+
+"Well," said Silas, laying down his paper and standing up, "there isn't
+a blamed thing in that paper!"
+
+Lucyet looked up at him startled. Had she heard aright? Then the color
+slowly receded from her face and left it pale. Silas was quite
+unconscious of having made an unusual statement.
+
+"Well, Lucyet," he went on, "going to the Christian Endeavor to-night?"
+
+"I don't know," she stammered. "No," she added suddenly, "I am not." All
+endeavor was a mockery to her stunned soul.
+
+"I dunno as I will either," he observed carelessly as he lounged out.
+
+It was nothing to her whether he went or not, though once it might have
+been. She sat still for some minutes after he had gone, looking blankly
+at the paper. The page which a few minutes ago had seemed fairly to glow
+with interest had become mere columns of print concerning trivial
+things; for an instant she saw it with Silas's eyes. John Thomas came
+limping for his mail. He had been detained on the way, he explained, and
+was late. She handed him his paper through the window, dully,
+indifferently. She was suffering a measure of that disappointment which
+comes with what we have grown to believe attainment, and is so much more
+bitter than that of failure. But the revolt against this unnatural state
+of mind came before long. The elasticity of her own enthusiasm
+reasserted itself. It could not be that there was nothing in her poem.
+She read the lines over again. Two or three were not quite what they
+ought to be, somehow; but the rest of them the world would lay hold
+of,--that big sympathetic world which knew so much more than Silas
+Stevens.
+
+When the hour came to close the office at noon, she locked the drawer
+and passed out of the door to the footpath with a sense of triumph under
+the habitual shyness of her manner. She still shrank from the publicity
+she had achieved, but she was conscious of an undercurrent of desire
+that her achievement, since it was real, should be recognized.
+
+When the old postmaster died, leaving Lucyet, his only child, alone in
+the world, and interest in official quarters had procured for her the
+appointment in her father's place, a home had also been offered her at
+Miss Flood's; and it was thither that Lucyet now went for her noonday
+meal. Miss Delia Flood was of most kindly disposition and literary
+tastes. That these tastes were somewhat prescribed in their
+manifestation was no witness against their genuineness. It must be
+confessed that Miss Delia's preference was for the sentimental,--though
+she would have modestly shrunk from hearing it thus baldly stated,--and,
+naturally, for poetry above prose. The modern respect for "strength" in
+literature would have impressed her most painfully had she known of it.
+The mind turns aside from the contemplation of the effect that a story
+or two of Kipling's would have produced upon her could she have grasped
+their vocabulary; she would probably have taken to her bed in sheer
+fright, as she did in a thunderstorm. Poetry of the heart and emotions,
+which never verged, even most distantly, upon what her traditions and
+her susceptibilities told her was the indecorous, satisfied her highest
+demands, and the less said about nature, except by way of an occasional
+willow, or the sad, sweet scent of a jasmine flower, the better. Miss
+Delia had fostered Lucyet's love for literature; and it was to Miss
+Delia that Lucyet hastened with the great news of the publication of her
+poem. It was for this acute pleasure that she had hitherto kept the
+knowledge of her attempt from her,--and, too, that her joy might be
+full, and that she would not have to suffer the alternating phases of
+hope and fear through which Lucyet herself had passed.
+
+As she entered the room where dinner stood on the table and Miss Delia
+waited to eat it with her, she suppressed the trembling excitement which
+threatened to make itself visible in her manner now that the words were
+upon her very lips. They seated themselves at the table. Miss Delia was
+small and wiry and grave, and never spilled anything on the tablecloth
+when helping.
+
+"Miss Delia," said Lucyet, "I've written a poem."
+
+Her companion looked at her and smiled a shrewd little smile. "I've
+guessed as much before now," she said.
+
+"But," said Lucyet, laying down her knife and fork, "it has been
+printed."
+
+"Printed, child!" exclaimed Miss Delia, almost dropping hers. At last
+the cup of satisfaction was at Lucyet's lips; at least she had not
+overestimated the purport of the event to one human being.
+
+"Printed," repeated Lucyet, smiling softly. "Here it is in the paper."
+
+Miss Delia pushed aside her plate, seized the paper, and, opening it,
+searched its columns. She had not to look long; there was but one poem.
+Lucyet watched with shining eyes. This is what it meant; this was the
+realization of her dreams--to see the reader pass over the rest of the
+page as trivial, to be arrested with spellbound interest at the word
+"Spring," to know that the words that held that absorbed attention were
+her words--her own.
+
+As Miss Delia read, gradually her expression changed; from eagerness it
+faded into perplexity. Lucyet watched her breathlessly, her hands
+clasped, her thin arms and somewhat angular elbows resting on the coarse
+tablecloth. From perplexity Miss Delia's look was chilled into what the
+observant girl recognized, with a dull pain at her heart, as
+disappointment. Lucyet averted her gaze to a dish of ill-shaped boiled
+potatoes; there was no need of watching longer the face opposite. Miss
+Delia read it all through again, dwelling on certain lines, which she
+indicated by her forefinger, with special attention; then she looked up
+timidly. She met Lucyet's unsmiling eyes for a moment; then she, too,
+looked away, hurriedly, helplessly, to the dish of boiled potatoes.
+
+"I'm sure it is very nice--very nice indeed, Lucyet," she said.
+
+"But you don't like it," said Lucyet.
+
+"Oh, yes, I do," poor Miss Delia hastened to say. "I do like it; the
+rhymes are in the right places, and all, and it looks so nice in the
+column." Mechanically she pulled her plate back again, and Lucyet did
+the same. "I'm proud of you, Lucyet," she went on with a forced little
+smile, "that you can write real poetry like that."
+
+"But what if it isn't real poetry?" said Lucyet.
+
+The doubt was wrung from her by the overwhelming bitterness of her
+disappointment. A rush of tears was smarting behind her rather
+inexpressive eyes; but she held them back. Miss Delia was thoroughly
+distressed. She put aside her own serious misgivings.
+
+"But it must be," she argued eagerly, "or they wouldn't have printed
+it."
+
+Lucyet shook her head as she forced herself to eat a morsel of bread.
+How unconvincing sounded the argument from another's lips! and yet she
+knew now that secretly it had carried with it more weight than she had
+realized. Miss Delia glanced apprehensively at the folded paper as it
+lay on the table. She herself was disappointed, deeply disappointed; she
+had expected much, and this,--why, this was, most of it, just what any
+one could find out for herself. But she must say something more.
+Lucyet's patient silence as she went on with her dinner, never raising
+the eyes which had so shone when she first spoke, demanded speech from
+her more urgently than louder claims.
+
+"I suppose I thought perhaps there would be more about--about
+misfortune, and scattered leaves, and dells,"--poor Miss Delia smiled
+deprecatingly, while she felt wildly about for more tangible
+reminiscences of her favorite poets, that she might respond to the
+unuttered questioning of Lucyet,--"and"--she dropped her eyes--"lovers."
+
+"I don't know anything about dells and lovers," said Lucyet, simply;
+"how should I?"
+
+Miss Delia started a little. It had never occurred to her that one must
+know about things personally in order to write poetry about them. If it
+had, she would never have dreamed of mentioning lovers.
+
+"No, of course not," she said hastily; "but writing about a thing isn't
+like knowing about it."
+
+Lucyet was not experienced enough to detect any fallacy in this, and she
+dumbly acquiesced.
+
+"You have in all the grass and trees and--and such things as you have
+in--very nicely, I'm sure," went on Miss Delia; "only next time"--and
+she smiled brightly--"next time you must put in what we don't see every
+day--like islands and reefs and such things. I know you could write a
+beautiful poem about a reef--a coral reef."
+
+Lucyet tried to smile hopefully in return, but the attempt was a
+failure. She had finished her dinner, and she longed to get away; she
+was so hurt that she must be alone to see how it was to be borne. She
+helped Miss Delia clear the table and wash the dishes, almost in
+silence. Two or three times they exchanged words on indifferent
+subjects; Miss Delia asked who had had letters, and Lucyet told her, but
+it was hard work for both. When it was over, Lucyet paused in the
+doorway, putting on her straw hat to go back to the post-office.
+
+Miss Delia stood a moment irresolute, and then stepped to her side.
+"Lucyet," she said, her voice trembling, "I don't understand it exactly.
+It isn't like the poetry I've been used to. There are things in it that
+I don't know what they mean. To be sure, that's so with all poetry that
+we do like,"--the tears were in her eyes; it is not an easy thing to
+disappoint one's best friend and to be conscious of it,--"but it isn't
+like what I thought it was going to be, just about what we see out of
+the window. But it's my fault, just as likely as not,"--she laid her
+hand on Lucyet's arm,--"that's what I want to say; you mustn't take it
+to heart--just 's likely 's not, it's my fault."
+
+Miss Delia did not believe a word of what she was saying, which made it
+difficult for her to articulate; but she was making a brave effort in
+her sensitive loyalty.
+
+"I know," said Lucyet, gently; "but I guess it isn't your fault;" and
+she slipped out to the road on her way to the post-office. Miss Delia
+went back, picked up the paper, and, seating herself at the window, she
+read "Spring" all through again, word by word; then she laid it aside
+again, shaking her head sadly.
+
+Lucyet went quietly behind her little window. Her disappointment
+amounted to actual physical pain. She found no comfort, as a wiser
+person might have done, in certain of Miss Delia's expressions; she only
+realized that her best friend and her most generous critic could find
+nothing good in what she had done. Her duty this afternoon was only to
+make up the mail for the down train; then her time was her own till the
+next mail train came up at half-past five. At two o'clock she closed the
+office again and started on a long walk. She longed for the comfort of
+the solitary hillsides, where warm patches of sunlight lay at the foot
+of ragged stone walls, and there were long stretches of plain and meadow
+to be looked over, and rolling hills to comfort the soul. As she climbed
+a hill just before the place where a weedy untravelled road turned off
+from the highway leading between closely growing underbrush and stone
+walls, where now and then a shy bird rustled suddenly and invisibly
+among last year's dried leaves, she saw three countrymen standing by the
+wayside and talking with as near an approach to earnestness as ever
+visits the colloquies of the ordinary unemotional New Englander. One of
+them held a copy of the "Daily Chronicle," gesturing with it somewhat
+jerkily as he spoke.
+
+For a moment the hope that it is hard to make away with revived in
+Lucyet's breast. Were they talking of the poem, she wondered, with a
+certain weary interest. She dreaded a fresh disappointment so keenly
+that it pained her to speculate much on the chance of it. It was not
+impossible that they were saying such meaningless stuff ought never to
+have been printed. As the pale girl drew near with the plodding, patient
+step which so often proclaims that walking is not a pleasure, but a
+necessity, of country life, the men did not lower their voices, which
+she heard distinctly as she passed.
+
+"Wal, I tell you, 't was that," said one of them. "He didn't live more'n
+a little time after he took it."
+
+"Mebbe he wouldn't have lived anyhow."
+
+"Wal, mebbe he wouldn't. 'T ain't for me to say," responded the first
+speaker, evincing a certain piety, which, however, was not to be
+construed as at variance with his first statement.
+
+"Wal, 't wa'n't this he took, was it?" demanded the man with the
+"Chronicle," waving it wildly.
+
+"Wal, no, 't wa'n't," responded the other, reasonably. The third member
+of the party maintained an air of not being in a position to judge, and
+regarded Lucyet stolidly as she approached.
+
+"Do, Lucyet?" he observed, unnoticed of the other two.
+
+"I tell you this'll cure him. It'll cure anybody. Just read them
+testimonies,"--and he pressed the paper into the other's meagre hand.
+"Read that one, 'Rheumatiz of thirty years' standin',--it'll interest
+ye."
+
+Lucyet went on up the hill, and turned into the weedy road. She had not
+a keen sense of the ridiculous. It did not strike her as funny that they
+should have been discussing a patent medicine instead of the verses on
+"Spring;" but her shrinking sense of defeat was deepened, and she felt,
+with an unconscious resentment, that most people cared very little about
+poetry. She wondered, without bitterness, and with a saddened distrust
+of her own power, if she could write an advertisement. Once within the
+precincts of the tangled road, her disquieted soul rejoiced in the
+freedom from observation. She felt as bruised and sore from the
+unsympathetic contact of her world as if it had been a larger one; and
+with the depression had come a startled sense of the irrevocableness of
+what she had done. Those printed words seemed so swift, so tangible.
+They would go so far, and afford such opportunity for the grasp of
+indifference, of ridicule! If she could only have them again, spoken,
+perhaps, but unheard!
+
+Yet here, at least, where the enterprising grass grew in the rugged cart
+track, and the branches drooped impertinently before the face of the
+wayfarer, no one but herself need know that she was very near to tears.
+And as she came out of the shut-in portion of the road to a stretch of
+open country, where the warm light lay on the hillsides, and the air was
+sweetened by the breath of pines, her depression gave way to a keen
+sense of elation. She turned aside and, crossing a bit of elastic, dry
+grass, climbed to the top of the stone wall and looked about her. Her
+heart throbbed with confidence, doubly grateful for the previous
+distrust. Her own lines came back to her; it was this that somehow,
+imperfectly, but somehow, she had put into words. It was still spring, a
+late New England spring, though the unseasonable warmth of the day made
+it seem summer. The landscape bore the coloring of autumn rather than
+that of the earlier year. The trees were red and brown and yellow in
+their incipient leafage. Now and then, among the sere fields, there was
+a streak of vivid green, or a mound of rich brown, freshly turned earth;
+but for the most part they were bare. Here and there was the crimson of
+a new maple; in the distance were the reds and brown of new, not old,
+life. Only the birds sang as they never sing in autumn, a burst of
+clear, joyous anticipation--the trill of the meadowlark, the "sweet,
+sweet, piercing sweet" of the flashing oriole, the call of the catbird,
+and the melody of the white-bosomed thrush. And here and there a
+fountain of white bloom showed itself amid the sombreness of the fields,
+a pear or cherry tree decked from head to foot in bridal white, like a
+bit of fleecy cloud dropped from the floating masses above to the
+discouraged earth; along the wayside the white stars of the anemone, the
+wasteful profusion of the eyebright, and the sweet blue of the violet;
+and in solemn little clusters, the curled up fronds of the ferns,
+uttering a protest against longer imprisonment--let wind and sun look
+out! they would uncurl to-morrow! All these things set the barely
+blossomed branches, the barely clothed hillsides, at defiance. It was
+the beginning, not the end, the promise, not the regret--it was life,
+not death. Summer was afoot, not winter.
+
+It was worth a longer walk, that half hour on the hillside; for it
+restored, in a measure, her sense of enjoyment, and substituted for the
+burden of defeat the exultation of expression, however faulty and
+however limited. But like other moods, this one was temporary; and as
+she retraced her steps and turned into the village street, she felt
+again the lassitude which follows the extinction of hope and the
+inexorable narrowing of the horizon which she had fancied extended.
+
+It was usual for her at this hour to stop at the tavern for the mail
+which might be ready there, and herself take it to the post-office. In
+midsummer this mail was quite an important item, but at this time of
+year it amounted to little; nevertheless, she followed what had become
+the custom. She found one of the daughters of the house in the throes
+of composition.
+
+"Oh, Lucyet," she exclaimed, "you don't say that's you! I want this to
+go to-night the worst way. Ain't you early?"
+
+"Yes, I guess I am," said Lucyet, rather wearily.
+
+"If you'll set on the piazzer and wait, I'll finish up in just a minute.
+You see we had to get dinner for two gentlemen as came down to go
+fishin' to-morrer, and it sorter put me back. I wish you'd wait."
+
+"Well, I guess I can wait a few minutes," said Lucyet, the line between
+her personal and her official capacity being sometimes a difficult one
+to maintain rigidly. She seated herself on the piazza, not observing
+that she was just outside of the window of the room within which the two
+fishermen were smoking and talking in a desultory fashion. Later their
+voices fell idly on her ear, speaking a language she only half
+understood, blending with the few lazy sounds of the afternoon. The
+conversation was really extremely desultory, being chiefly maintained by
+the younger man of the two, who lounged on the sofa of unoriental luxury
+with a thorough-going perversion of the maker's plan,--his head being
+where his feet ought to have been and his feet hanging over the portion
+originally intended for the back of his head. The other man wore the
+frown of absorption as, a pencil in his hand, he worried through some
+pages of manuscript.
+
+"Oh, I say," observed the idler, "ain't you 'most through slaughtering
+the innocents? I want to take that walk."
+
+"I told you half an hour ago that if I could have a few uninterrupted
+minutes I'd be with you," answered the other man, without looking up.
+"They haven't fallen in my way yet."
+
+"It's pity that moves me to speech," rejoined the first speaker, rising
+and sauntering to the window,--not that one outside of which Lucyet was
+sitting,--"pity for those young souls throbbing with the consciousness
+of power who may have forgotten to enclose a stamp for return. I feel
+when I interrupt you as if I were holding back the remorseless wheel of
+fate."
+
+His companion allowed this speculative remark to pass without reply. The
+idler sauntered back to the table.
+
+"What'll you bet, now, before you go any further, that it'll go into the
+waste-basket?"
+
+"Stamped and addressed envelope enclosed," observed the patient editor,
+absently.
+
+"Well, what odds will you give me of its being not necessarily devoid of
+literary merit, but unfitted for the special uses of your magazine?"
+
+The other was still silent as he laid aside another page.
+
+"Half the time," continued the idler, "to look at you, you wouldn't
+believe that you speak the truth when you express your thanks for the
+pleasure of reading their manuscripts. It would seem that that, too,
+was simulated."
+
+The older man picked up a soft felt hat and threw it across the room at
+his companion, without taking his eyes from the page.
+
+"Oh, well," went on the other, "I can read the newspaper. I can read
+what is printed, while you're reading what ought to be. Of course you
+and I know the things are never the same."
+
+Picking up the paper, he resumed, approximately, his former attitude,
+and applied himself to its columns for a few moments of silence. Outside
+Lucyet sat quietly, her head resting against the white wooden wall of
+the house; and the editor made a mark or two.
+
+"Now this is what the public want to know," resumed the idler, with a
+gratuitous air of having been pressed for his opinion. "You editors have
+a ridiculous way of talking about the public--"
+
+"It strikes me that it is not I who have been making myself ridiculous
+talking about anything."
+
+"The public! You just tell the great innocent public that you are giving
+them the sort of thing they like, and half the time they believe you,
+and half the time they don't. Now this man"--and he tapped the
+"Chronicle"--"knows an editor's business."
+
+"Which is more than you do," interpolated the goaded man.
+
+"'The frame for William Brown's new house is up. William may be trusted
+to finish as well as he has begun,'" read the idler, imperturbably.
+"'Miss Sophie Brown is visiting friends in Albany. The boys will be glad
+to see her back.' 'Fruit of all kinds will be scarce, though berries
+will be abundant.'"
+
+The older man stood up, his pencil in his mouth. "Confound you,
+Richards! Either you keep still or I go to my room and lock the door."
+
+"Oh, I'll keep still," said Richards, as if it was the first time it
+had been suggested. Again there was a silence.
+
+The letter must be to Ada's young man, who was doing a good business in
+cash registers, it took so long to write it. It was within five minutes
+of the time Lucyet should be at the office. She moved to leave the
+piazza, when a not loud exclamation from Richards fell on her ear with
+unusual distinctness.
+
+"By Jove! I say, just listen to this."
+
+The editor looked up threateningly, and went back to his work again
+without a word.
+
+"No, but really--it's quite in your line. Listen."
+
+Lucyet had moved forward a step or two, when she stood motionless. The
+words that floated through the window were her own. Richards had an
+unusually sweet voice, and he was reading in a way entirely different
+from that in which he had rattled off the "personals." There seemed a
+new sweetness in every syllable; the warmth of the hillside, the
+perfume of opening apple blossoms, breathed between the lines. He read
+slowly, and the words fell on the still air that seemed waiting
+breathless to hear them. When he finished, Lucyet was leaning against
+the side of the house, her hand on her heart, her eyes shining,--and the
+editor was looking at the reader.
+
+"There," he concluded, "ain't there something of the 'blackbird's tune
+and the beanflower's boon' in that?"
+
+"Copied, of course?" inquired the editor, briefly.
+
+"No. 'Written for the Daily Chronicle,' and signed 'L.' Not bad, are
+they? Of course I don't know," Richards scoffed, "and the public
+wouldn't know if it read them, but you know--"
+
+"Read 'em again."
+
+A second time, with increased expression, half mischievous now in its
+fervor, the lines on Spring fell in musical tones from Richards's lips.
+Still Lucyet stood breathless, her whole being thrilled with an impulse
+of exultant, inexpressible delight, listening as she had never listened
+before. It was as if she stood in the midst of a shining mist.
+
+"She's got it in her, hasn't she?" Richards added, after a pause.
+
+"Yes," said his companion, slowly. "She's got it in her fast enough;"
+and he returned to his page of manuscript. "Much good may it do her!" he
+added, with weary cynicism.
+
+Richards laughed, and pulled a pack of cards out of his pocket. "I'll
+play solitaire," he said.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" murmured the other, devoutly.
+
+Ada arrived breathless. "Here 'tis," said she. "Did you think I was
+never comin'? You've got time enough; they ain't very prompt. There
+ain't anythin' the matter, is there?" she asked.
+
+Lucyet took the letter mechanically. "No," she said, "there isn't
+anything the matter."
+
+As she went swiftly toward the little post-office the rhythm of those
+lines was in her ears; the assured, incisive tones of that man's voice
+pulsed through her very soul. She was conscious of no hope for the
+future; she had no regret for the past; the present was a glory. In that
+moment Lucyet had taken a long, dizzying draught from the cup of
+success.
+
+
+
+
+Hearts Unfortified
+
+
+THE observation train wound its way in clumsy writhings along the bank
+of the river, upon which the afternoon light fell in modified brilliancy
+as the west kindled towards the sunset. But if the sheen and sparkle of
+the earlier day had passed into something more subdued and less
+exhilarating, the difference was made up in the shifting action and
+color that moved and glowed and flashed on, above and beside the soft
+clearness of the stream. The sunlight caught the turn of the wet oars
+and outlined the brown muscular backs of the young athletes who were
+pulling the narrow shells. The Yale blue spread itself in blocks and
+patches along the train, and the Harvard crimson burned in vivid
+stretches by its side, and all the blue and crimson seemed instinct
+with animation as they floated, quivered, and waved in the thrilled
+interest of hundreds of men and women who followed with eager eyes the
+knife-blades of boats cleaving the water in a quick, silent ripple of
+foam. The crowd of launches, tugs, yachts, and steamers pushed up the
+river, keeping their distance with difficulty, and from them as well as
+from the banks sounded the fluctuating yet unbroken cheers of
+encouragement and exhortation, rising and falling in rhythmic measure,
+guided by public-spirited enthusiasts, or breaking out in purely
+individual tribute to the grand chorus of partisanship. It had been a
+close start, and the furor of excitement had spent itself, somewhat,
+during the first seconds, and now made itself felt more like the quick
+heart-beats of restrained emotion as the issue seemed to grow less
+doubtful, though reaching now and then climaxes of renewed expression.
+
+"Alas for advancing age!" sighed a woman into the ear of her neighbor,
+as their eyes followed the crews, but without that fevered intensity
+which marked some other glances.
+
+"By all means," he answered. "But why, particularly, just now? I was
+beginning to fancy myself young under the stress of present
+circumstances."
+
+"Because even if one continues to keep one's emotions
+creditably--effervescent--one loses early the single-minded glow of
+contest."
+
+"A single-minded glow is a thing that should be retained, even at
+considerable cost."
+
+"And what is worse yet, one grows critical about language," she
+continued calmly, "and gives free rein to a naturally unpleasant
+disposition under cover of a refined and sensitive taste."
+
+Ellis Arnold smiled tolerantly.
+
+"They are pretty sure to keep their lead now," he said. "The other boat
+is more than a length behind, and losing. They are not pulling badly,
+either," he added. "You were saying?"--and he turned towards her for the
+first time since the start.
+
+She was a handsome blonde-haired woman, perfectly dressed, with the seal
+of distinction set upon features, figure, and expression.
+
+"That was what I was saying," she replied, "that the ones that are
+behind are not pulling badly."
+
+"More sphinx-like than ever," he murmured. "I perceive that you speak in
+parables."
+
+Miss Normaine laughed a little. The conversation was decidedly
+intermittent. They dropped it entirely at times, and then took it up as
+if there had been no pause. It was after a brief silence that she went
+on: "But you and I can see both boats--the success, and the
+disappointment too. And we can't, for the life of us, help feeling that
+it's hard on those who have put forth all their strength for defeat."
+
+"But it isn't so bad as if it were our boat that was behind," he said
+sensibly.
+
+"Oh, no; of course not. But I maintain that it injures the _fine fleur_
+of enjoyment to remember that there are two participants in a contest."
+
+"I suppose it is useless to expect you to be logical--"
+
+"Quite. I know enough to be entirely sure I'd rather be picturesque."
+
+"But let me assure you, that in desiring that there should be but one
+participant in a contest, you are striking at the very root of all
+successful athletic exhibitions."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders a little.
+
+"Oh, well, if you like to air your powers of irony at the expense of
+such painful literalness!"
+
+"The exuberance of my style has been pruned down to literalness by the
+relentless shears of a cold world. With you, of course,"--but he was
+interrupted by the shouts of the crowd, as the winning boat neared the
+goal. The former enthusiasm had been the soft breathings of approval
+compared to this outbreak of the victorious. Flags, hats, handkerchiefs
+rose in the air, and the university cheer echoed, re-echoed, and began
+again.
+
+Arnold cheered also, with an energy not to be deduced from his hitherto
+calm exterior, standing up on the seat and shouting with undivided
+attention; and Miss Normaine waved her silk handkerchief and laughed in
+response to the bursts of youthful joy from the seat in front of her.
+
+"Oh, well," said Arnold, sitting down again, "sport is sport for both
+sides, whoever wins--or else it isn't sport at all."
+
+"Ah, how many crimes have been committed in thy name!" murmured Miss
+Normaine.
+
+"Katharine, I think you have turned sentimentalist."
+
+"No, it's age, I tell you. I'm thinking more now of the accessories
+than I am of the race. That's a sure sign of age, to have time to notice
+the accessories."
+
+Arnold nodded.
+
+"There's compensation in it, though. If we lose a little of the drama of
+conflict on these occasions, we gain something in recognizing the style
+of presentation."
+
+"Yes," and she glanced down at her niece, whose pretty eyes were making
+short work of the sunburned, broad-shouldered, smooth-faced, handsome
+boy, who was entirely willing to close the festivities of Commencement
+week subjected to the ravages of a grand, even if a hopeless, passion.
+
+From her she looked out upon the now darkening river. There had been
+some delay before the train could begin to move back, and the summer
+twilight had fallen; for the race had been at the last available moment.
+Though it was far from quiet, the relief from the tension of the
+previous moments added to the placidity of the scene. The opposite
+banks were dim and shadowy, and the water was growing vague; there were
+lights on some of the craft; a star came out, and then another; there
+were no hard suggestions, no sordid reminders. It was a beautiful world,
+filled with happy people, united in a common healthy interest; the
+outlines of separation were softened into ambiguity and the differences
+veiled by good breeding.
+
+"It is only a mimic struggle, after all," she said at last. "The stage
+is well set, and now that the curtain is down, there is no special
+bitterness at the way the play ended."
+
+"There you exaggerate, as usual," he replied, "and of course in another
+direction from that in which you exaggerated last time."
+
+"The pursuit of literature has made you not only precise but didactic,"
+she observed.
+
+"There is a good deal, if not of bitterness, of very real
+disappointment, and some depression."
+
+"Which will be all gone long before the curtain goes up for the next
+performance."
+
+"Ah, yes, to be sure; but nevertheless you underrate the disappointments
+of youth,--because they are not tragic you think they are not
+bitter,--you have always underrated them."
+
+She met his eyes calmly, though he had spoken with a certain emphasis.
+
+"We are talking in a circle," she replied. "That was what I said in the
+first place--that as we grow older we have more sympathy with defeat."
+
+"You are incorrigible," he said, smiling; "you will accept neither
+consolation nor reproof."
+
+"Life brings enough of both," she answered; "it does not need to be
+supplemented by one's friends."
+
+The train was moving very slowly; people were laughing and talking gayly
+all about them; more lights had come out on the water, and a gentle
+breeze had suddenly sprung up.
+
+"Just what do you mean by that, I wonder?" he said slowly.
+
+"Not much," she answered lightly. "But I do mean," she added, as he
+looked away from her, "that, whether it be the consequence of the
+altruism of the day, or of advancing age, as I said at first, it has
+grown to be provokingly difficult to ignore those who lose more serious
+things than a college championship. Verestchagin and such people have
+spoiled history for us. Who cares who won a great battle now?--it is
+such a small thing to our consciousness compared to the number of people
+who were killed--and on one side as well as the other."
+
+"Except, of course, where there is a great principle, not great
+possessions, at stake?"
+
+"Yes," she assented, but somewhat doubtfully, "yes, of course."
+
+"But it shows a terrible dearth of interest when we get down to
+principles."
+
+"Yes," she said again, laughing. Meanwhile Miss Normaine's niece was
+pursuing her own ends with that directness which, though lacking the
+evasive subtlety of maturer years, is at once effective and commendable.
+
+"It was nothing but a box of chocolate peppermints," she insisted. "I'd
+never be so reckless as to wager anything more without thinking it over.
+I have an allowance, and I'm obliged to be careful what I spend."
+
+He looked her over with approval.
+
+"You spend it well," he asserted.
+
+"I have to," she returned, "or else boys like you would never look at me
+twice."
+
+"I don't know about that." He spoke as one who, though convinced, is not
+a bigot.
+
+"It's fortunate that I do," she replied decidedly. "I'm mortifyingly
+dependent on my clothes. There's my Aunt Katharine now,--she has an air
+in anything."
+
+"I like you better than your aunt," he confessed.
+
+"Of course you do. I've taken pains to have you. But it was just as much
+as ever that you looked at me twice last night."
+
+"I was afraid of making you too conspicuous."
+
+"A lot you were!" she retorted rudely. "Who was that girl you danced
+with?"
+
+He smiled wearily.
+
+"Tommy Renwick's cousin from the West."
+
+"She is pretty."
+
+"Very good goods."
+
+"Is she as nice as Tommy?"
+
+"No. There are not many girls as nearly right as Tommy."
+
+"Except me."
+
+"Well, perhaps, except you."
+
+"But then, I'm not many."
+
+"No, separate wrapper, only one in a box," he admitted handsomely.
+
+Miss Normaine's niece had dark eyes, brown hair that curled in small
+inadvertent rings, and a rich warm complexion through which the crimson
+glowed in her round cheeks. She was so pretty that she ought to have
+been suppressed, and had a way of speaking that made her charming all
+over again.
+
+"It was not chocolate peppermints, and you know quite well it wasn't,"
+he said, with the finished boldness compatible with hair parted exactly
+in the middle and a wide experience. Miss Normaine's niece opened her
+eyes wide.
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Nothing but your heart."
+
+She considered the matter seriously.
+
+"Was it really?"
+
+"It was really."
+
+"And I've lost," she pondered aloud.
+
+"And you've lost."
+
+She raised her eyes with a glance in which he could read perfect faith,
+glad acknowledgment, and entire surrender.
+
+"Do you want me to keep telling you?" she demanded with adorable
+petulance.
+
+"There is Henry Donald!" exclaimed Miss Normaine. "I didn't see him
+before. He has grown stout, hasn't he?"
+
+"Yes, and bald."
+
+"Isn't he young to be bald and stout too? Do tell me that he is," urged
+Miss Normaine with pathos. "He seems just out of college to me, and I
+don't like to think that I've lost all sense of proportion."
+
+"Oh, no, you haven't," said Arnold, consolingly. "It's only he that has
+lost his. He doesn't take exercise enough. He's coming this way to speak
+to you. You had better think of something more flattering to say."
+
+"I never thought Harry Donald would get stout and bald," went on Miss
+Normaine, to herself. "There was a period when I let my fancy play
+about him, most of the time too, but I never thought of that."
+
+"Who's that man squeezing through the crowd to speak to Aunt Katharine?"
+asked Alice.
+
+"That? Oh, that's one of the old boys."
+
+"I can see that for myself."
+
+"He's a Judge Donald of Wisconsin. He's pretty well on, but he's a
+Jim-dandy after-dinner speaker. Made a smooth speech at his class
+reunion."
+
+"They still like to come to the race and things, don't they?"
+
+"Oh, yes, and they're right into it all while they're here too."
+
+Unhappily unconscious of the kindly feeling being extended to him from
+the bench in front, Judge Donald seated himself by Katharine, just as
+they drew slowly into the station.
+
+"You haven't been on for some years, have you?" she asked him.
+
+"No," he answered, "I've been busy."
+
+"Oh, we know you've been busy," she interpolated, smiling.
+
+"You're the same Katharine Normaine," he rejoined. "I thought you were,
+by the looks, and now I'm sure. You don't really know that I've ever had
+a case, but you make me feel that my name echoes through two worlds at
+the very least."
+
+"And you are still Harry Donald, suspicious of the gifts that are tossed
+into your lap," and they both laughed.
+
+"This is the man of the class," went on Judge Donald, turning to Ellis,
+who had taken a seat above them. "Your books have gotten out to
+Wisconsin, and that's fame enough for any man."
+
+"Have they really?" said Arnold. "I supposed they only wrote notices of
+them in the papers."
+
+"Oh, yes," murmured Miss Normaine. "Ellis has turned out clever,--one
+never knows."
+
+"I guess they're good, too," went on Donald; "I tell 'em I used to think
+you wrote well in college."
+
+"I thought I did, too," answered Arnold. "I don't believe we're either
+of us quite so sure I write well now."
+
+They had delayed their steps to keep out of the crowd, for the people
+were leaving the train, some hurrying to catch other trains, some
+stopping to greet friends and acquaintances; there was a general rushing
+to and fro, the clamor of well-bred voices, the calling out of names in
+surprised accost, the frou-frou of gowns and the fragrance of flowers,
+in the bare and untidy station.
+
+At last the party of which Miss Normaine was one left the car, and with
+the two men she made her way down the platform, through the midst of the
+hubbub, which waxed more insistent every moment.
+
+"It is with a somewhat fevered anxiety that I am keeping my eye on
+Alice," she said.
+
+"She is with a young man," said Judge Donald.
+
+"That statement has not the merit of affording information. She has been
+with a young man ever since we left home."
+
+"It isn't the same one, either," supplemented Arnold.
+
+"It never is the same one," said Miss Normaine, somewhat impatiently. "I
+am under no obligation to look after or even differentiate the young
+men. I simply have to see that the child doesn't get lost with any one
+of them."
+
+"She won't get lost with one," said Arnold, reassuringly, as they were
+separated by a cross-current of determined humanity. "She has three now,
+and they are all shaking hands at a terrible rate."
+
+Judge Donald departed on a tour of investigation, and returned to say
+that there was no chance just at present of their getting away. It was a
+scene of confusion which only patience and time could elucidate. The
+omniscience of officials had given place to a less satisfactory if more
+human ignorance; last come was first served, and a seat in a train
+seemed by no means to insure transportation. It was as well to wait for
+a while outside as in; so with many others they strolled up and down,
+until their car should be more easily accessible.
+
+"Alice is an example of the profound truths we have been enunciating,
+Ellis," said Miss Normaine. "She has an ardent admirer on the defeated
+crew. At one time I did not know but his devotion might shake her
+lifelong allegiance to the other university; but now that victory has
+fairly perched, you observe she has small thought for the bearers of
+captured banners. We were saying, Mr. Arnold and I," she explained to
+Donald, "that it is at our time of life that people begin to remember
+that when somebody beats, there is somebody else beaten."
+
+Donald grew grave,--as grave as a man can be with the feathers of an
+unconscious girl tickling one ear and a fleeting chorus of the latest
+"catchy" song penetrating the other.
+
+"Arnold and I can appreciate it better than you, I guess," he said,
+"because there have been times when we thought it highly probable we
+might get beaten ourselves."
+
+"Highly," assented Arnold.
+
+"But you, Miss Normaine, you've never had any difficulty in getting in
+on the first floor," went on the other. "You've quaffed the foam of the
+beaker and eaten the peach from the sunniest side of the wall right
+along--I'm quite sure of it just to look at you."
+
+"The Scripture moveth us in sundry places," said Katharine, with a
+lightness that did not entirely veil something serious, "not to put too
+much faith in appearances. Even I am not above learning a lesson now and
+then."
+
+He looked at her curiously.
+
+"I'd like to know by what right you haven't changed more," he said.
+
+"Did you expect to find me in ruins, after--let me see, how many years?"
+she laughed. "The hand of Time is heavy, but not necessarily
+obliterating. _What_ has become of Alice?"
+
+"She can't have gone far," said Arnold. "She was with us a moment ago."
+
+"There she is with some of the rest of your party--I caught a glimpse of
+her just now," added Donald. "She's quite safe."
+
+Alice stood talking with a girl of her own age and two or three
+undergraduates, on the outskirts of the crowd. One of the youths wore in
+his buttonhole the losing color, but he bore himself with a proud
+dignity that forbade casual condolences. Alice's eyes were bright, and
+her pretty laugh rippled forth with readily communicated mirth, while
+the very roses of her hat nodded with the spirit of unthinking gayety.
+
+"There's the car that belongs to our fellows," said, half to himself,
+the person of sympathies alien to those of his present companions. "They
+must be about--yes, they're getting on," he added, as a car which had
+been propelled from a neighboring switch stopped at the farther end of
+the station. Alice's head turned with a swiftness of motion that set the
+roses vibrating as if a sudden breeze had ruffled their petals.
+
+"The crew?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," assented the young man.
+
+She turned more definitely towards him, away from the rest of the group,
+whose attention was called in another direction.
+
+"Will you do something for me, Mr. Francis?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+Alice had not anticipated refusal, and her directions were prompt and
+lucid.
+
+"Please go into that car and ask Mr. Herbert to come out to the
+platform, at the other end, to speak to me. There isn't much time to
+lose, so please be quick."
+
+As he lifted his hat and moved away, she joined in the conversation of
+the others, which seemed to be largely metaphorical.
+
+"So he got it that time," one of the young men was explaining, "where
+Katy wore the beads."
+
+"Well, it served him quite right," said Alice, with the generosity of
+ignorance. Her whole attention was apparently given to the matter in
+hand, but she was standing so that she could see the somewhat vague
+vestibule of the brilliant but curtained car.
+
+"Oh, yes, but it wasn't on the tintype that the other fellow should have
+been there at all."
+
+"No, to be sure, but that made it all the better," said Alice's friend,
+with sympathetic vision.
+
+"Why, there's Eugene Herbert!" exclaimed Alice. "I really must go and
+tell him that he pulled beautifully, if he didn't win, and comforting
+things like that! Don't go off without me."
+
+Before comment could be framed upon their lips, she had left her
+companions and was slipping quickly down the platform.
+
+"She knows him very well," said the other girl; "she'll be back in a
+minute."
+
+"She must have sharp eyes," said another of the group, as he looked
+after her. But too many people were about for fixed attention to be
+bestowed upon a single figure. There was but one light under the roof of
+that part of the station where a young man was standing, looking rather
+sulkily up and down. Alice was a little breathless with her rapid walk
+when she reached him.
+
+"I thought Francis was giving me a song and dance," he said, as he
+grasped the hand she held out.
+
+"No, I sent him," she explained hurriedly. "And I wanted to say--" She
+paused an instant as she looked up at him.
+
+He was serious, and wore a look of fatigue, in spite of the superb
+physical health of his whole appearance. The light fell across her face
+under the dark brim of her hat, and touched its beauty into something
+vividly apart from the shadows and sordidness of the place, yet paler
+than its sunlit brilliancy.
+
+"I wanted to say," she went on bravely, "that I've changed my mind. At
+least, I didn't really have any mind at all. And if you still want me
+to--" she paused again, but something in his eyes reassured her--"I
+will--I'd really _like_ to, you know, and _please_ be quiet, there isn't
+but a minute to say it in--and I'd never have told you--at least not for
+years and _years_--if you had won the race. Now let go of my hand--there
+are _hundreds_ of people all about--and you can come and see me
+to-morrow."
+
+It was all over in a moment. She had snatched her hand away, and was
+speeding back with a clear-eyed look of conscious rectitude, and he had
+responded to the exhortations of divers occupants of the car, backed by
+a disinterested brakeman, and stepped aboard.
+
+"Oh, well, there's another race next year," he said to somebody who
+spoke to him as he sat down in the end seat. It was early for such
+optimism, and they thought Herbert had a disgustingly cheerful
+temperament.
+
+Alice returned just as Miss Normaine and Arnold came up, and they all
+went back together, collecting the rest of the party as they went to
+their train. It was a vivacious progress along the homeward route. Paeans
+of victory and the flash of Roman candles filled the air. At one time,
+when some particular demonstration was absorbing the attention of the
+men, Miss Normaine found her niece at her side.
+
+"Aunt Katharine, you know I've always adored you," she said, with a
+repose of manner that disguised a trifle of apprehension.
+
+"Yes, I know, Alice, but I really can't promise to take you anywhere
+to-morrow. I--"
+
+"I don't want you to--I only want to confide in you."
+
+"Oh, dear, what have you been doing now?"
+
+"I think," replied Alice, while the chorus of sound about them swelled
+almost to sublimity, "that I've been getting engaged--to Eugene Herbert,
+you know."
+
+"Only to Eugene Herbert," breathed Miss Normaine. "I'm glad it occurred
+to you to mention it. But why didn't you say so before?"
+
+"It didn't--it wasn't--before," said Alice, faltering an instant under
+the calmly judicial eye of her aunt. "You see," she went on quickly, "it
+was because they lost the race. It wouldn't have been at all--not anyway
+for a long time,"--and again her mental glance swept the vista of the
+years she had mentioned to Herbert himself,--"if it hadn't been for
+that; but I couldn't let him go back without either the race or--or
+me," she concluded ingenuously.
+
+Arnold had been talking with a man of his own age, and hearing things
+that were very pleasant to hear about his latest work, and yet, as he
+leaned back in his chair and looked across at Katharine Normaine, whose
+own expression was a little pensive, he sighed. It was a great deal--he
+told himself it was nearly everything--to have what he had now in the
+line of effort which he loved and had chosen. It was not so good as the
+work itself, of course, but the recognition was grateful. And as his
+eyes dwelt again upon the distinction of Miss Normaine's profile, with
+the knot of blonde hair at the back of her well-held head, he sighed
+again, as he rose and went over to her. She looked up at him, and her
+eyes were not quite so calm as usual.
+
+"I am sitting," she said, "among the ruins."
+
+"Indeed?" he said. "Is there room upon a fallen column or a broken
+plinth for me?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered, "but it is not for a successful man like you,
+whose name is upon the public lips, to gaze with me upon demolished
+theories."
+
+"I have taken my time in gazing upon them before now," he observed.
+
+"Everybody is talking about your book," she said.
+
+"Oh, no, only a very few people. But about your theories--which of them
+has proved itself unable to bear the weight of experience?"
+
+"You may remember I dwelt somewhat at length upon the indifference of
+happy youth to the stings of outrageous fortune when supported by some
+one else?"
+
+"I remember. I regard it as the lesson for the day."
+
+"It's early to mention it, but I am obliged to give you the evidence of
+my error--honor demands it--and Alice will not mind, even if she sees
+fit to contradict it to-morrow;" and she told him what had just been
+told her.
+
+He smiled as she concluded her statement, and she, meeting his glance in
+all seriousness, broke down into a moment's laughter.
+
+"'She does not know anything but that her side is beating,'" he quoted
+meditatively.
+
+"I thought my generosity in confession might at least forestall
+sarcasm," she said severely.
+
+"It ought to do so," he admitted.
+
+There was a moment's pause.
+
+"Has youth itself changed with the times, I wonder?" he speculated.
+"Certainly you did not sympathize overmuch with defeat at Alice's age."
+
+She did not answer, and she was looking away from him through the glass,
+beyond which the darkness was pierced now and then by a shaft of
+illumination. The pensiveness that had rested on her face, when he had
+looked across the car at her, had deepened almost into sadness.
+
+"And now," he went on, "you have called me successful--which shuts me
+out from your more mature sympathy."
+
+Still she did not answer. He bent a little nearer to her.
+
+"Believe me, Katharine," he said, "my success is not so very
+intoxicating after all. I need sympathy of a certain kind as much as I
+did twenty years ago."
+
+She glanced at him.
+
+"Is that all you want?" she asked with a swift smile.
+
+"No," he returned boldly; and she looked away again, out into the
+darkness through which they were rushing.
+
+"I had hoped," he went on, "that my so-called success might be something
+to offer you after all this time--something you would care for--and now
+I find that your ideals are all reversed. I have not won much, but I
+have won a little, and you tell me to-day that it is only extreme youth
+that cares for the winners."
+
+"And that I have found out that I was mistaken." Her voice was low, but
+quite clear. "Have I not told you that, too?"
+
+"And about experience of life making us care the more for those who fail
+in everything?"--he waited a moment. "You have not mentioned that that
+was a mistake also. I wish you'd stop looking out of that confounded
+window," he added irritably, "and look at me. Heaven knows I've failed
+in some things!"
+
+She laughed a little at his tone, but she did not follow his suggestion.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "you have succeeded."
+
+"And that means--what?"
+
+"I told you I was sitting among the ruins of my theories," she said,
+while a faint color, which he saw with sudden pleasure, rose in her
+cheek.
+
+"That adverse theory--has that gone too?"
+
+"I have had enough of theories," she declared softly. "What I really
+care for is success."
+
+
+
+
+Her Neighbors' Landmark
+
+
+THE sun had not quite disappeared behind the horizon, though the days no
+longer extended themselves into the long, murmurous twilight of summer;
+instead, the evening fell with a certain definiteness, precursor of the
+still later year.
+
+On the step of the door that led directly into the living-room of his
+rambling house sat Reuben Granger, an old man, bent with laborious
+seasons, and not untouched by rheumatism. The wrinkles on his face were
+many and curiously intertwined; his weather-beaten straw hat seemed to
+supply any festal deficiency indicated by the shirt-sleeves; and his dim
+eyes blinked with shrewdness upon the dusty road, along which, at
+intervals, a belated wagon passed, clattering. His days of usefulness
+were not over, but he had reached the age when one is willing to spend
+more time looking on. He had always been tired at this hour of the day,
+but it was only of late that fatigue had had a certain numbing effect,
+which disinclined him to think of the tasks of tomorrow. He came to this
+period of repose rather earlier nowadays, and after less sturdy
+labor--somehow, a great deal of the sturdy labor got itself done without
+him; and there was an acquiescence in even this dispensation perceptible
+in the fall of his knotted hands and the tranquil gaze of his faded
+eyes.
+
+About a dozen yards beyond him, on the doorstep leading directly into
+the living-room of a house which joined the other, midway between two
+windows (the union marked by a third doorway unused and boarded up,
+around whose stone was the growth of decades), sat Stephen Granger. His
+weather-beaten straw hat shaded eyes dim also, but still keen; and a
+network of curious wrinkles wandered over his tanned and sun-dried
+skin. Upon his features, too, dwelt that look of patient tolerance that
+is not indifference, that only the "wise years" can bring; and on his
+face as well as his brother's certain lines about the puckered mouth
+went far to contradict it. If one saw only one of the old men, there was
+nothing grim in the spectacle--that of a weary farmer looking out upon
+the highroad from the shelter of his own doorway; but the sight of them
+both together took on suddenly a forbidding air, a suggestion of
+sullenness, of dogged resolution; they were so precisely alike, and they
+sat so near one another on thresholds of the same long, low building,
+and they seemed so unconscious the one of the other. It was impossible
+not to believe the unconsciousness wilful and deliberate. A heavily
+freighted and loose-jointed wagon rattled noisily but slowly along the
+road.
+
+"Howaryer?" called out one of its occupants.
+
+"'Are yer?" returned Stephen Granger.
+
+Reuben had opened his mouth to speak, but closed it in silence, while he
+gazed straight before him, unseeing, apparently, and unheeding. The
+leisurely driver checked his horse, which responded instantly to the
+welcome indication. Behind him in the wagon two calves looked somewhat
+perplexedly forth, their mild eyes, with but slightly accentuated
+curiosity, surveying the Grangers and the landscape from the durance of
+the cart.
+
+"Been tradin'?" asked Stephen.
+
+"Wal, yes, I have," answered the other, with that lingering intonation
+that seems to modify even the most unconditional assent.
+
+"Got a good bargain?"
+
+"Wal, so-so."
+
+"Many folks down to the store this evenin'?"
+
+"Wal, considerable."
+
+"Ain't any news?"
+
+"Not any as I know on."
+
+Stephen nodded his acceptance of this state of things. The other nodded,
+too. There was a pause.
+
+"G'long," said the trader, as if he would have said it before if he had
+thought of it. But the horse had taken but a few steps when another
+voice greeted him.
+
+"Howaryer, Monroe?" said Reuben Granger.
+
+"Whoa," said Monroe. "Howaryer?"
+
+"Been down to the Centre?" asked Reuben.
+
+"Yare."
+
+"Got some calves in there, I see."
+
+"Wal, yes; been doin' some tradin'."
+
+Reuben nodded. "Ain't any news, I take it?"
+
+"None in partickler." Another exchange of nods followed.
+
+"G'long," said Monroe, after a short silence, during which the calves
+looked more bored than usual. But the shaky wheels had made but a few
+revolutions before the owner of the wagon reined in again.
+
+"Say," he called back, twisting himself around and resting his hand on
+the bar that confined the calves. "They've took down the shed back of
+the meetin'-house. Said 'twas fallin' to pieces. Might 'a' come down on
+the heads of the hosses. Goin' to put up a new one." Then, as his steed
+recommenced its modest substitute for a trot, unseen of the Grangers he
+permitted himself an undemonstrative chuckle. "They can sorter divide
+that piece of news between 'em," he said to his companion, who had been
+the silent auditor of the conversation. A moment of indecision on the
+part of the Grangers had given him time to make this observation, but it
+was not concluded when Reuben's cracked voice sang out cheerfully, "Ye
+don't say!" A slight contraction passed over Stephen's face. Much as he
+would have liked to mark the bit of information for his own, now that it
+had been appropriated by another, he gave no further sign. The noise of
+the wagon died along the road, and still Reuben and Stephen Granger sat
+gazing straight before them at the hill which faced them from the other
+side of the way, at the foot of which the darkness was falling fast. By
+and by a lamp was lighted in one half of the house, and a moment later
+there was a flash through the window of the other, and slowly and
+stiffly the two old men rose and went inside, each closing his door
+behind him.
+
+"Them's the Granger twins," had said the owner of the calves in answer
+to his companion's question as soon as they were out of hearing. "Yes,
+they be sort of odd. Don't have nothin' to say to one another, and
+they've lived next door to each other ever since they haven't lived
+_with_ each other. It's goin' on thirty years since they've spoke. Yes,
+they do look alike--I don't see no partickler difference myself, and it
+would make it kinder awk'ard if they expected folks to know which one
+he's talkin' to. But they don't. They're kinder sensible about that.
+They're real sensible 'bout some things," he added tolerantly. "Oh, they
+was powerful fond of each other at first--twins, y' know. They was
+always together, and when each of 'em set up housekeepin', nothin' would
+do for it but they should jine their houses and live side by side--they
+knew enough not to live together, seein' as how, though they was twins,
+their wives wasn't. So they took and added on to the old homestead, and
+each of 'em took an end. Wal, I dunno how it began--no, it wasn't their
+wives--it don't seem hardly human natur', but it wasn't their wives."
+The speaker sighed a little. He was commonly supposed to have gained
+more experience than felicity through matrimony. "I've heard it said
+that it was hoss-reddish that begun it. You see, they used to eat
+together, and Stephen he used to like a little hoss-reddish along with
+his victuals in the spring, and Reuben, he said 't was a pizen weed.
+But there! you can never tell; they're both of 'em just as sot as--as
+erysipelas; and when that's so, somethin' or other is sure to come. I
+know for a fact that Reuben always wanted a taste of molasses in his
+beans, and Stephen couldn't abide anythin' but vinegar. So, bymeby, they
+took to havin' their meals separate. You know it ain't in human natur'
+to see other folks puttin' things in their mouths that don't taste good
+to yours, and keep still about it."
+
+His companion admitted the truth of this statement.
+
+"Sometimes I think," went on Monroe, musingly, "that if they'd begun by
+eatin' separate they might have got along, 'cause it's only His saints
+that the Lord has made pleasant-tempered enough to stand bein' pestered
+with three meals a day, unless they're busy enough not to have time to
+think about anythin' but swallerin'. Hayin'-time most men is kinder
+pleasant 'bout their food--so long 's it's ready. Wal, however it was,
+after they eat separate there was other things. There was the weather.
+They always read the weather signs different. And each of 'em had that
+way of speakin' 'bout the weather as if it was a little contrivance of
+his own, and he was the only person who could give a hint how 'twas run,
+or had any natural means of findin' out if 'twas hot, or cold, or
+middlin', 'less he took hold and told 'em. It's a powerful tryin' sort
+of way, and finally it come so that, if Reuben said we was in for a wet
+spell, Stephen'd start right off and begin to mow his medder grass, and
+if Stephen 'lowed there was a sharp thunder-shower comin' up, inside of
+ten minutes, Reuben'd go and git his waterin'-pot and water every blamed
+thing he had in his garden. I dunno when it was they stopped speakin',
+but that was about all there was to it--little things like that. They
+didn't either of 'em have any children; sometimes I've thought if they
+had, the kids might sort of brought 'em together--they couldn't have
+kep' 'em apart without they moved away, and of course they wouldn't
+either of 'em give in to the other enough to move away from the old
+farm. Then their wives died 'bout a year from each other. They kep' kind
+o' friendly to the last, but they couldn't stir their husbands no more'n
+if they was safes--it seems, sometimes, as if husbands and wives was
+sort o' too near one another, when it comes to movin', to git any kind
+of a purchase. When Reuben's wife died, folks said they'd have to git
+reconciled now; and when Stephen's died, there didn't seem anythin' else
+for 'em to do; but folks didn't know 'em. Stephen went up country where
+his wife come from and brought home a little gal, that was her niece, to
+keep house for him; and then what did Reuben do but go down to Zoar,
+where _his_ wife come from, and git her half-sister--both of 'em young,
+scart little things, and no kin to one another--and _they_ can't do
+nothin' even if they wanted to. Bad-tempered? Wal, no. I wouldn't say
+the Granger twins was bad-tempered;" and the biographer dexterously
+removed a fly from his horse's patient back. "They're sot, of course,
+but they ain't what they used to be--I guess it's been a sort of
+discipline to 'em--livin' next door and never takin' no kind of notice.
+They're pleasant folks to have dealin's with, and I've had both of 'em
+ask me if I cal'lated it was goin' to rain, when I've been goin'
+by--different times, o' course--but it 'most knocked the wind out of me
+when they done it, 'stead of givin' me p'inters. Yes, you never can
+speak to 'em both at once, 'cause the other one never hears if ye do;
+but there! it ain't much trouble to say a thing over twice--most of us
+say it more'n that 'fore we can git it 'tended to; and," he added, as he
+leaned forward and dropped the whip into its socket preparatory to
+turning into his own yard, "most of us hears it more'n once."
+
+"Monroe," called a voice from the porch, "did you bring them calves?"
+
+"Yare," said Monroe.
+
+"I told you if you stopped to bring 'em, you wouldn't be home till after
+dark."
+
+"Wal?"
+
+"I told you 't would be dark and you'd be late to supper."
+
+"Wal?" and Monroe took down the end of the wagon, and persuaded out the
+calves.
+
+The person who was Monroe's companion and the recipient of his
+confidences was a young woman who was an inmate of his house for the
+present month of September.
+
+Confident and somewhat audacious in her conduct of life, Cynthia Gardner
+had felt that this September existence lacked a motive for energy before
+it brought her into contact with the Granger twins.
+
+"They are so interesting," she said to Monroe, a day or two later.
+
+"Wal, I guess they be," answered Monroe, amiably. The quality of being
+interesting did not assume to his vision the proportions it presented to
+Cynthia Gardner's, but he saw no reason to deny its existence. Cynthia
+cast a backward glance from the wagon as she spoke, and saw Reuben
+slowly and stiffly gathering up dry stalks in his garden, while Stephen
+propped up the declining side of a water-butt in his adjoining domain,
+one man's back carefully turned to the other.
+
+She walked back from the Centre, and stopped to talk with the twins in a
+casual manner. But no careful inadvertence drew them, at this or any
+later time when their social relations had become firmly established,
+into a triangular conversation. They greeted her with cordiality,
+responded to her advances, talked to her with the tolerant and humorous
+shrewdness that lurked in their dim eyes, but it was always one at a
+time. If, with disarming naivete, she appealed to Stephen, Reuben turned
+into a graven image; and if she chaffed with Reuben, Stephen became as
+one who having eyes seeth not, and having ears heareth not. But she
+persisted with a zeal which, if not according to knowledge, was the
+result of a firm belief in the possibility of a final adjustment of
+differences. She did not know, herself, what led her into such
+earnestness,--a caprice, or the lingering pathos of two lonely, barren
+lives.
+
+Monroe watched her proceedings with tolerant kindliness. It was not his
+business to discourage her. He knew what it was to be discouraged, and
+he felt that there was quite enough discouragement going about in life
+without his adding to it.
+
+"I tell you they would like to be reconciled, Mr. Monroe," said Cynthia.
+"They don't know they would like it, but they would."
+
+"Wal, mebbe they would. They're gittin' to be old men. And when you git
+along as far as that, you don't, perhaps, worry so much about _bein'_
+reconciled, but neither does it seem as worth while _not_ to. There's a
+good deal that's sort of instructive about gittin' old," he ruminated.
+
+"It's very lonely for them both, I think;" and Cynthia's voice fell into
+the ready accents of youthful pity.
+
+"Their quarrel's been kinder comp'ny for 'em," suggested Monroe.
+
+"It's overstayed its time," asserted Cynthia.
+
+"Mebbe," answered Monroe.
+
+The crisis--for Cynthia had been looking for a crisis--came, after all,
+unexpectedly. She had been for the mail, and as she drove the amenable
+horse over the homeward road she strained her eyes to read the last page
+of an unusually absorbing letter, for it was again sundown, and the
+Granger twins again sat in their doorways. There was a decided chill in
+the air, this late afternoon. The old men, though they were sturdy
+still, had put on their coats, and from behind them the comfortable glow
+of two stove doors promised a later hour of warmth and comfort. Their
+aspect was more melancholy than usual, whether it were that the
+bleakness of winter seemed pressing close upon the bleakness of lonely
+age, or that there was an added weariness in the droop of the thin
+shoulders and the fixed eyes--it was certain that the picture had gained
+a shadow of depression.
+
+For once, Cynthia was not thinking of them as she drew near. The reins
+were loose in her hand, and as she bent to catch the waning light, an
+open newspaper, which she had laid carelessly on the seat beside her,
+was lifted by a transient gust of wind and tossed almost over her
+horse's head. No horse, of whatever serenity, can be thus treated
+without resentment. He jerked the reins from her heedless hands, made a
+sharp turn to avoid the white, wavering, inconsequent thing at his feet,
+a wheel caught in a neighboring boulder, and Cynthia was spilled out
+just in front of the Granger house and midway between the twins. In a
+common impulse of fright the two old men started to their feet. For an
+instant they paused to judge of the situation, but it was no time for
+fine distinctions. The accident had, to all appearances, happened as
+near one as the other, and meanwhile a young and pretty woman lay
+unsuccored upon the ground. It became a point of honor to yield nothing
+to an ignored companion. As speedily as their years allowed, Stephen and
+Reuben marched to the rescue. The horse, meanwhile, had dragged the
+overturned wagon but a few yards, and had stopped of his own reasonable
+accord. As Cynthia raised herself rather confusedly and quite convinced
+that she was killed, her first impression was that the angels were older
+than she had fancied, and looked very much like the Granger twins. But
+in a few seconds her balance of mind was restored, she realized that
+while there was life there was hope, and that for the first time in her
+experience the eyes of Reuben and Stephen were fixed solicitously upon a
+common object, that each of them had stretched out to her a helping
+hand, and that two voices with precisely the same anxious intonation
+were saying,--
+
+"Be ye hurt?"
+
+It was a solemn moment, but Cynthia Gardner was of the stuff that
+recognizes opportunity. She laid a hand upon each rugged arm, and
+steadied herself between them; she perceived that they trembled under
+her touch, and she felt that the instant in which they stood side by
+side was dramatic.
+
+"I declare, 'twas too bad," said Reuben.
+
+"'Twas too bad," said Stephen.
+
+"Is the horse all right?" asked Cynthia, feebly.
+
+"Yes, Johnny Allen got him," said Stephen.
+
+"Johnny Allen came along," said Reuben, as if Stephen had not spoken,
+"and he's got him."
+
+"I can walk," she said, with not unconscious pathos, "if you will walk
+with me, but I must go in and rest a moment;" and the three moved slowly
+straight forward.
+
+A few steps brought them to the point at which they must turn aside to
+reach either entrance. Before them rose the old boarded-up, dismal
+doorway, weather-beaten, stained, repellent as bitterness. There was
+another fateful pause. Cynthia felt the quiver that ran through the
+frames of the old men as for the first time in long years they stood
+side by side before the doorway about which as children they had played,
+and through which as boys they had rushed together. In Cynthia's
+drooping head plans were rapidly forming themselves, but she had time to
+be thankful that she did not know which was Reuben and which was
+Stephen--it saved her the anxiety of decision; instinctively she turned
+to the right, a small brown hand clutching impartially either rough and
+shabby sleeve.
+
+The man on her right swerved in an impulse of desertion, but her grasp
+did not relax.
+
+"Is the judgment of Solomon to be pronounced!" she said to herself, half
+hysterically, for her nerves were a little shaken.
+
+"Oh, I hope I sha'n't faint!" she exclaimed aloud.
+
+Beneath Reuben's rustic exterior beat the American heart that cannot
+desert an elegant female in distress. He followed the inclination of the
+other two to Stephen's door, and in another never-to-be-forgotten moment
+he stepped inside his brother's house.
+
+Stephen's deceased wife's niece was so overcome by the spectacle that
+she retained barely enough presence of mind to drag forward a wooden
+chair upon which Cynthia sank in a condition evidently bordering upon
+syncope. It was a critical moment; she must not give the intruder an
+opportunity to escape. She knew the intruder by that impulse of
+desertion, and she clung the tighter to his arm when she murmured
+pitifully, "If you could get me some water, Mr. Granger."
+
+Stephen hastened towards the kitchen pump--the sight of Reuben in his
+side of the house, after thirty years, set old chords vibrating with a
+suddenness that threatened to snap some disused string, and his
+perceptions were not as clear as usual. He seized the dipper, filled it,
+and looked about him.
+
+"Where's the tumbler, Jenny?" he called impatiently.
+
+"It's right there," answered the girl, with the explicitness of
+agitation.
+
+"Whar?" he demanded with asperity.
+
+"Settin' on the side--right back of the molasses jug."
+
+"Molasses jug!" he exclaimed. "Nice place for the molasses jug!"
+
+"We was goin' to have baked beans for supper," said the trembling Jenny,
+feeling that it was best to be tentative about even a trifling matter
+within the area of this convulsion, "and you always want it handy."
+
+It was a simple statement, but it laid a finger upon the past and upon
+the future. Cynthia, through her half-closed eyes, saw one old man with
+disturbed features, standing with his hand upon her chair, while another
+old man shuffled toward her with a glass of water, which spilled a
+little in his shaking hand as he came across the humble kitchen. Most
+inadequate dramatic elements, yet they held the tragedy of nearly a
+lifetime, and the comedy, though more evident, was cast by it in the
+shade, and she neither laughed nor cried.
+
+Within a few moments more she was on her homeward way, a trifling break
+in the harness tied up with twine, and Johnny Allen in the seat beside
+her as guard of honor.
+
+The next evening the people, driving home from the Centre, were saved
+from some active demonstration only by the repression of the New England
+temperament. Some of them even, after driving past, invented an errand
+to drive back again, so as to make sure. For the Granger twins sat side
+by side in front of the disused doorway, and their straw hats were
+turned sociably towards one another, now and then, as they exchanged a
+syllable or two, and there was a mild luminousness of pleasure in the
+recesses of their pale-blue eyes. The evening darkened fast into night.
+The plaintive half-chirp, half-whistle of a tree-toad fell in monotonous
+repetition upon the ear.
+
+"Hear them little fellers!" said Stephen, ruminantly. "I reckon they
+think it's goin' to rain."
+
+"Yare," said Reuben. "And," he went on, pushing back his straw hat and
+looking up into the sky, "I wouldn't wonder if they was right."
+
+"Mostly are," said Stephen.
+
+
+
+
+_Miss Trumbull's New Story_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mistress Content Cradock
+
+AN HISTORICAL TALE OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE IN THE TIME OF GOVERNOR WINTHROP
+AND ROGER WILLIAMS
+
+By ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
+
+_Author of "A Cape Cod Week," "Rod's Salvation," "A Christmas Accident,"
+etc._
+
+_1 vol. 12mo., cloth. Illustrated. Price, $1.00._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          A charming colonial romance.--_The
+          Congregationalist._
+
+          It is in a word a fascinating, strong, well-told
+          story.--_The Church Review._
+
+          It is a delightful way to study history--one of
+          the best of ways--to read a book written by one
+          whose historical information is accurate.--_Boston
+          Advertiser._
+
+          The thread of romance and love is rendered most
+          attractive by the author's well-known bright and
+          attractive style, her delicately fashioned
+          descriptions, and her entertaining dialogue.--_N.
+          Y. Times._
+
+          Winsome and captivating, Content pleases us of
+          to-day as she did the lover who patiently waited
+          to obtain the gift of her not too easily engaged
+          heart, and the quiet story of her fortunes is well
+          worth following.--_Literature._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price, by
+the Publishers,_
+
+          A. S. BARNES & CO.
+          156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Rod's Salvation.
+
+BY
+
+ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL.
+
+Illustrated by Charles Copeland. 12mo, cloth, 285 pages. $1.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          The volume entitled "Rod's Salvation," contains
+          four short stories, some of which are long enough
+          to be fairly called novelets.... "Rod's Salvation"
+          is a good picture of 'longshore life, telling of
+          the devotion of a sister to a scapegrace brother
+          and well worthy a reading.--_Springfield
+          Republican._
+
+          Miss Trumbull is blessed by a most delightful and
+          unpretentious gift of story-telling. Her work
+          suggests a twilight musician; she has a certain
+          dainty humor in her touch.--_The Citizen._
+
+          "Rod's Salvation" appears to us the most
+          interesting sketch of the four in the present
+          volume. It proves a thorough comprehension of the
+          noblest characteristics of the inhabitants of the
+          typical New England fishing village. The author
+          shows us diamonds in the rough, and with a most
+          happy talent, suddenly reveals to us the gleaming
+          beauties beneath their rude exterior. "Rod's
+          Salvation" is an inspiring story, the pathos of
+          which is accentuated by the delicate satire,
+          exquisite humor, and touches of kindly human
+          nature which lead one up to the unexpected
+          climax.--_The Church Review._
+
+
+
+
+A
+Cape Cod Week.
+
+BY
+ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL.
+
+12mo, cloth, 170 pages. $1.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          The keenness, quickness, and acuteness of the New
+          England mind were, perhaps, never better
+          illustrated than in her stories. Her conversations
+          are at times almost supernaturally bright; such
+          talk as one hears from witty, brilliant, and
+          cultivated American women--talk notable for
+          insight, subtle discriminations, unexpected and
+          surprised terms and persuasive humor.
+
+          "A Cape Cod Week" contains an account of the
+          adventures and achievements of three young women
+          who sought the seclusion, silence, and scenery of
+          Cape Cod, and who enlivened that remote and
+          restful country by flashes of talk often
+          brilliant, almost always entertaining. Miss
+          Trumbull's work is delightful reading: the
+          sameness of the commonplace and the obvious is so
+          entirely absent from it.--_The Outlook._
+
+          Annie Eliot Trumbull delights in fine descriptions
+          of nature as it exists. The book is capital
+          reading and its merits can be appreciated the
+          whole year round.--_New York Times._
+
+          A delightful, gossipy little sketch of a week's
+          holiday on Cape Cod. It is full of bright things,
+          imaginative to a degree, and yet based on facts as
+          we have all seen them on the sands of the Cape.
+          The book is beautifully printed and
+          bound.--_Boston Globe._
+
+
+
+
+The "Annie Eliot" Stories
+
+FIVE NEW BOOKS
+
+BY ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
+
+          MISTRESS CONTENT CRADOCK. Illustrated by Chas.
+            Copeland. 12mo, cloth, 306 pages. $1.00.
+
+          A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT AND OTHER STORIES. 12mo,
+            cloth, 234 pages. $1.00.
+
+          A CAPE COD WEEK, 12mo, cloth, 170 pages. $1.00.
+
+          ROD'S SALVATION. Illustrated by Charles Copeland.
+            12mo, cloth, 285 pages. $1.00.
+
+          AN HOUR'S PROMISE. _New Edition_. 12mo, cloth.
+            $1.00.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          The reader will enjoy the wit, the delicate
+          satire, the happy bits of nature description.--_S.
+          S. Times._
+
+          They are New England stories and exhibit a
+          delicate comprehension of many types of New
+          England character. They are delightfully readable,
+          and the books ought to be favorites.--_The
+          Congregationalist._
+
+          Miss Trumbull's claim to the attention of her
+          readers is undisputed. Her short stories possess a
+          freshness, a poignancy and underlying quick-witted
+          penetration into human feelings, motives and
+          experiences that give them a peculiar charm. Her
+          choice of themes is such as appeals to a wide
+          circle and her handling of the persons of her
+          imagination is exquisite.--_Hartford Post._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price, by
+the Publishers,_
+
+          A. S. BARNES & CO.
+          156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 108. "did'nt" changed to "didn't" (We didn't really think then)
+
+Page 108, "appened" changed to "happened" (what happened thirty-five)
+
+Page 135, "hey" changed to "they" (that they stayed)
+
+Page 149, "aquired" changed to "acquired" (They had acquired a)
+
+Page 156, "colyum" changed to "column" (so nice in the column)
+
+Page 238, "CRADDOCK" changed to "CRADOCK" (CRADOCK. Illustrated)
+
+Page 235, "Literature" was obscurred (worth following.--_Literature._)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Accident and Other Stories, by
+Annie Eliot Trumbull
+
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