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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of In a Little Town, by Rupert Hughes
+
+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: In a Little Town
+
+Author: Rupert Hughes
+
+Release Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #29561]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN A LITTLE TOWN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Colin Bell, Woodie4, Michael and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: cover]
+
+
+  IN A LITTLE TOWN
+
+
+
+
+  BOOKS BY
+
+  RUPERT HUGHES
+
+  IN A LITTLE TOWN                Illustrated. Post 8vo
+
+  THE THIRTEENTH COMMANDMENT      Illustrated. Post 8vo
+
+  CLIPPED WINGS.                  Frontispiece. Post 8vo
+
+  WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?           Illustrated. Post 8vo
+
+  THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.        Frontispiece. 16mo
+
+  EMPTY POCKETS.                  Illustrated. Post 8vo
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
+
+  [Illustration: Frontispiece]
+
+
+  In a Little Town
+
+  [Illustration: Title page decoration]
+
+  BY
+
+  RUPERT HUGHES
+
+  [Illustration: Publisher's mark]
+
+  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+
+  NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+  IN A LITTLE TOWN
+
+  Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
+
+  Printed in the United States of America
+
+  Published March, 1917
+
+
+
+
+                     TO
+         FREDERICK ATHERTON DUNEKA
+              AS AN I-O-U OF
+             HEARTFELT ESTEEM
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+                                  PAGE
+
+  DON'T YOU CARE!                    1
+
+  POP                               42
+
+  BABY TALK                         73
+
+  THE MOUTH OF THE GIFT HORSE      106
+
+  THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME            141
+
+  AND THIS IS MARRIAGE             173
+
+  THE MAN THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN     191
+
+  THE HAPPIEST MAN IN IOWAY        222
+
+  PRAYERS                          224
+
+  PAIN                             232
+
+  THE BEAUTY AND THE FOOL          262
+
+  THE GHOSTLY COUNSELORS           267
+
+  DAUGHTERS OF SHILOH              285
+
+  "A" AS IN "FATHER"               356
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+There are two immortal imbecilities that I have no patience for.
+
+The other one is the treatment of little towns as if they were
+essentially different from big towns. Cities are not "Ninevehs" and
+"Babylons" any more than little towns are Arcadias or Utopias. In fact
+we are now unearthing plentiful evidence of what might have been safely
+assumed, that Babylon never was a "Babylon" nor Nineveh a "Nineveh" in
+the sense employed by poets and praters without number. Those old cities
+were made up of assorted souls as good and as bad and as mixed as now.
+
+They do small towns a grievous injustice who deny them restlessness,
+vice, ostentation, cruelty; as they do cities a grievous injustice who
+deny them simplicity, homeliness, friendship, and contentment. It is one
+of those undeniable facts (which everybody denies) that a city is only a
+lot of small towns put together. Its population is largely made up of
+people who came from small towns and of people who go back to small
+towns every evening.
+
+A village is simply a quiet street in the big city of the world. Quaint,
+sweet happenings take place in the avenues most thronged, and desperate
+events come about in sleepy lanes. People are people, chance is chance.
+
+My novels have mainly concerned themselves with New York, and I have
+tried therein to publish bits of its life as they appear to such eyes
+and such mind as I have. Though several of my short stories have been
+published in single volumes, this is the first group to be issued. They
+are all devoted to small-town people. In them I have sought the same end
+as in the city novels: to be true to truth, to observe with sympathy and
+explain with fidelity, to find the epic of a stranger's existence and
+shape it for the eyes of strangers--to pass the throb of another heart
+through my heart to your heart.
+
+The scene of these stories lies pretty close to the core of these United
+States, in the Middle West, in the valley of the Mississippi River. I
+was born near that river and spent a good deal of my boyhood in it.
+
+Though it would be unfair, false, and unkind to fasten these stories on
+any definite originals, they are centered in the region about the small
+city of Keokuk, Iowa, from which one can also see into Illinois, and
+into Missouri, where I was born. Comic poets have found something comic
+in the name of Keokuk, as in other town names in which the letter "K" is
+prominent. Why "K" should be so humorous, I can't imagine. The name of
+Keokuk, however, belonged to a splendid Indian chief who was friendly
+to the early settlers and saved them from massacre. The monument over
+his bones in the park, on the high bluff there, now commands one of the
+noblest views in the world, a great lake formed in the Mississippi River
+by a dam which is as beautiful as if the Greeks had built it. It was, in
+fact, built by a thousand Greeks who camped there for years. As an
+engineering achievement it rivals the Assouan dam and as a manufacturer
+of electricity it is a second to Niagara Falls. But it has not yet
+materially disturbed the rural quality of the country.
+
+The scenery thereabout is very beautiful, but I guarantee you against
+landscape in these stories. I cannot, however, guarantee that the
+stories are even based on fact. Yet I hope that they are truth.
+
+The characters are limited to a small neighborhood, but if they are not
+also faithful to humanity in general, then, as we would say out there,
+"I miss my guess."
+
+                                                      RUPERT HUGHES.
+
+
+
+
+IN A LITTLE TOWN
+
+
+
+
+DON'T YOU CARE!
+
+I
+
+
+When she was told it was a girl, Mrs. Govers sighed. "Well, I never did
+have any luck, anyway; so I d' know's I'm supprised."
+
+Later she wept feebly:
+
+"Girls are easier to raise, I suppose; but I kind of had my heart set on
+namin' him Launcelot." After another interval she rallied to a smile: "I
+was prepared for the worst, though; so I picked out Ellaphine for a name
+in case he was a her. It's an awful pirty name, Ellaphine is. Don't you
+think so?"
+
+"Yes, yes," said the nurse, who would have agreed to anything then.
+
+After a time Mrs. Govers resumed: "She'll be an awful pirty girl, I
+hope. Is that her makin' all that noise? Give me a glimpse of her, will
+you? I got a right, I guess, to see my own baby. Oh, Goshen! Is that
+how she looks?" A kind of swoon; then more meditation, followed by a
+courageous philosophy: "Children always look funny at first. She'll
+outgrow it, I expect. Ellaphine is such an elegant name. It ought to be
+a kind of inducement to grow up to. Don't you think so?"
+
+The nurse, who was juggling the baby as if it were red-hot, mumbled
+through a mustache of safety-pins that she thought so. Mrs. Govers
+echoed, "I thought so, too." After that she went to sleep.
+
+Ellaphine, however, did not grow up elegant, to fit the name. The name
+grew inelegant to fit her. During her earliest years the witty little
+children called her Elephant until they tired of the ingenuity and
+allowed her to lapse indolently from Ellar to El.
+
+Mrs. Govers for some years cherished a dream that her ugly duckling
+would develop into a swan and fly away with a fabulously wealthy prince.
+Later she dwindled to a prayer that she might capture a man who was
+"tol'able well-to-do."
+
+The majority of ugly ducklings, however, grow up into uglier ducks, and
+Mrs. Govers resigned herself to the melancholy prospect of the widowed
+mother of an old maid perennial.
+
+To the confusion of prophecy, among all the batch of girls who descended
+on Carthage about the time of Ellaphine's birth--"out of the nowhere
+into the here"--Ellaphine was the first to be married! And she cut out
+the prettiest girl in the township--it was not such a small township,
+either.
+
+Those homely ones seem to make straight for a home the first thing.
+Ellaphine carried off Eddie Pouch--the very Eddie of whom his mother
+used to say, "He's little, but oh, my!" The rest of the people said,
+"Oh, my, but he's little!"
+
+Eddie's given name was Egbert. Edward was his taken name. He took it
+after his mother died and he went to live at his uncle Loren's. Eddie
+was sorry to change his name, but he said his mother was not responsible
+at the time she pasted the label Egbert on him, and his shy soul could
+not endure to be called Egg by his best friends--least of all by his
+best girl.
+
+His best girl was the township champion looker, Luella Thickins. From
+the time his heart was big enough for Cupid to stick a child's-size
+arrow in, Eddie idolized Luella. So did the other boys; and as Eddie was
+the smallest of the lot, he was lost in the crowd. Even when Luella
+noticed him it was with the atrocious contempt of little girls for
+little boys they do not like.
+
+Eddie could not give her sticks of candy or jawbreakers, for his uncle
+Loren did not believe in spending money. And Eddie had no mother to go
+to when the boys mistreated him and the girls ignored him. A dismal life
+he led until he grew up as far as he ever grew up.
+
+Eddie reached his twenty-second birthday and was working in Uncle
+Loren's factory--one of the largest feather-duster factories in the
+whole State--when he observed a sudden change in Luella's manner.
+
+She had scared him away from paying court to her, save from a distance.
+Now she took after him, with her aggressive beauty for a club and her
+engaging smiles for a net. She asked him to take her to the
+Sunday-school picnic, and asked him what he liked best for her to put in
+for him. She informed him that she was going to cook it for herself and
+everybody said she could fry chicken something grand. So he chose fried
+chicken.
+
+He was so overjoyed that it was hard for him to be as solemn about the
+house as he ought to have been, in view of the fact that Uncle Loren had
+been taken suddenly and violently ill. Eddie was the natural heir to the
+old man's fortune.
+
+Uncle Loren was considered close in a town where extravagance was almost
+impossible, but where rigid economy was supposed to pile up tremendous
+wealth. Hitherto it had pained Uncle Loren to devote a penny to anything
+but the sweet uses of investment. Now it suddenly occurred to the old
+miser that he had invested nothing in the securities of New Jerusalem,
+Limited. He was frightened immeasurably.
+
+In his youth he had joined the Campbellite church and had been baptized
+in the town pond when there was a crust of ice over it which the pastor
+had to break with a stick before he immersed Loren. Everybody said the
+crust of ice had stuck to his heart ever since.
+
+In the panic that came on him now he craftily decided to transfer all
+his savings to the other shore. The factory, of course, he must leave
+behind; but he drafted a hasty will presenting all his money to the
+Campbellite church under conditions that he counted on to gain him a
+high commercial rating in heaven.
+
+Over his shoulder, as he wrote, a shadow waited, grinning; and the old
+man had hardly folded his last testament and stuffed it into his
+pillow-slip when the grisly hand was laid on his shoulders and Uncle
+Loren was no longer there.
+
+
+II
+
+His uncle's demise cut Eddie out of the picnic with Luella; but she was
+present at the funeral and gave him a wonderful smile. Uncle Loren's
+final will was not discovered until the pillow-slip was sent to the
+wash; and at the funeral Eddie was still the object of more or less
+disguised congratulations as an important heir.
+
+Luella solaced him with rare tact and tenderness, and spoke much of his
+loneliness and his need of a helpmate. Eddie resolved to ask her to
+marry him as soon as he could compose the speech.
+
+Some days later Uncle Loren's farewell will turned up, and Eddie fell
+from grace with a thump. The town laughed at him, as people always laugh
+when a person--particularly so plump a person as Eddie was--falls hard
+on the slippery sidewalk of this icy world.
+
+In his dismay he hastened to Luella for sympathy, but she turned up
+missing. She jilted him with a jolt that knocked his heart out of his
+mouth. He stood, as it were, gaping stupidly, in the middle of the
+highway.
+
+Then Ellaphine Govers came along, picked his heart out of the road,
+dusted it, and offered it back. He was so grateful that he asked her to
+keep it for him. He was so pitiable an object that he felt honored even
+by the support of Ellar Govers.
+
+He went with Ellar quite a lot. He found her very comfortable company.
+She seemed flattered by his attention. Other people acted as if they
+were doing him a favor by letting him stand around.
+
+He had lost Uncle Loren's money, but he still had a small job at the
+factory. Partly to please Ellar and partly to show certain folks that he
+was not yet dead, he took her out for a drive behind a livery-stable
+horse. It was a beautiful drive, and the horse was so tame that it
+showed no desire to run away. It was perfectly willing to stand still
+where the view was good.
+
+He let Ellar drive awhile, and that was the only time the horse
+misbehaved. It saw a stack of hay, nearly went mad, and tried to climb a
+rail fence; but Ellar yelled at it and slapped the lines at it and got
+it past the danger zone, and it relapsed into its usual mood of despair.
+
+Eddie told Ellar the horse was "attackted with haydrophobia." And she
+nearly laughed herself to death and said:
+
+"You do say the funniest things!"
+
+She was a girl who could appreciate a fellow's jokes, and he saw that
+they could have awful good times together. He told her so without
+difficulty and she agreed that they could, and they were as good as
+engaged before they got back as far as the fair-grounds. As they came
+into the familiar streets Eddie observed a remarkable change in the
+manner of the people they passed. People made an effort to attract his
+eye. They wafted him salutes from a distance. He encountered such a
+lifting of hats, elaborateness of smiles and flourish of hands, that he
+said to Ellaphine:
+
+"Say, Pheeny, I wonder what the joke is!"
+
+"Me, I guess," sighed Ellaphine. "They're makin' fun of you for takin'
+me out buggy-ridin'."
+
+"Ah, go on!" said Eddie. "They've found out something about me and
+they're pokin' fun."
+
+He was overcome with shame and drove to Ellaphine's house by a side
+street and escorted the horse to the livery-stable by a back alley. On
+his way home he tried in vain to dodge Luella Thickins, but she headed
+him off with one of her Sunday-best smiles. She bowled him over by an
+effusive manner.
+
+"Why, Eddie, you haven't been round to see me for the longest time!
+Can't you come on over 'safternoon? I'd just love to see you!"
+
+He wondered whether she had forgotten how she had ground his meek heart
+under her heel the last time he called.
+
+She was so nice to him that she frightened him. He mumbled that he would
+certainly call that afternoon, and got away, wondering what the trick
+was. Her smile seemed less pretty than it used to be.
+
+
+III
+
+A block farther on Eddie met a man who explained the news, which had run
+across the town like oil on water. Tim Holdredge, an idle lawyer who had
+nothing else to do, looked into the matter of Uncle Loren's will and
+found that the old man, in his innocence of charity and his passion for
+economy, had left his money to the church on conditions that were not
+according to the law. The money reverted to the estate. Eddie was the
+estate.
+
+When Tim Holdredge slapped Eddie on the shoulder and explained the
+result of what he called "the little joker" in Uncle Loren's will, Eddie
+did not rejoice, as Tim had a right to expect.
+
+Eddie was poisoned by a horrible suspicion. The logic of events ran
+through his head like a hateful tune which he could not shake off:
+
+"When Luella thought I was coming into a pile of money she was nice to
+me. When she heard I wasn't she was mean to me. Now that my money's
+coming to me, after all, she's nice again. Therefore--" But he was
+ashamed to give that ungallant _ergo_ brain room.
+
+Still more bewildering was the behavior of Ellaphine. As soon as he
+heard of his good fortune he hurried to tell her about it. Her mother
+answered the door-bell and congratulated him on his good luck. When he
+asked for Ellar, her mother said, "She was feelin' right poorly, so
+she's layin' down." He was so alarmed that he forgot about Luella, who
+waited the whole afternoon all dressed up.
+
+After supper that night he patrolled before Ellaphine's home and tried
+to pluck up courage enough to twist that old door-bell again. Suddenly
+she ran into him. She was sneaking through the front gate. He tried to
+talk to her, but she said:
+
+"I'm in a tur'ble hurry. I got to go to the drug-store and get some
+chloroform liniment. Mamma's lumbago's awful bad."
+
+He walked along with her, though she tried to escape him. The first
+drowsy lamp-post showed him that Ellaphine had been crying. It was the
+least becoming thing she could have done. Eddie asked whether her mother
+was so sick as all that. She said "No"--then changed to "Yes"--and then
+stopped short and began to blubber uncouthly, dabbing her eyes
+alternately with the backs of her wrists.
+
+Eddie stared awhile, then yielded to an imperious urge to clasp her to
+his heart and comfort her. She twisted out of his arms, and snapped,
+"Don't you touch me, Eddie Pouch!"
+
+Eddie mumbled, inanely, "You didn't mind it this mornin', buggy-ridin'."
+
+Her answer completely flabbergasted him:
+
+"No; because you didn't have all that money then."
+
+"Gee whiz, Pheeny!" he gasped. "What you got against Uncle Loren's
+money? It ain't a disease, is it? It's not ketchin', is it?"
+
+"No," she sobbed; "but we--Well, when you were so poor and all, I
+thought you might--you might really like me because I could be of
+some--of some use to you; but now you--you needn't think I'm goin' to
+hold you to any--anything against your will."
+
+Eddie realized that across the street somebody had stopped to listen.
+Eddie wanted to throw a rock at whoever it was, but Ellaphine absorbed
+him as she wailed:
+
+"It 'd be just like you to be just's nice to me as ever; but I'm not
+goin' to tie you down to any homely old crow like me when you got money
+enough to marry anybody. You can get Luella Thickins back now. You could
+marry the Queen of England if you'd a mind to."
+
+Eddie could find nothing better to say than, "Well, I'll be dog-on'd!"
+
+While he gaped she got away.
+
+
+IV
+
+Luella Thickins cast her spells over Eddie with all her might, but he
+understood them now and escaped through their coarse meshes. She was so
+resolute, however, that he did not dare trust himself alone in the same
+town with her unless he had a chaperon.
+
+He sent a note to Ellaphine, saying he was in dire trouble and needed
+her help. This brought him the entree to her parlor. He told her the
+exact situation and begged her to rescue him from Luella.
+
+Ellaphine's craggy features grew as radiant as a mountain peak in the
+sunrise. The light made beautiful what it illumined. She consented at
+last to believe in Eddie's devotion, or at least in his need of her; and
+the homely thing enjoyed the privilege of being pleaded for and of
+yielding to the prayers of an ardent lover.
+
+She assumed that the marriage could not take place for several years, if
+ever. She wanted to give Eddie time to be sure of his heart; but Eddie
+was stubborn and said:
+
+"Seein' as we're agreed on gettin' married, let's have the wedding right
+away and get it over with."
+
+When Ellaphine's mother learned that Ellaphine had a chance to marry an
+heir and was asking for time, Mrs. Govers delivered an oration that
+would have sent Ellaphine to the altar with almost anybody, let alone
+her idolized Eddie.
+
+The wedding was a quiet affair. Everybody in Carthage was invited. Few
+came. People feared that if they went they would have to send
+wedding-presents, and Eddie and Ellar were too unimportant to the social
+life of Carthage to make their approval valuable.
+
+Eddie wore new shoes, which creaked and pinched. He looked twice as
+uncomfortable and twice as sad as he had looked at his uncle Loren's
+obsequies; and he suffered that supreme disenchantment of a too-large
+collar with a necktie rampant.
+
+In spite of the ancient and impregnable theory that all brides are
+beautiful, was there ever a woman who looked her best in the uniform of
+approaching servitude? In any case, Ellaphine's best was not good, and
+she was at her worst in her ill-fitting white gown, with the veil askew.
+Her graceless carriage was not improved by the difficulty of keeping
+step with her escort and the added task of keeping step with the music.
+
+The organist, Mr. Norman Maugans, always grew temperamental when he
+played Mendelssohn's "Wedding March," and always relieved its monotonous
+cadence with passionate accelerations and abrupt retardations. That made
+walking difficult.
+
+When the minister had finished with the couple and they moved down the
+aisle to what the paper called the "Bridle March, by Lohengrin," Mr.
+Maugans always craned his neck to see and usually put his foot on the
+wrong pedal, with the startling effect of firing a cannon at the
+departing guests.
+
+He did not crane his neck, however, to see Mr. and Mrs. Pouch depart.
+They were too commonplace entirely. He played the march with such
+doleful indifference that Eddie found the aisle as long as the distance
+from Marathon to Athens. Also he was trying to walk so that his pinching
+shoes would not squeak.
+
+At the end of the last pew Eddie and Ellaphine encountered Luella
+Thickins leaning out into the aisle and triumphantly beautiful in her
+finest raiment. Her charms were militant and vindictive, and her smile
+plainly said: "Uh-huh! Don't you wish you'd taken me instead of that
+thing you've hitched up with for life?"
+
+Eddie gave her one glance and found her hideous. Ellaphine lowered her
+eyelids in defeat and slunk from the church, thinking:
+
+"Now he's already sorry that he married me. What can he see in me to
+love? Nothing! Nothing!"
+
+When they clambered into the carriage Eddie said, "Well, Mrs. Pouch,
+give your old husband a kiss!"
+
+Ellaphine shrank away from him, however, crying again. He was hurt and
+puzzled until he remembered that it is the business of brides to cry.
+He held her hand and tried to console her for being his victim, and
+imagined almost every reason for her tears but the true one.
+
+The guests at the church straggled to Mrs. Govers's home, drawn by the
+call of refreshments. Luella was the gayest of them all. People wondered
+why Eddie had not married her instead of Ellaphine. Luella heard some
+one say, "What on earth can he see in her?"
+
+Luella answered, "What on earth can she see in him?" It was hardly
+playing fair, but Luella was a poor loser. She even added, to clinch it,
+"What on earth can they see in each other?"
+
+That became the town comment on the couple when there was any comment at
+all. Mainly they were ignored completely.
+
+Eddie and Ellar were not even honored with the usual outburst of the
+ignoblest of all sports--bride-baiting. Nobody tied a white ribbon to
+the wheel of the hack that took them to the depot. Old shoes had not
+been provided and rice had been forgotten. They were not pelted or
+subjected to immemorial jokes. They were not chased to the train, and
+their elaborate schemes for deceiving the neighbors as to the place of
+their honeymoon were wasted. Nobody cared where they went or how long
+they stayed.
+
+They returned sheepishly, expecting to run a gantlet of humor; but
+people seemed unaware that they had been away. They settled down into
+the quiet pool of Carthage without a splash, like a pair of mud-turtles
+slipping off a log into the water. Even the interest in Eddie's
+inheritance did not last long, for Uncle Loren's fortune did not last
+long--not that they were spendthrift, for they spent next to nothing;
+but money must be fed or it starves to death. Money must grow or wither.
+
+
+V
+
+Eddie found that his uncle's reputation for hard dealing had been a
+condition of his success. He soon learned that the feather-duster
+factory could be run at a profit only by the most microscopic care.
+Wages must be kept down; hours kept up; the workers driven every minute,
+fined if they were late, nagged if they dawdled. Profit could be wrung
+from the trade only by ugly battles with dealers and purchasers. Raw
+material had to be fought down, finished product fought up; bills due
+fought off, accounts fought in; the smallest percentage of a percentage
+wrestled for.
+
+Eddie was incapable of such vigilant hostility toward everybody. The
+factory almost immediately ceased to pay expenses. Eddie was prompt to
+meet debts, but lenient as a collector. The rest of his inheritance
+fared no better. Eddie was an ideal mortgagee. The first widow wept him
+out of his interest in five tears. Having obliged her, he could hardly
+deny the next person, who had money but wanted more, "to carry out a big
+deal."
+
+Eddie first gained a reputation for being a kind-hearted gentleman and a
+Christian, and later a notoriety for being an easy mark. Eddie overheard
+such comment eventually, and it wounded him as deeply as it bewildered
+him. Bitterer than the contempt for a hard man is the contempt for a
+soft man who is betrayed by a vice of mercy. Eddie was hopelessly
+addicted to decency.
+
+Uncle Loren had been a miser and so close that his nickname had implied
+the ability to skin a flint. People hated him and raged against him; but
+it suddenly became evident that they had worked hard to meet their bills
+payable to him. They had sat up nights devising schemes to gain cash for
+him. He was a cause of industry and thrift and self-denial. He paid poor
+wages, but he kept the factory going. He squeezed a penny until the
+eagle screamed, but he made dusters out of the tail feathers, and he was
+planning to branch out into whisk brooms and pillows when, in the words
+of the pastor, he was "called home." The pastor liked the phrase, as it
+did not commit him to any definite habitat.
+
+Eddie, however, though he worked hard and used thrift, and, with
+Ellaphine's help, practised self-denial, found that he was not so big a
+man as the small man he succeeded. He increased the wages and cut down
+the hours, and found that he had diminished the output of everything
+except complaints. The men loafed shamelessly, cheated him of the energy
+and the material that belonged to him, and whined all the time. His
+debtors grew shiftless and contemptuous.
+
+It is the irony, the meanness, of the trade of life that virtue may
+prove vicious in effect; and viciousness may produce good fruit. Figs do
+grow from thistles.
+
+For a time the Pouch couple attracted a great deal of attention from the
+people of Carthage--the sort of attention that people on shore devote to
+a pair of capsized canoeists for whom nobody cares to risk his life.
+
+Luella Thickins had forced the note of gaiety at the wedding, but she
+soon grew genuinely glad that Eddie had got away. She began to believe
+that she had jilted him.
+
+
+VI
+
+People who wondered what Mr. and Mrs. Pouch saw in each other could not
+realize that he saw in her a fellow-sufferer who upheld him with her
+love in all his terrors. She was everything that his office was
+not--peace without demand for money; glowing admiration and raptures of
+passion.
+
+What she saw in him was what a mother sees in a crippled child that runs
+home to her when the play of the other boys is too swift or too rough.
+She saw a good man, who could not fight because he could not slash and
+trample and loot. She saw what the Belgian peasant women saw--a little
+cottage holder staring in dismay at the hostile armies crashing about
+his homestead.
+
+The only comfort Eddie found in the situation was the growing
+realization that it was hopeless. The drowsy opiate of surrender began
+to spread its peace through his soul. His torment was the remorse of
+proving a traitor to his dead uncle's glory. The feather-dustery that
+had been a monument was about to topple into the weeds. Eddie writhed at
+that and at his feeling of disloyalty to the employees, who would be
+turned out wageless in a small town that was staggering under the burden
+of hard times.
+
+He made a frantic effort to keep going on these accounts, but the battle
+was too much for him. He could not imagine ways and means--he knew
+nothing of the ropes of finance. He was like a farmer with a scythe
+against sharpshooters. Ellaphine began to fear that the struggle would
+break him down. One night she persuaded him to give up.
+
+She watched him anxiously the next morning as his fat little body,
+bulging with regrets, went meekly down the porch steps and along the
+walk. The squeal of the gate as he shoved through sounded like a groan
+from his own heart. He closed the gate after him with the gentle care he
+gave all things. Then he leaned across it to wave to his Pheeny. It was
+like the good-by salute of a man going to jail.
+
+Ellaphine moped about the kitchen, preparing him the best dinner she
+could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace
+she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the
+homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at
+a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when
+it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at
+noon, for he could still afford petunias.
+
+She was squatting by the colony aligned along the walk, and her big
+sunbonnet hid her unbeautiful face from the passers-by and theirs from
+her, when she caught a glimpse of Luella Thickins coming along, giggling
+with the banker's son. Luella put on a little extra steam for the
+benefit of Ellaphine, who was glad of her sunbonnet and did not look up.
+
+Later there came a quick step, thumping the boardwalk in a rhythm she
+would have recognized but for its allegrity. The gate was opened with a
+sweep that brought a shriek from its old rheumatic hinge, and was
+permitted to swing shut with an unheeded smack. Ellaphine feared it was
+somebody coming with the haste that bad news inspires. Something awful
+had happened to Eddie! Her knees could not lift her to face the evil
+tidings. She dared not turn her head.
+
+Then she heard Eddie's own voice: "Pheeny! Pheeny, honey! Everything's
+all right!"
+
+Pheeny spilled the petunias and sat down on them. Eddie lifted her up
+and pushed his glowing face deep into her sunbonnet, and kissed her.
+
+Luella Thickins was coming back and her giggling stopped. She and the
+banker's son, who were just sauntering about, exchanged glances of
+disgust at the indecorous proceeding. Later Luella resumed her giggle
+and enjoyed hugely her comment:
+
+"Ellar looks fine in a sunbonnet! The bigger it is, the better she
+looks."
+
+
+VII
+
+Meantime Eddie was supporting his Pheeny into the house. His path was
+strewn with petunias and she supposed he had some great victory to
+announce. He had; but he was the victim.
+
+The conqueror was the superintendent of the factory, Jabez Pittinger,
+who had survived a cycle of Uncle Loren's martinetism with less
+resentment than a year of Eddie's lenience. But Eddie is telling
+Ellaphine of his glorious achievement:
+
+"You see, I went to the fact'ry feeling like I was goin' to my grave."
+
+"I know," she said; "but what happened?"
+
+"I just thought I'd rather die than tack up the notice that we were
+going to shut down and turn off those poor folks and all."
+
+"I know," said Ellaphine; "but tell me."
+
+"Well, finally," Eddie plodded along, "I tried to draw up the
+'nouncement with the markin'-brush; but I just couldn't make the
+letters. So I called in Jabe Pittinger and told him how it was; and I
+says to him: 'Jabe, I jest naturally can't do it m'self. I wisht you'd
+send the word round that the factory's goin' to stop next Sat'd'y.' I
+thought he'd show some surprise; but he didn't. He just shot a splash
+of tobacco-juice through that missin' tooth of his and says, 'I wouldn't
+if I's you.' And I says, 'Goodness knows I hate to; but there's no way
+out of it.' And he wopsed his cud round and said, 'Mebbe there is.'
+'What do you mean?' I says. And he says, 'Fact is, Eddie'--he always
+called me Mr. Pouch or Boss before, but I couldn't say anything to him,
+seeing--"
+
+"I know!" Ellaphine almost screamed. "But what'd he say? What's the
+upshot?"
+
+Eddie went on at his ox-like gait. "'Well,' he says, 'fact is,
+Eddie,' he says, 'I been expectin' this, and I been figgerin' if they
+wasn't a way somewhere to keep a-runnin',' says he; 'and I been talkin'
+to certain parties that believes as I do, that the fault ain't with the
+feather-duster business, but with the way it's run,' he says. 'People
+gotter have feather dusters,' he says; 'but they gotter be gave to 'em
+right.' O' course I knew he was gettin' at me, but I was in no p'sition
+to talk back."
+
+"Oh, please, Eddie!" Ellaphine moaned. "Please tell me! I'm goin' crazy
+to know the upshot of it, and I smell the pie burnin'--it's rhubob,
+too."
+
+"You got rhubob pie for dinner to-day?" Eddie chortled. "Oh, crickety,
+that's fine!"
+
+He followed her into the kitchen and helped her carry the things to the
+dining-room, where they waited on each other in alternate dashes and
+clashes of "Lemme get it!" and "You set right still!"
+
+Eventually he reached the upshot, which was that Mr. Pittinger thought
+he might raise money to run the factory if Eddie would give him the
+control and drop out. Eddie concluded, with a burst of rapture: "I'm so
+tickled I wisht I could telegraft poor Uncle Loren that everything's all
+right!"
+
+
+VIII
+
+It was an outrageous piece of petty finance on high models, and it
+euchred Eddie out of everything he had in the world except his illusion
+that Jabez was working for the good of the factory.
+
+Eddie always said "The Fact'ry" in the tone that city people use when
+they say "The Cathedral."
+
+Ellaphine saw through the wiles of Jabez and the measly capitalists he
+had bound together, and she was ablaze with rage at them and with pity
+for her tender-hearted child-husband; but she did not reveal these
+emotions to Eddie.
+
+She encouraged him to feast on the one sweetmeat of the situation: that
+the hands would not be turned off and the factory would keep open doors.
+In fact, when doubt began to creep into his own idle soul and a feeling
+of shame depressed him, as the butt of the jokes and the pity that the
+neighbors flung at him, Ellaphine pretended to be overjoyed at the
+triumph he had wrested from defeat.
+
+And when he began to chafe at his lack of occupation, and to fret about
+their future, she went to the factory and invaded the office where the
+usurper, Jabez Pittinger, sat enthroned at the hallowed desk, tossing
+copious libations of tobacco-juice toward a huge new cuspidor. She
+demanded a job for Eddie and bullied Jabez into making him a bookkeeper,
+at a salary of forty-five dollars a month.
+
+Thus, at last, Eddie Pouch found his place in the world. There are
+soldiers who make ideal first sergeants and are ruined and ruinous as
+second lieutenants; and there are soldiers who are worthless as first
+sergeants, but irresistible as major-generals. Eddie was a born first
+sergeant, a routine man, a congenital employee--doomed, like fire, to be
+a splendid servant and a disastrous master.
+
+Working for himself, he neglected every opportunity. Working for
+another, he neglected nothing. Meeting emergencies, tricking creditors
+and debtors, and massacring competitors were not in his line; but when
+it came to adding up columns of figures all day, making out bills,
+drawing checks for somebody else to sign, and the Santa Claus function
+of stuffing the pay-roll into the little envelopes--Eddie was there.
+Shrewd old Jabez recognized this. He tried him on a difficult collection
+once--sent him forth to pry an ancient debt of eighteen dollars and
+thirty-four cents out of the meanest man in town, vice Uncle Loren.
+Eddie came back with a look of contentment.
+
+"Did you git it?" said Jabez.
+
+"Well, you see, it was like this: the poor feller--"
+
+"Poor heller! Did you git it?"
+
+"No; he was so hard up I lent him four dollars."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Out of my own pocket, o' course."
+
+Jabez remarked that he'd be hornswoggled; but he valued the incident and
+added it to the anecdotes he used when he felt that he had need to
+justify himself for playing Huerta with his dreamy Madero.
+
+
+IX
+
+After that the most Jabez asked of Eddie was to write "Please remit" or
+"Past due" on the mossier bills. Eddie preferred an exquisite poem he
+had copied from a city creditor: "This account has no doubt escaped your
+notice. As we have several large obligations to meet, we should greatly
+appreciate a check by return mail."
+
+Eddie loved that. There was a fine chivalry and democracy about it, as
+one should say: "We're all debtors and creditors in this world, and we
+big fellows and you little fellows must all work together."
+
+Life had a regularity now that would have maddened a man more ambitious
+than Eddie or a woman more restless than Ellaphine. Their world
+was like the petunia-garden--the flowers were not orchids or
+telegraph-pole-stemmed roses; but the flower faces were joyous, their
+frocks neat, and their perfume savory.
+
+Eddie knew just how much money was coming in and there was no temptation
+to hope for an increase. They knew just how much time they had, and one
+day was like another except that along about the first of every month
+Eddie went to the office a little earlier and went back at night to get
+out the bills and adjust his balances.
+
+On these evenings Ellaphine was apt to go along and sit with him,
+knitting thick woolen socks for the winter, making him shirts or
+nightgowns, or fashioning something for herself or the house. Her
+loftiest reach of splendor was a crazy quilt; and her rag carpets were
+highly esteemed.
+
+On Sundays they went to church in the morning and again in the evening.
+Prayer-meeting night saw them always on their way to the place where the
+church bell called: "Come! Come!"
+
+Sometimes irregular people, who forgot it was prayer-meeting night,
+would be reminded of it by seeing Eddie and Ellar go by. They went so
+early that there was time for the careless to make haste with their
+bonnets and arrive in time.
+
+It was a saying that housewives set their kitchen clocks by Eddie's
+transits to and from the factory. At any rate, there was no end to the
+occasions when shiftless gossips, dawdling on their porches, were
+surprised to see Eddie toddle homeward, and scurried away, cackling:
+
+"My gracious! There goes Eddie Pouch, and my biscuits not cut out!"
+
+
+X
+
+The whole year was tranquil now for the Pouches, and the halcyon brooded
+unalarmed in the waveless cove of their life. There were no debtors to
+be harassed, no creditors to harass them. They paid cash for
+everything--at least, Ellaphine did; for Eddie turned his entire
+forty-five dollars over to her. She was his banker and his steward.
+
+She could not persuade him to smoke, or to buy new clothes before the
+old ones grew too shabby for so nice a man as a bookkeeper is apt to be.
+He did not drink or play cards or billiards; he did not belong to any
+lodge or political organization.
+
+The outgo of money was as regular as the income--so much for the
+contribution-basket on Sundays; so much for the butcher; so much for the
+grocer; so much for the coal-oil lamps. The baker got none of their
+money and the druggist little.
+
+A few dollars went now and then to the dry-goods store for dress goods,
+which Pheeny made up; and Eddie left an occasional sum at the
+Pantatorium for a fresh alpaca coat, or for a new pair of trousers when
+the seat of the old ones grew too refulgent or perilously extenuate. As
+Eddie stood up at his tall desk most of the time, however, it was rather
+his shoes than his pantaloons that felt the wear and tear of attrition.
+
+And yet, in spite of all the tender miserhood of Ellaphine and the
+asceticism of Eddie, few of the forty-five dollars survived the thirty
+days' demands. Still, there was always something for the savings-bank,
+and the blessing on its increment was that it grew by exactions from
+themselves--not from their neighbors.
+
+The inspiration of the fund was the children that were to be. The fund
+had ample time for accretion, since the children were as late as Never
+is.
+
+Such things are not discussed, of course, in Carthage. And nobody knew
+how fiercely they yearned. Nobody knew of the high hopes that flared and
+faded.
+
+After the first few months of marriage Eddie had begun to call Pheeny
+"Mother"--just for fun, you know. And it teased her so that he kept it
+up, for he liked a joke as well as the next fellow. Before people, of
+course, she was "Pheeny," and, on very grand occasions, "the wife."
+"Mrs. Pouch" was beyond him. But once, at a sociable, he called across
+the room, "Say, mother!"
+
+He was going to ask her whether she wanted him to bring her a piece of
+the "chalklut" cake or a hunk of the "cokernut," but he got no farther.
+Nobody noticed it; but Eddie and Pheeny were consumed with shame and
+slunk home scarlet. Nobody noticed that they had gone.
+
+Time went on and on, and the fund grew and grew--a little coral reef of
+pennies and nickels and dimes. The amusements of the couple were
+petty--an occasional church sociable was society; a revival period was
+drama. They never went to the shows that came to the Carthage Opera
+House. They did not miss much.
+
+Eddie wasted no time on reading any fiction except that in the news
+columns of the evening paper, which a boy threw on the porch in a
+twisted boomerang every afternoon, and which Eddie untwisted and read
+after he had wiped the dishes that Pheeny washed.
+
+Ellaphine spent no money on such vanities as novels or short stories,
+but she read the edifying romances in the Sunday-school paper and an
+occasional book from the Sunday-school library, mainly about children
+whose angelic qualities gave her a picture of child life that would have
+contrasted strongly with what their children would have been if they had
+had any.
+
+Their great source of literature, however, was the Bible. Soon after
+their factory passed out of their control and their evenings ceased to
+be devoted to riddles in finance, they had resolved to read the Bible
+through, "from kiver to kiver." And Eddie and Ellaphine found that a
+chapter read aloud before going to bed was an excellent sedative.
+
+They had not invaded Genesis quite three weeks before the evening when
+it came Eddie's turn to read aloud the astonishing romance of Abram, who
+became Abraham, and of Sarai, who became Sarah. It was very exciting
+when the child was promised to Sarah, though she was "well stricken in
+age." Eddie smiled as he read, "Sarah laughed within herself." But
+Pheeny blushed.
+
+Ellaphine was far from the ninety years of Sarah, but she felt that the
+promise of a son was no laughing matter. These poignant hopes and awful
+denials and perilous adventures are not permitted to be written about or
+printed for respectable eyes. If they are discussed it must be with
+laughing ribaldry.
+
+Even in their solitude Eddie and Pheeny used modest paraphrases and
+breathed hard and looked askance, and made sure that no one overheard.
+They whispered as parents do when their children are abed up-stairs.
+
+The neighbors gave them hardly thought enough to imagine the lofty
+trepidation of these thrilling hours. The neighbors never knew of the
+merciless joke Fate played on them when, in their ignorance, they
+believed the Lord had sent them a sign. They dwelt in a fools' paradise
+for a long time, hoarding their glorious expectations.
+
+At length Pheeny grew brazen enough to consult the old and peevish
+Doctor Noxon; and he laughed her hopes away and informed her that she
+need never trouble herself to hope again.
+
+That was a smashing blow; and they cowered together under the shadow of
+this great denial, each telling the other that it did not matter, since
+children were a nuisance and a danger anyway.
+
+They pretended to take solace in two current village tragedies--the
+death of the mayor's wife in childbed and the death of the minister's
+son in disgrace; but, though they lied to each other lovingly, they were
+neither convincing nor convinced.
+
+
+XI
+
+Year followed year as season trudged at the heel of season. The only
+difference it made to them was that now Ellaphine evicted weeds from the
+petunia-beds, and now swept snow from the porch and beat the broom out
+on the steps; now Eddie carried his umbrella up against the sun or rain
+and mopped his bald spot, and now he wore his galoshes through the slush
+and was afraid he had caught a cold.
+
+The fund in the bank went on growing like a neglected garden, but it was
+growing for nothing. Eddie walked more slowly to and from the office,
+and Pheeny took a longer time to set the table. She had to sit down a
+good deal between trips and suffered a lot of pain. She said nothing
+about it to Eddie of evenings, but it grew harder to conceal her
+weakness from him when he helped her with the Sunday dinner.
+
+Finally she could not walk to church one day and had to stay at home. He
+stayed with her, and their empty pew made a sensation. Eddie fought at
+Pheeny until she consented to see the doctor again--on Monday.
+
+The doctor censured her for being foolish enough to try to die on her
+feet, and demanded of Eddie why they did not keep a hired girl. Eddie
+had never thought of it. He was horrified to realize how heartless and
+negligent he had been. He promised to get one in at once.
+
+Pheeny stormed and wept against the very idea; but her protests ended on
+the morning when she could not get up to cook Eddie's breakfast for him.
+He had to get his own and hers, and he was late at the office for the
+first time in years. Two householders, seeing him going by, looked at
+their clocks and set them back half an hour.
+
+Jabez spoke harshly to Eddie about his tardiness. It would never do to
+ignore an imperfection in the perfect. Eddie was Pheeny's nurse that
+night and overslept in the morning. It would have made him late again if
+he had stopped to fry an egg or boil a cup of coffee. He ran
+breakfastless to his desk.
+
+After that Pheeny consented to the engagement of a cook. They tried five
+or six before they found one who combined the traits of being both
+enduring and endurable.
+
+Eddie was afraid of her to a pitiful degree. She put too much coffee in
+his coffee and she made lighter bread than Pheeny did.
+
+"There's no substance to her biscuits!" Eddie wailed, hoping to comfort
+Pheeny, who had leisure enough now to develop at that late date her
+first acquaintance with jealousy.
+
+
+XII
+
+The cook was young and vigorous, and a hired man on a farm might have
+called her good-looking; but her charms did not interest Eddie. His soul
+was replete with the companionship of his other self--Pheeny; and if
+Delia had been as sumptuous a beauty as Cleopatra he would have been
+still more afraid of her. He had no more desire to possess her than to
+own the Kohinoor.
+
+And Delia, in her turn, was far more interested in the winks and
+flatteries of the grocer's boy and the milkman than in any conquest of
+the fussy little fat man, who ate whatever she slammed before him and
+never raised his eyes.
+
+Pheeny, however, could not imagine this. She could not know how secure
+she was in Eddie's heart, or how she had grown in and about his soul
+until she fairly permeated his being.
+
+So Pheeny lay up in the prison of her bed and imagined vain things,
+interpreting the goings-on down-stairs with a fantastic cynicism that
+would have startled Boccaccio. She did not openly charge Eddie with
+these fancied treacheries. She found him guilty silently and silently
+acquitted him of fault, abjectly asking herself what right she had to
+deny him all acquaintance with beauty, hilarity, and health.
+
+She remembered her mother's eternal moan, "All men are alike." She
+dramatized her poor mouse of a husband as a devastating Don Juan; and
+then forgave him, as most of the victims of Don Juan's ruthless piracies
+forgave him.
+
+She suffered hideously, however. Eddie, seeing the deep, sad look of her
+eyes as they studied him, wondered and wondered, and often asked her
+what the matter was; but she always smiled as a mother smiles at a child
+that is too sweet to punish for any mischief, and she always answered:
+"Nothing! Nothing!" But then she would sigh to the caverns of her soul.
+And sometimes tears would drip from her brimming lids to her pillow.
+Still, she would tell him nothing but "Nothing!"
+
+Finally the long repose repaired her worn-out sinews and she grew well
+enough to move about the house. She prospered on the medicine of a new
+hope that she should soon be well enough to expel the third person who
+made a crowd of their little home.
+
+And then Luella Thickins came back to town. Luella had married long
+before and moved away; but now she came back a widow, handsome instead
+of pretty, billowy instead of willowy, seductive instead of spoony, and
+with that fearsome menace a widow carries like a cloud about her.
+
+Eddie spoke of meeting her "down-town," and in his fatuous innocence
+announced that she was "as pirty as ever." If he had hit Pheeny with a
+hatchet he would have inflicted a less painful wound.
+
+
+XIII
+
+Luella's presence cast Pheeny into a profounder dismay than she had ever
+felt about the cook. After all, Delia was only a hired girl, while
+Luella was an old sweetheart. Delia had put wicked ideas into Eddie's
+head and now Luella would finish him. As Ellaphine's mother had always
+said, "Men have to have novelty."
+
+The Lord Himself had never seen old Mr. Govers stray an inch aside from
+the straight path of fidelity; but his wife had enhanced him with a
+lifelong suspicion that eventually established itself as historical
+fact.
+
+Pheeny could find some excuse for Eddie's Don Juanity with the common
+clay of Delia, especially as she never quite believed her own beliefs in
+that affair; but Luella was different. Luella had been a rival. The
+merest courtesy to Luella was an unpardonable affront to every sacred
+right of successful rivalry.
+
+The submerged bitternesses that had gathered in her soul like bubbles at
+the bottom of a hot kettle came showering upward now, and her heart
+simmered and thrummed, ready to boil over if the heat were not removed.
+
+One day, soon, Luella fastened on Eddie as he left the factory to go
+home to dinner. She had loitered about, hoping to engage the eye of
+Jabez, who was now the most important widower in town. Luella had
+elected him for her next; but he was away, and she whetted her wits on
+Eddie. She walked at his side, excruciating him with her glib memories
+of old times and the mad devotion he had cherished for her then.
+
+He felt that it was unfaithful of him even to listen to her, but he
+could not spur up courage enough to bolt and run. He welcomed the sight
+of his own gate as an asylum of refuge. To his horror, Luella stopped
+and continued her chatter, draping herself in emotional attitudes and
+italicizing her coquetries. Her eyes seemed to drawl languorous words
+that her lips dared not voice; and she committed the heinous offense of
+plucking at Eddie's coat-sleeve and clinging to his hand. Then she
+walked on like an erect cobra.
+
+Eddie's very back had felt that Pheeny was watching him from one of the
+windows or from all the windows; for when, at last, he achieved the rude
+victory of breaking away from Luella and turned toward the porch, every
+window was a somber eye of reproach.
+
+He would not have looked so guilty if he had been guilty. He shuffled
+into the house like a boy who comes home late from swimming; and when he
+called aloud "Pheeny! Oh, Pheeny!" his voice cracked and his throat was
+uncertain with phlegm.
+
+He found Pheeny up-stairs in their room, with the door closed. He
+closed it after him when he went in. He feigned a care-free joy at the
+sight of her, and stumbled over his own foot as he crossed the room and
+put his arms about her, where she sat in the big rocking-chair; but she
+brushed his arms aside and bent her cheek away from his pursed lips.
+This startled him, and he gasped:
+
+"Why, what's the matter, honey? Why don't you kiss me?"
+
+"You don't want to kiss me," she muttered.
+
+"Why don't I?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Because I'm not pirty. I'm not young. I'm not round or tall. I haven't
+got nice clothes or those terrible manners that men like in women.
+You're tired of me. I don't blame you; but you don't have to kiss me,
+and you don't want to."
+
+It was a silly sort of contest for so old a couple; but their souls felt
+as young as childhood, or younger, and this debate was all-important. He
+caught at her again and tried to drag her head to his lips, pleading
+inanely:
+
+"Of course I want to kiss you, honey! Of course I do! Please--please
+don't be this way!"
+
+But she evaded him still, and glared at him as from a great distance,
+sneering rather at herself than him and using that old byword of
+Luella's:
+
+"What can you see in me?" Suddenly she challenged him: "Who do you kiss
+when you kiss me?"
+
+He stared at her for a while as if he were not sure who she was. Then he
+sat down on the broad arm of her chair and took one of her hands in
+his--the hand with the wedding-ring on it--and seemed to talk to the
+hand more than to her, lifting the fingers one after another and
+studying each digit as though it had a separate personality--as perhaps
+it had.
+
+
+XIV
+
+"Who do I kiss when I kiss you? That's a funny question!"
+
+He laughed solemnly. Then he made a very long speech, for him; and she
+listened to it with the attention due to that most fascinating of
+themes, the discussion of oneself by another.
+
+"Pheeny, when I was about knee-high to a grasshopper I went over to play
+in Tim Holdredge's father's orchard; and when I started for home there
+was a big dawg in old Mrs. Pittinger's front yard, and it jumped round
+and barked at me. I guess it was just playing, because, as I remember it
+now, it was wagging its tail, and afterward I found out it was only a
+cocker spaniel; but I thought it was a wolf and was going to eat me. I
+begun to cry, and I was afraid to go backward or to go forward. And by
+and by a little girl came along and asked me what I was crying about,
+and I said, 'About the dawg!' And the little girl said: 'O-oh! He's big,
+ain't he?' And I said, 'He's goin' to eat one of us all up!' And the
+little girl said: 'Aw, don't you care! You take a-holt of my hand and
+I'll run past with you; and if he bites he'll bite me first and you can
+git away!' She was as scared as I was, but she grabbed my hand and we
+got by without being et up. Do you remember who that little girl was?"
+
+The hand in his seemed to remember. The fingers of it closed on his a
+moment, then relaxed as if to listen for more. He mused on:
+
+"I wasn't very big for my size even then, and I wasn't very brave ever.
+I didn't like to fight, like the other boys did, and I used to rather
+take a lickin' than give one. Well, one day I was playin' marbles with
+another boy, and he said I cheated when I won his big taw; but I didn't.
+He wanted to fight, though, and he hit me; and I wouldn't hit back. He
+was smaller than what I was, and he give me a lot of lip and dared me to
+fight; and I just couldn't. He said I was afraid, and so did the other
+boys; and I guess I was. It seemed to me I was more afraid of hurtin'
+somebody else than gettin' hurt myself; but I guess I was just plain
+afraid. The other boys began to push me round and call me a cowardy
+calf, and I began to cry. I wanted to run home, but I was afraid to
+start to run. And then a little girl came along and said: 'What's the
+matter, Eddie? What you cryin' for?' And I said, 'They're all pickin' on
+me and callin' me cowardy calf!' And she said: 'Don't you care! You come
+right along with me; and if one of 'em says another word to you I'll
+scratch their nasty eyes out!' Do you remember that, Pheeny?"
+
+Her other hand came forward and embraced his wrist.
+
+"And another time you found me cryin'. I was a little older, and I'd
+studied hard and tried to get my lessons good; but I failed in the
+exam'nations, and I was goin' to tie a rock round my neck and jump in
+the pond. But you said: 'Aw, don't you care, Eddie! I didn't pass in
+mine, either!'
+
+"And when I wanted to go to college, and Uncle Loren wouldn't send me, I
+didn't cry outside, but I cried inside; and I told you and you said:
+'Don't you care! I don't get to go to boardin'-school myself.'
+
+"And when I was fool enough to think I liked that no-account Luella
+Thickins, and thought I'd go crazy because her wax-doll face wouldn't
+smile for me, you said: 'Don't you care, Eddie! You're much too good for
+her. I think you're the finest man in the country.'
+
+"And when the baby didn't come and I acted like a baby myself, you said:
+'Don't you care, Eddie! Ain't we got each other?'
+
+"Seems like ev'ry time I been ready to lay down and die you've been
+there with your old 'Don't you care! It's going to be all right!'
+
+"Just last night I had a turrible dream. I didn't tell you about it for
+fear it would upset you. I dreamed I got awful sick at the office. I
+couldn't seem to add the figures right and the old desk wabbled. Finally
+I had to leave off and start for home, though it was only a quarter of
+twelve; and I had to set down on Doc Noxon's horse-block and on
+Holdredge's wall to rest; and I couldn't get our gate open. And you run
+out and dragged me in, and got me up-stairs somehow, and sent Delia
+around for the doctor.
+
+"Doc Noxon made you have a trained nurse, but I couldn't stand her; and
+I wouldn't take medicine from anybody but you. I don't suppose I was
+dreamin' more 'n a few minutes, all told; but it seemed like I laid
+there for weeks, till one day Doc Noxon called you out of the room. I
+couldn't hear what he was saying, but I heard you let out one horrible
+scream, and then I heard sounds like he was chokin' you, and you kept
+sayin': 'Oh no! No! No!'
+
+"I tried to go and help you, but I couldn't lift my head. By and by you
+come back, with your eyes all red. Doc Noxon was with you and he called
+the nurse over to him. You come to me and tried to smile; and you said:
+
+"'Well, honey, how are you now?'
+
+"Then I knew what the doctor had told you and I was worse scared than
+when the black dawg jumped at me. I tried to be brave, but I never could
+seem to be. I put out my hands to you and hollered:
+
+"'Pheeny, I'm goin' to die! I know I'm goin' to die! Don't let me go!
+I'm afraid to die!'"
+
+Now the hands clenched his with a frenzy that hurt--but beautifully.
+And he kissed the wedding-ring as he finished:
+
+"And you dropped down to me on the floor by the bed and took my
+hands--just like that. And you whispered: 'Don't you care, honey! I'll
+go with you. Don't you care!'
+
+"And the fever seemed to cool out of me, and I kind of smiled and wasn't
+afraid any more; and I turned my face to you and kissed you--like this,
+Pheeny.
+
+"Why, you've been cryin', haven't you? You mustn't cry--you mustn't! All
+those girls I been tellin' you about are the girl I kiss when I kiss
+you, Pheeny. There couldn't be anybody as beautiful as you are to me.
+
+"I ain't 'mounted to much; but it ain't your fault. I wouldn't have
+'mounted to anything at all if it hadn't been for you, Pheeny; and I
+been the happiest feller in all this world--or I have been up to now.
+I'm awful lonedsome just now. Don't you s'pose you could spare me a
+kiss?"
+
+She spared him one.
+
+Then the cook pounded on the door and called through in a voice that
+threatened to warp the panels: "Ain't you folks ever comin' down to
+dinner? I've rang the bell three times. Everything's all cold!"
+
+But it wasn't. Everything was all warm.
+
+
+
+
+POP
+
+I
+
+
+They made a handsome family group, with just the one necessary element
+of contrast.
+
+Father was the contrast.
+
+They were convened within and about the big three-walled divan which,
+according to the fashion, was backed up against a long library-table in
+what they now called the living-room. It had once been the sitting-room
+and had contained a what-isn't-it and a sofa like an enormous bald
+caterpillar, crowded against the wall so that you could fall off only
+one side of it.
+
+It was a family reunion and unexpected. Father was not convened with the
+rest, but sat off in the shadow and counted the feet sticking out from
+the divan and protruding from the chairs. He counted fourteen feet,
+including his wife's and excluding his own. All the feet were
+expensively shod except his own.
+
+Three of the children had come home for a visit, and father, glad as he
+was to see them, had a vague feeling that they had been brought in by
+some other motive than their loudly proclaimed homesickness. He was
+willing to wait until they disclosed it, for he had an idea what it was
+and he was always glad to postpone a payment. It meant so much less
+interest to lose. Father was a business man.
+
+Father was also dismally computing the addition to the grocery bills,
+the butchery bills, and livery bills, and the others. He was figuring
+out the added expense of the dinner, with roast beef now costing as much
+as peacocks' tongues. He had raised a large family and there was not a
+dyspeptic in the lot--not even a banter.
+
+They had been photographed together the day before and the proof had
+just come home. Father was not in the picture. It was a handsome
+picture. They admitted it themselves. They had urged father to come
+along, but he had pleaded his business, as usual. As they studied the
+picture they would glance across at father and realize how little the
+picture lost by his absence. It lost nothing but the contrast.
+
+While they were engaged each in that most fascinating of
+employments--studying one's own photograph--they were all waiting for
+the dining-room maid to appear like a black-and-white sketch and crisply
+announce that dinner was served. They had not arrived yet at having a
+man. Indeed, that room could still remember when a frowsy, blowsy hired
+girl was wont to stick her head in and groan, "Supper's ready!"
+
+In fact, mother had never been able to live down a memory of the time
+when she used to put her own head in at a humbler dining-room door and
+call with all the anger that cooks up in a cook: "Come on! What we got's
+on the table!" But mother had entirely forgotten the first few months of
+her married life, when she would sing out to father: "Oh, honey, help me
+set the table, will you? I've a surprise for you--something you like!"
+
+This family had evolved along the cycles so many families go
+through--from pin feathers to paradise plumes--only, the male bird had
+failed to improve his feathers or his song, though he never failed to
+bring up the food and keep the nest thatched.
+
+The history of an American family can often be traced by its monuments
+in the names the children call the mother. Mrs. Grout had begun as--just
+one Ma. Eventually they doubled that and progressed from the accent on
+the first to the accent on the second ma. Years later one of the
+inarticulate brats had come home as a collegian in a funny hat, and Mama
+had become Mater. This had lasted until one of the brattines came home
+as a collegienne with a swagger and a funny sweater. And then her Latin
+title was Frenchified to _Mere_--which always gave father a shock; for
+father had been raised on a farm, where only horses' wives were called
+by that name.
+
+Father had been dubbed Pop at an early date. Efforts to change this
+title had been as futile as the terrific endeavors to keep him from
+propping his knife against his plate. He had been browbeaten out of
+using the blade for transportation purposes, but at that point he had
+simply ceased to develop.
+
+Names like Pappah, Pater, and _Pere_ would not cling to him; they fell
+off at once. Pop he was always called to his face, whether he were
+referred to abroad as "the old man," "the governor," or "our dear
+father."
+
+The evolution of the Grout family could be traced still more clearly in
+the names the parents had given the children. The eldest was a daughter,
+though when she grew up she dropped back in the line and became ever so
+much younger than her next younger brothers. She might have fallen still
+farther to the rear if she had not run up against another daughter who
+had her own age to keep down.
+
+The eldest daughter, born in the grim days of early penury, had been
+grimly entitled Julia. The following child, a son, was soberly called by
+his father's given and his mother's maiden names--John Pennock Grout, or
+Jno. P., as his father wrote it.
+
+A year or two later there appeared another hostage. Labeling him was a
+matter of deep concern. John urged his own father's name, William; but
+the mother wafted this away with a gesture of airy disgust. There was a
+hired girl in the kitchen now and mother was reading a good many novels
+between stitches. She debated long and hard while the child waited
+anonymous. At length she ventured on Gerald. She changed that two or
+three times and the boy had a narrow escape from Sylvester. He came
+perilously near to carrying Abelard through an amused world; but she
+harked back to Gerald--which he spelled Jerrold at times.
+
+Then two daughters entered the family in succession and were stamped
+Beatrice--pronounced Bay-ah-treat-she by those who had the time and the
+energy--and Consuelo, which Pop would call Counser-eller.
+
+By this time Julia had grown up and was beginning at finishing-school.
+She soon saw that Julia would never do--never! She had started with a
+handicap, but she caught up with the rest and passed them gracefully by
+ingeniously altering the final _a_ to an _e_, and pronouncing it
+Zheelee.
+
+Her father never could get within hailing distance of the French _j_ and
+_u_, and teetered awkwardly between Jilly and Jelly. He was apt to relax
+sickeningly into plain Julia--especially before folks, when he was
+nervous anyway. Only they did not say "before folks" now; the Grouts
+never said "before folks" now--they said, "In the presence of guests."
+
+By the time the next son came the mother was shamelessly literary enough
+to name him Ethelwolf, which his school companions joyously abbreviated
+to Ethel, overlooking the wolf.
+
+Ethelwolf was the last of the visitors. For by this time _Mere_ had
+accumulated so many absolutely unforgivable grievances against her
+absolutely impossible husband that she felt qualified for that crown of
+comfortable martyrhood, that womanly ideal, "a wife in name only"--and
+only that "for the sake of the children."
+
+By this time the children, too, had acquired grievances against Pop. The
+more refined they grew the coarser-grained he seemed. They could not
+pulverize him in the coffee-mill of criticism. He was as hopeless in
+ideas as in language. It was impossible to make him realize that the
+best is always the cheapest; that fine clothes make fine people; that
+petty economies are death to "the larger flights of the soul"; and that
+parents have no right to have children unless they can give them what
+other people's children have.
+
+If John Grout complained that he was not a millionaire the younger
+Grouts retorted that this was not their fault, but their misfortune; and
+it was "up to Pop" to do the best he could during what _Mere_ was now
+calling their "formative years." The children had liberal ideas,
+artistic and refined ideals; but Pop was forever talking poor, always
+splitting pennies, always dolefully reiterating, "I don't know where the
+money is coming from!"
+
+It was so foolish of him, too--for it always came from somewhere. The
+children went to the best schools, traveled in Europe, wore as good
+clothes as anybody--though they did not admit this, of course, within
+father's hearing, lest it put false notions into his head; and the sons
+made investments that had not yet begun to turn out right.
+
+Parents cannot fool their children long, and the Grout youngsters had
+learned at an early date that Pop always forked over when he was nagged
+into it. Any of the children in trouble could always write or telegraph
+home a "must have," and it was always forthcoming. There usually
+followed a querulous note about "Sorry you have to have so much, but I
+suppose it costs a lot where you are. Make it go as far as you can, for
+I'm a little pinched just now." But this was taken as a mere detail--an
+unfortunate paternal habit.
+
+That was Pop's vice--his only one and about the least attractive of
+vices. It was harrowing to be the children of a miser--for he must have
+a lot hoarded away. His poor talk, his allusions to notes at the bank
+and mortgages and drafts to meet, were just bogies to frighten them with
+and to keep them down.
+
+It was most humiliating for high-spirited children to be so
+misunderstood. Pop lacked refined tastes. It was a harsh thing to say of
+one's parent, but when you came right down to it Pop was a hopeless
+plebeian.
+
+Pop noticed the difference himself. He would have doubted that these
+magnificent youngsters could be his own if that had not implied a
+criticism of his unimpeachable wife. So he gave her all the credit. For
+_Mere_ was different. She was well read; she entertained charmingly; she
+loved good clothes, up-to-the-minute hats; she knew who was who and
+what was what. She was ambitious, progressive. She nearly took up French
+once.
+
+But Pop was shabby. Pop always wore a suit until it glistened and his
+children ridiculed him into a new one. As for wearing evening dress, in
+the words of Gerald they "had to blindfold him and back him into his
+soup-and-fish, even on the night the Italian Opera Company came to
+town."
+
+Pop never could take them anywhere. A vacation was a thing of horror to
+him. It was almost impossible to drag him to a lake or the sea, and it
+was quite impossible to keep him there more than a few days. His
+business always called him home.
+
+And such a business! Dry-goods!--and in a small town.
+
+And such a town, with such a name! To the children who knew their Paris
+and their London, their New York and their Washington, a visit home was
+like a sentence to jail. It was humiliating to make a good impression on
+acquaintances of importance and then have to confess to a home town
+named Waupoos.
+
+People either said, "I beg your pardon!" as if they had not heard it
+right, or they laughed and said, "Honestly?"
+
+The children had tried again and again to pry Pop out of Waupoos, but he
+clung to it like a limpet. He had had opportunities, too, to move his
+business to big cities, but he was afraid to venture. He was fairly sure
+of sustenance in Waupoos so long as he nursed every penny; but he could
+never find the courage to transplant himself to another place.
+
+The worst of his cowardice was that he blamed the children--at least, he
+said he dared not face a year or two of possible loss lest they might
+need something. So he stayed in Waupoos and managed somehow to keep the
+family afloat and the store open.
+
+When _Mere_ revolted and longed for a glimpse of the outer world he
+always advised her to take a trip and have a good time. He always said
+he could afford that much, and he took an interest in seeing that she
+had funds to buy some city clothes with; but he never had funds enough
+to go along.
+
+That was one of mother's grievances. Pop bored her to death at home and
+she wanted to scream every time he mentioned his business--it was so
+selfish of him to talk of that at night when she had so much to tell him
+of the misbehavior of the servants. But, greatly as he annoyed her round
+the house, she cherished an illusion that she would like him in a hotel.
+
+She had tried to get him to read a certain novel--a wonderful book
+mercilessly exposing the curse of modern America; which is the men's
+habit of sticking to their business so closely that they give their poor
+wives no companionship. They leave their poor wives to languish at home
+or to go shopping or gossiping, while they indulge themselves in the
+luxuries of vibration between creditor and debtor.
+
+In this novel, and in several others she could have named, the poor
+wife naturally fell a prey to the fascinations of a handsome devil with
+dark eyes, a motor or two, and no office hours.
+
+_Mere_ often wondered why she herself had not taken up with some
+handsome devil fully equipped for the entertainment of neglected wives.
+
+If she had not been a member of that stanch American womanhood to which
+the glory of the country and its progress are really due, she might have
+startled her husband into realizing too late, as the too-late husbands
+in the novels realized, that a man's business is a side issue and that
+the perpetuation of romance is the main task. Her self-respect was all
+that held _Mere_ to the home; that and--whisper!--the fact that no
+handsome devil with any kind of eyes ever tried to lure her away.
+
+When she reproached Pop and threatened him he refused to be scared. He
+paid his wife that most odious of tributes--a monotonous trust in her
+loyalty and an insulting immunity to jealousy. Almost worse was his
+monotonous loyalty to her and his failure to give her jealousy any
+excuse.
+
+They quarreled incessantly, but the wrangles were not gorgeously
+dramatic charges of intrigue with handsome men or painted women,
+followed by rapturous make-ups. They were quarrels over expenditures,
+extravagances, and voyages.
+
+_Mere_ charged Pop with parsimony and he charged her with recklessness.
+She accused him of trying to tie them down to a village; he accused her
+of trying to drive him to bankruptcy. She demanded to know whether he
+wanted his children to be like children of their neighbors--clerks in
+small stores, starveling tradespeople and wives of little merchants. He
+answered that she was breeding a pack of snobs that despised their
+father and had no mercy on him--and no use for him except as a lemon to
+squeeze dry. She answered with a laugh of scorn that lemon was a good
+word; and he threw up his hands and returned to the shop if the war
+broke out at noon, or slunk up to bed if it followed dinner.
+
+This was the pattern of their daily life. Every night there was a new
+theme, but the duet they built on it ran along the same formulas.
+
+The children sided with _Mere_, of course. In the first place, she was a
+poor, downtrodden woman; in the second, she was their broker. Her job
+was to get them things. They gave her the credit for what she got them.
+They gave Pop no praise for yielding--no credit for extracting somehow
+from the dry-soil of an arid town the money they extracted from him.
+They knew nothing of the myriad little agonies, the ingenuity, the
+tireless attention to detail, the exquisite finesse that make success
+possible in the melee of competition. Their souls were above trade and
+its petty nigglings.
+
+Jno. P., who was now known as J. Pennock, was aiming at a million
+dollars in New York, and his mother was sure that he would get it next
+time if Pop would only raise him a little more money to meet an
+irritating obligation or seize a glittering opportunity. Pop always
+raised the money and J. Pennock always lost it. Yet Pennock was a
+financier and Pop was a village merchant. And now Pen had come home
+unexpectedly. He was showing a great interest in Pop's affairs.
+
+Gerald was home also unexpectedly. He was an artist of the most
+wonderful promise. None of his promises was more wonderful than those he
+made his father to repay just one more loan--to tide him over until he
+sold his next picture; but it never sold, or it sold for a mere song.
+Gerald solaced himself and _Mere_ solaced him for being ahead of his
+time, unappreciated, too good for the public. She thanked Heaven that
+Gerald was a genius, not a salesman. One salesman in the family was
+enough!
+
+And Gerald had beaten Pen home by one train. He had greeted Pen somewhat
+coldly--as if Pen were a trespasser on his side of the street. And when
+it was learned that Julie had telegraphed that she would arrive the next
+day, both the brothers had frowned.
+
+Pop had sighed. He was glad to see his wonderful offspring, but he had
+already put off the grocer and the butcher--and even his life-insurance
+premium--because he had an opportunity by a quick use of cash to obtain
+the bankrupt stock of a rival dealer who had not nursed his pennies as
+Pop had. It was by such purchases that Pop had managed to keep his store
+alive and his brilliant children in funds.
+
+He had temporarily drawn his bank account down to the irreducible
+minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum.
+It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were--Jno.
+P., Jerry, and Julia--all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet
+all of them evidently cherishing an ulterior idea.
+
+He watched them lounging in fashionable awkwardness. They were brilliant
+children. And he was as proud of them as he was afraid of them--and for
+them.
+
+
+II
+
+If the children looked brilliant to Pop he did not reflect their
+refulgence. As they glanced from the photographer's proof to Pop they
+were not impressed. They were not afraid of him or for him.
+
+His bodily arrangement was pitifully gawky; he neither sat erect nor
+lounged--he slumped spineless. Big spectacles were in style now, but
+Pop's big spectacles were just out of it. His face was like a parchment
+that had been left out in the rain and had dried carelessly in deep,
+stiff wrinkles--with the writing washed off.
+
+Ethelwolf, the last born, had no ulterior idea. He always spent his
+monthly allowance by the second Tuesday after the first Monday, and
+sulked through a period of famine and debt until the next month. It was
+now the third Tuesday and he was disposed to sarcasm.
+
+"Look at Pop!" he muttered. "He looks just like the old boy they put in
+the cartoons to represent The Common People."
+
+"He's the Beau Brummel of Waupoos, all right!" said Bayahtreatshe, who
+was soon returning to Wellesley. And Consuelo, who was preparing for
+Vassar, added under her breath, "Mere, can't you steal up on him and
+swipe that already-tied tie?"
+
+Had Pop overheard, he would have made no complaint. He had known the
+time when they had thrown things at him. The reverence of American
+children for their fathers is almost as famous as the meekness of
+American wives before their husbands. Yet it might have hurt Pop a
+little to see Mother shake her head and hear her sigh:
+
+"He's hopeless, children! Do take warning from my misfortune and be
+careful what you marry."
+
+Poor _Mere_ had absolutely forgotten how proud she had been when Johnnie
+Grout came courting her, and how she had extracted a proposal before he
+knew what he was about, and had him at the altar before he was ready to
+support a wife in the style she had been accustomed to hope for. She
+remembered only the dreams he had not brought true, the harsh realities
+of their struggle upward. She had worked and skimped with him then. Now
+she was like a lolling passenger in a jinrikisha, who berates the shabby
+coolie because he stumbles where the roads are rough and sweats where
+they are steep.
+
+Julie spoke up in answer to her mother's word of caution:
+
+"There's one thing better than being careful what you marry--and that's
+not marrying at all!"
+
+The rest of them were used to Julie's views; but Pop, who had paid
+little heed to them, almost collapsed from his chair. Julie went on:
+
+"Men are all alike, Mere. They're very soft-spoken when they come to
+make love; but it's only a bluff to make us give up our freedom. Before
+we know it they drag us up before another man, a preacher, and make us
+swear to love, honor, and obey. They kill the love, make the honor
+impossible, and the obey ridiculous. Then they coop us up at home and
+expect us to let them run the world to suit themselves. They've been
+running it for thousands of years--and look at the botch they've made of
+it! It's time for us to take the helm."
+
+"Go to it, sis," said Ethelwolf. "I care not who makes the laws so long
+as I can break them."
+
+"Let your sister alone!" said _Mere_. "Go on, Julie!"
+
+"I've put it all in the address I read before the Federation last week,"
+said Julie. "It was reported at length in one of the papers. I've got a
+clipping in my handbag here somewhere."
+
+She began to rummage through a little condensed chaos of handkerchiefs,
+gloves, powder-puff, powdery dollar bills, powdery coins, loose bits of
+paper, samples, thread, pins, buttons--everything--every-whichway.
+
+J. Pennock laughed. "Pipe what's going to run the world! Better get a
+few pockets first."
+
+"Don't be a brute, Pen!" said _Mere_.
+
+At last Julie found the clipping she sought and, shaking the powder from
+it, handed it to her mother.
+
+"It's on the strength of this speech that I was elected delegate to the
+international convention at San Francisco," she said.
+
+"You were!" _Mere_ gasped, and Beatrice and Consuelo exclaimed,
+"Ripsnorting!"
+
+"Are you going?" said _Mere_ when she recovered from her awe.
+
+"Well, it's a pretty expensive trip. That's why I came home--to see
+if--Well, we can take that up later. Tell me how you like the speech."
+
+_Mere_ mumbled the report aloud to the delighted audience. Pop heard
+little of it. He was having a chill. It was very like plain ague, but he
+credited it to the terror of Julie's mission home. All she wanted him to
+do was to send her on a little jaunt to San Francisco! The tyrant, as
+usual, was expected to finance the rebellion.
+
+When _Mere_ had finished reading everybody applauded Julie except Pop.
+_Mere_ overheard his silence and rounded on him across the aristocratic
+reading-glass she wielded.
+
+"Did you hear that?"
+
+Pop was so startled that he answered, "Uh-huh!"
+
+"Didn't you think it was splendid?" _Mere_ demanded.
+
+"Uh-huh!" said Pop.
+
+"What didn't you like about it?"
+
+"I liked it all first-rate. Julie is a smart girl, I tell you."
+
+_Mere_ scented his evasion, and she would never tolerate evasions. She
+repeated:
+
+"What didn't you like about it?"
+
+"I liked all I could understand."
+
+"Understand!" snapped _Mere_, who rarely wasted her culture on Pop.
+"What didn't you understand? Could anything be clearer than this?
+Listen!" She read in an oratorical voice:
+
+"'Woman has been for ages man's mere beast of burden, his household
+drudge. Being a wife has meant being a slave--the only servant without
+wages or holiday. But the woman of to-day at last demands that the
+shackles be stricken off; she demands freedom to live her life her own
+way--to express her selfhood without the hampering restrictions imposed
+on her by the barbaric customs inherited from the time of the
+cave-man.'"
+
+_Mere_ folded up the clipping and glared defiance at the cave-man
+slumped in the uneasy chair.
+
+"What's clearer than that?" she reiterated.
+
+Pop was at bay. He was like a desperate rabbit. He answered:
+
+"It's clear enough, I guess; but it's more than I can take in. Seems to
+me the women folks are hollering at the men folks to give 'em what the
+men folks have never been able to get for themselves."
+
+It was peevish. Coming from Pop, it amounted to an outburst, a riot, a
+mutiny. Such a tendency was dangerous. He must be sharply repressed at
+once--as a new servant must be taught her place. _Mere_ administered the
+necessary rebuke, aided and abetted by the daughters. The sons did not
+rally to their father's defense. He was soon reduced to submission, but
+his apology was further irritation:
+
+"I'm kind of rattled like. I ain't feeling as chipper as usual."
+"Chipper" was bad enough, but "ain't" was unendurable! They rebuked him
+for that and he put in another irrelevant plea: "I had a kind of sick
+spell at the store. I had to lay down."
+
+"Lie down!" Beatrice corrected.
+
+"Lie down," he accepted. "But as soon as I laid down--"
+
+"Lay down!"
+
+"Lay down--I had chills and shootin' pains; and I--"
+
+"It's the weather," _Mere_ interrupted, impatiently. "I've had a
+headache all day--such a headache as never was known! It seemed as if
+hammers were beating upon my very brain. It was--"
+
+"I'm not feeling at all well myself," said Consuelo.
+
+There was almost a tournament of rivalry in describing sufferings.
+
+Pop felt as if he had wakened a sleeping hospital. He sank back ashamed
+of his own outburst. He rarely spoke of the few ailments he could
+afford. When he did it was like one of his new clerks pulling a bolt of
+goods from the shelf and bringing down a silken avalanche.
+
+The clinic was interrupted by the crisp voice of Nora: "Dinner is
+served!"
+
+Everybody rose and moved to the door with quiet determination. Pop alone
+failed to rise. _Mere_ glowered at him. He pleaded: "I don't feel very
+good. I guess I'd better leave my stummick rest."
+
+The children protested politely, but he refused to be moved and _Mere_
+decided to humor him.
+
+"Let him alone, children. It won't hurt him to skip a meal."
+
+They said: "Too bad, Pop!"--"You'll be all right soon," and went out and
+forgot him.
+
+Pop heard them chattering briskly. It was polite talk. If slang were
+used it was the very newest. He gleaned that Pen and Gerald were
+opposing Julie's mission to San Francisco on the ground of the expense.
+He smiled bitterly to hear that word from them. He heard Julie's retort:
+
+"I suppose you boys want the money yourselves! Well, I've got first
+havers at Pop. I saw him first!"
+
+At about this point the conversation lost its coherence in Pop's ears.
+It was mingled with a curious buzzing and a dizziness that made him grip
+his chair lest it pitch him to the floor. Chills, in which his bones
+were a mere rattlebox, alternated with little rushes of prairie fire
+across his skin. Throes of pain wrung him.
+
+Also, he was a little afraid--he was afraid he might not be able to get
+to the store in the morning. And important people were coming! He had to
+make the first payment on the invoice of that bankrupt stock. A
+semiannual premium was overdue on his life insurance. The month of grace
+had nearly expired, and if he failed to pay the policy would lapse--now
+of all times! He had kept it up all these years; it must not lapse now,
+for he was going to be right sick. He wanted somebody to nurse him: his
+mother--or that long-lost girl he had married in the far past.
+
+His shoes irked him; his vest--what they wanted called his
+waistcoat--was as tight as a corset. He felt that he would be safer in
+bed. He'd better go up to his own room and stretch out. He rose with
+extraordinary difficulty and negotiated a swimming floor on swaying
+legs.
+
+The laughter from the dining-room irritated him. He would be better off
+up-stairs, where he could not hear it. The noise in his ears was all he
+could stand. He attained the foot of the stairs and the flight of steps
+seemed as long and as misty as Jacob's Ladder. And he was no angel!
+
+The Grouts lingered at dinner and over their black coffee and tobacco
+until it was time to dress for the reception at Mrs. Alvin Mitnick's, at
+which Waupoos society would pass itself in review. The later you got
+there the smarter you were, and most people put off dressing until the
+last possible minute in order to keep themselves from falling asleep
+before it was time to start.
+
+The Grouts, however, were eager to go early and get it over with. They
+loved to trample on Waupoos traditions. As they drifted into the hall
+they found it dark. They shook their heads in dismal recognition of a
+familiar phenomenon, and Ethelwolf groaned:
+
+"Pop has gone up-stairs. You can always trace Pop. Wherever he has
+passed by the lights are out."
+
+"He has figured out that by darkening the halls while we are at dinner
+he saves nearly a cent a day," _Mere_ groaned.
+
+"If Pop were dying he'd turn out a light somewhere because he wouldn't
+need it." And Ethelwolf laughed.
+
+But _Mere_ groaned again: "Can you wonder that I get depressed? Now,
+children, I ask you--"
+
+"Poor old Mere! It's awful!"--"Ghastly!"--"Maddening!"
+
+They gathered round her lovingly, echoing her moans. They started up the
+dark stairway, Consuelo first and turning back to say to Beatrice:
+
+"Pop can cut a penny into more slices than--" Then she screamed and
+started back.
+
+Her agitation went down the stairway through the climbing Grouts like a
+cold breeze. What was it? She looked close. A hand was just visible on
+the floor at the head of the stairs. She had stepped on it.
+
+
+III
+
+Pop had evidently reached the upper hall, when the ruling passion
+burning even through his fever had led him to grope about for the
+electric switch. His last remaining energy had been expended for an
+economy and he had collapsed.
+
+They switched the light on again; they were always switching on currents
+that he switched off--and paid for. They found him lying in a crumpled
+sprawl that was awkward, even for Pop.
+
+They stared at him in bewilderment. They would have said he was drunk;
+but Pop never drank--nor smoked--nor played cards. Perhaps he was dead!
+
+This thought was like a thunderbolt. There was a great thumping in the
+breasts of the Grouts.
+
+Suddenly _Mere_ strode forward, dropped to her knees and put her hand on
+Pop's heart. It was not still--far from that. She placed her cold palm
+on his forehead. His brow was clammy, hot and cold and wet.
+
+"He has a high fever!" she said.
+
+Then, with a curious emotion, she brushed back the scant wet hair;
+closed her eyes and felt in her bosom a sudden ache like the turning of
+a rusty iron. She felt young and afraid--a young wife who finds her man
+wounded.
+
+She looked up and saw standing about her a number of tall ladies and
+gentlemen--important-looking strangers. Then she remembered that they
+had once been nobodies. She felt ashamed before them and she said,
+quickly:
+
+"He's going to be ill. Telephone for the doctor to come right away. And
+you girls get his bed ready. No, you'd better put him in my room--it
+gets the sunlight. And you boys fill the ice-cap--and the hot-water bag
+and--hurry! Hurry!"
+
+The specters vanished. She was alone with her lover. She was drying his
+forehead with her best lace handkerchief and murmuring:
+
+"John honey, what's the matter! Why, honey--why didn't you tell me?"
+
+Then a tall gentleman or two returned and one of them said:
+
+"Better let us get him off the floor, Mere."
+
+And the big sons of the frail little man picked him up and carried him
+into the room and pulled off his elastic congress gaiters, and his coat
+and vest, and his detached cuffs, and his permanently tied tie, and his
+ridiculous collar.
+
+Then _Mere_ put them out, and when the doctor arrived Pop was in bed in
+his best nightshirt.
+
+The doctor made his way up through the little mob of terrified children.
+He found Mrs. Grout vastly agitated and much ashamed of herself. She did
+not wish to look sentimental. She had reached the Indian-summer modesty
+of old married couples.
+
+The doctor went through the usual ritual of pulse-feeling and
+tongue-examining and question-asking, while Pop lay inert, with a little
+thermometer protruding from his mouth like a most inappropriate
+cigarette.
+
+The doctor was uncertain yet whether it were one of the big fevers or
+pneumonia or just a bilious attack. Blood-tests would show; and he
+scraped the lobe of the ear of the unresisting, indifferent old man, and
+took a drop of thin pink fluid on a bit of glass. The doctor tried to
+reassure the panicky family, but his voice was low and important.
+
+
+IV
+
+The brilliant receptions and displays that _Mere_ and the children had
+planned were abandoned without regret. All minor regrets were lost in
+the one big regret for the poor old, worn-out man up-stairs.
+
+There was a dignity about Pop now. The lowliest peasant takes on majesty
+when he is battling for his life and his home.
+
+There was dismay in all the hearts now--dismay at the things they had
+said and the thoughts and sneers; dismay at the future without this
+shabby but unfailing provider.
+
+The proofs of the family photograph lay scattered about the living-room.
+Pop was not there. They had smiled about it before. Now it looked
+ominous! What would become of this family if Pop were not there?
+
+The house was filled with a thick sense of hush like a heavy fog; but
+thoughts seemed to be all the louder in the silence--jumbled thoughts of
+selfish alarm; filial terror; remorse; tenderness; mutual rebuke; dread
+of death, of the future, of the past.
+
+The day nurse and the night nurse were in command of the house. The only
+events were the arrivals of the doctor, his long stops, his whispered
+conferences with the nurses, and the unsatisfactory, evasive answers he
+gave as the family ambushed him at the foot of the stairs on his way
+out.
+
+Meanwhile they could not help Pop in his long wrestle. They had drained
+his strength and bruised his heart while he had his power, and now that
+he needed their help and their youth they could not lend him anything;
+they could not pay a single instalment on the mortgages they had
+incurred.
+
+They could only stand at the door now and then and look in at him. They
+could not beat off one of the invisible vultures of fever and pain that
+hovered over him, swooped, and tore him.
+
+They could not even get word to him--not a message of love or of
+repentance or of hope. His brain was in a turmoil of its own. His white
+lips were muttering delirious nonsense; his soul was fluttering from
+scene to scene and year to year, like a restless dragon-fly. He was
+young; he was old; he was married; he was a bachelor; he was at home;
+he was in his store; he was pondering campaigns of business, slicing
+pennies or making daring purchases; he was retrenching; he was
+advertising; but he was afraid always that he might sink in the bog of
+competition with rival merchants, with creditors, debtors, bankers, with
+his wife, his children, his neighbors, his ideals, his business
+axioms----
+
+"Ain't the moon pirty to-night, honey! Gee! I'm scared of that preacher!
+What do I say when he says, 'Do you take this woman for your'--The
+pay-roll? I can't meet it Saturday. How am I going to meet the pay-roll?
+I don't see how we can sell those goods any cheaper, but we got to get
+rid of 'em. My premium! My premium! I haven't paid my premium! What'll
+become of the children? Three cents a yard--it's robbery! Eight cents a
+yard--that's givin' it away! Don't misunderstand me, Sally. It's my way
+of making love. I can't say pirty things like some folks can, but I can
+think 'em. My premium--the pay-roll--so many children! Couldn't they do
+without that? I ain't a millionaire, you know. Every time I begin to get
+ahead a little seems like one of the children gets sick or in
+trouble--the pay-roll! Three cents a yard--the new invoice--I can't buy
+myself a noo soot. The doctor's bills! I ain't complaining of 'em; but
+I've got to pay 'em! Let me stay home--I'd rather. I've had a hard day.
+My premium! Don't put false notions in their heads! The pay-roll! Don't
+scold me, honey! I got feelings, too. You haven't said a word of love
+to me in years! I'll raise the money somehow. I know I'm close; but
+somebody's got to be--the pay-roll--so many people depending on me. So
+many mouths to feed--the children--all the clerks--the delivery-wagon
+drivers--the advertising bills--the pay-roll--the children! I ain't as
+young as I was--honey, don't scold me!"
+
+The ceaseless babbling grew intolerable. Then it ceased; and the stupor
+that succeeded was worse, for it meant exhaustion. The doctor grew more
+grave. He ceased to talk of hope. He looked ashamed. He tried to throw
+the blame from himself.
+
+And one dreadful day he called the family together in the living-room.
+Once more they were all there--all those expensively shod feet; those
+well-clothed, well-fed bodies. In the chair where Pop had slumped the
+doctor sat upright. He was saying:
+
+"Of course there's always hope. While there's life there's always hope.
+The fever is pretty well gone, but so is the patient. The crisis left
+him drained. You see he has lived this American business man's life--no
+exercise, no vacations, no change. The worst of it is that he seems to
+have given up the fight. You know we doctors can only stand guard
+outside. The patient has to fight it out inside himself. It's a very
+serious sign when the sick man loses interest in the battle. Mr. Grout
+does not rally. His powerful mind has given up."
+
+In spite of themselves there was a general lifting of the brows of
+surprise at the allusion to Pop's poor little footling brain as a
+powerful mind. Perhaps the doctor saw it. He said:
+
+"For it was a powerful mind! Mr. Grout has carried that store of his
+from a little shop to a big institution; he has kept it afloat in a dull
+town through hard times. He has kept his credit good and he has given
+his family wonderful advantages. Look where he has placed you all! He
+was a great man."
+
+When the doctor had gone they began to understand that the town had
+looked upon Pop as a giant of industry, a prodigal of vicarious
+extravagance. They began to feel more keenly still how good a man he
+was. While they were flourishing like orchids in the sun and air, he had
+grubbed in the earth, sinking roots everywhere in search of moisture and
+of sustenance. Through him, things that were lowly and ugly and cheap
+were gathered and transformed and sent aloft as sap to make flowers of
+and color them and give them velvet petals and exquisite perfume.
+
+They gathered silently in his room to watch him. He was white and still,
+hardly breathing, already the overdue chattel of the grave.
+
+They talked of him in whispers, for he did not answer when they praised
+him. He did not move when they caressed him. He was very far away and
+drifting farther.
+
+They spoke of how much they missed him, of how perfect a father he had
+been, competing with one another in regrets and in praise. Back of all
+this belated tribute there was a silent dismay they did not give voice
+to--the keen, immediately personal reasons for regret.
+
+"What will become of us?" they were thinking, each in his or her own
+terrified soul.
+
+"I can't go back to school!"
+
+"This means no college for me!"
+
+"I'll have to stay in this awful town the rest of my life!"
+
+"I can't go to San Francisco! The greatest honor of my life is taken
+from me just as I grasped it."
+
+"I had a commission to paint the portrait of an ambassador at
+Washington--it would have been the making of me! It meant a lot of
+money, too. I came home to ask Pop to stake me to money enough to live
+on until it was finished."
+
+"My business will go to smash! I'll be saddled with debts for the rest
+of my life. If I could have hung on a little longer I'd have reached the
+shore; but the bank wouldn't lend me a cent. Nobody would. I came home
+to ask Pop to raise me some cash. I counted on him. He never failed me
+before."
+
+"What will become of us all?"
+
+There was a stir on the pillow. The still head began to rock, the throat
+to swell, the lips to twitch.
+
+_Mere_ ran to the bedside and knelt by it, laying her hand on the
+forehead. A miracle had been wrought in the very texture of his brow.
+He was whispering something. She put her ear to his lips.
+
+"Yes, honey. What is it? I'm here."
+
+She caught the faint rustling of words. It was as if his hovering soul
+had been eavesdropping on their thoughts. Perhaps it was merely that he
+had learned so well in all these years just what each of them would be
+thinking. For he murmured:
+
+"I've been figuring out--how much the--funeral will cost--you know
+they're awful expensive--funerals are--of course I wouldn't want
+anything fancy--but--well--besides--and I've been thinking the children
+have got to have so many things--I can't afford to--be away from the
+store any longer. I ain't got time to die! I've had vacation enough!
+Where's my clothes at?"
+
+They held him back. But not for long. He was the most irritatingly
+impatient of convalescents. In due course of time the family was
+redistributed about the face of the earth. Ethelwolf was at preparatory
+school; Beatrice and Consuelo were acquiring and lending luster at
+Wellesley and Vassar; Gerald was painting a portrait at Washington; and
+J. Pennock was like a returned Napoleon in Wall Street.
+
+Pop was at his desk in the store. All his employees had gone home. He
+was fretfully twiddling a telegram from San Francisco:
+
+Julie's address sublime please telegraph two hundred more love
+
+MERE.
+
+Pop was remembering the words of the address: "Woman has been for ages
+man's mere beast of burden.... Being a wife has meant being a slave."
+
+Pop could not understand it yet. But he told everybody he met about the
+first three words of the telegram, and added:
+
+"I got the smartest children that ever was and they owe it all to their
+mother, every bit."
+
+
+
+
+BABY TALK
+
+I
+
+
+The wisest thing Prof. Stuart Litton was ever caught at was the thing he
+was most ashamed of. He had begun to accumulate knowledge at an age when
+most boys are learning to fight and to explain at home how they got
+their clothes torn. He wore out spectacles almost as fast as his
+brothers wore out copper-toed boots; but he did not begin to acquire
+wisdom until he was just making forty. Up to that time, if the serpent
+is the standard, Professor Litton was about as wise as an angleworm.
+
+He submerged himself in books for nearly forty years; and then--in the
+words of Leonard Teed--then he "came up for air." This man Teed was the
+complete opposite of Litton. For one thing he was the liveliest young
+student in the university where Litton was the solemnest old professor.
+Teed had scientific ambitions and hated Greek and Latin, which Litton
+felt almost necessary to salvation. Teed regarded Litton and his Latin
+as the sole obstacles to his success in college; and, though Litton was
+too much of a gentle heart to hate anybody, if he could have hated
+anybody it would have been Teed. A girl was concerned in one of their
+earliest encounters, though Litton's share in it was as unromantic as
+possible.
+
+Teed, it seems, had violated one of the rules at Webster University. He
+had chatted with Miss Fannie Newman--a pretty student in the Woman's
+College--after nine o'clock; nay, more, he had sat on a campus bench
+bidding her good night for half an hour, and, with that brilliant
+mathematical mind of his, had selected the bench at the greatest
+possible distance from the smallest cluster of lampposts.
+
+On this account he was haled before the disciplinary committee of the
+faculty. Litton happened to be on that committee. Teed made the best
+fight he could. He showed himself a Greek--in argument at least--and,
+like an old sophist, he tried to prove, first, that he was not on the
+campus with the girl and never had spooned with her; second, that if he
+had been there and had spooned with her it was too dark for them to be
+seen; and third, that he was engaged to the girl, anyway, and had a
+right to spoon with her.
+
+The accusing witness was a janitor whom Teed had played various jokes on
+and had neglected to appease with tips. Teed submitted him to a fierce
+cross-examination; forced him to admit that he could not see the loving
+couple and had identified them solely by their voices. Teed demanded
+the exact words overheard; and, as often happens to the too-ardent
+cross-examiner, he got what he asked for and wished he had not. The
+janitor, blushing at what he remembered, pleaded:
+
+"You don't vant I should say it exectly vat I heered?"
+
+"Exactly!" Teed answered in his iciest tone.
+
+"Vell," the janitor mumbled, "it vas such a foolish talk as--but--vell,
+ven I come by I hear voman's voice says, 'Me loafs oo besser as oo loafs
+me!'"
+
+Teed flushed and the faculty sat forward.
+
+"Den I hear man's voice says,'Oozie-voozie, mezie-vezie--' Must I got to
+tell it all?"
+
+"Go on!" said Teed, grimly; and the old German mopped his brow with
+anguish and snorted with rage: "'Mezie-vezie loafs oozie-voozie
+bestest!'"
+
+The purple-faced members of the faculty were hanging on to their own
+safety-valves to keep from exploding--all save Professor Litton, who
+felt that his hearing must be defective. Teed, fighting in the last
+ditch, said:
+
+"But such language does not prove the identity of the--er--participants.
+You said you knew positively."
+
+The janitor, writhing with disgust and indignation, went on:
+
+"Ven I hear such nonsunse I stop and listen if it is two people escapet
+from de loonatic-houze. And den young voman says, 'It doesn't loaf its
+Fannie-vannie one teeny-veeny mite!' And young man says, 'So sure my
+name is Lennie Teedie-veedie, little Fannie Newman iss de onliest gerl I
+ever loafed!'"
+
+The cross-examiner crumpled up in a chair, while the members of the
+faculty behaved like children bursting with giggles in church--all save
+Litton, who had listened with increasing amazement and now leaned
+forward to demand of the janitor:
+
+"Mr. Kraus, you don't mean to say that two of our students actually
+disgraced this institution with conversation that would be appropriate
+only to a nursery?"
+
+Mr. Kraus thundered: "De talk of dose stoodents vould disgrace de
+nursery! It vas so sickenink I can't forget ut. I try to, but I keep
+rememberink Oozie-voozie! Mezie-vezie!"
+
+Mr. Kraus was excused in a state of hydrophobic rage and Teed withdrew
+in all meekness.
+
+Litton had fallen into a stupor of despair at the futility of learning.
+He remained in a state of coma while the rest of the committee laughed
+over the familiar idiocies and debated a verdict. Two of the professors,
+touched by some reminiscence of romance, voted to ignore the incident as
+a trivial commonplace of youth. Two others, though full of sympathy for
+Teed--Miss Fannie was very pretty--voted for his suspension as a
+necessary example, lest the campus be overrun by duets in lovers' Latin.
+The result was a tie and Litton was roused from his trance to cast the
+deciding vote.
+
+Now Professor Litton had read a vast amount about love. The classics are
+full of its every imaginable version or perversion; but Litton had seen
+it expressed only in the polished phrases of Anacreon, Bion, Propertius,
+and the others. He had not guessed that, however these men polished
+their verses, they doubtless addressed their sweethearts with all the
+imbecility of sincerity.
+
+Litton's own experience gave him little help. In his late youth he had
+thought himself in love twice and had expressed his fiery emotions in a
+Latin epistle, an elegy, and a number of very correct Alcaics. They
+pleased his teacher, but frightened the spectacles off one bookish young
+woman, and drove the other to the arms of a prescription clerk, who knew
+no Latin except what was on his drug bottles.
+
+Litton had thenceforward been wedded to knowledge. He had read nearly
+everything ancient, but he must have forgotten the sentence of Publilius
+Syrus: "Even a god could hardly love and be wise." He felt no mercy in
+his soft heart for the soft-headed Teed. He was a worshiper of language
+for its own sake and cast a vote accordingly.
+
+"I do not question the propriety of the conduct of these young people,"
+he said. "Mr. Teed claims to be engaged to the estimable young woman."
+
+"Ah!" said Professor Mackail, delightedly.
+
+Teed was the brightest pupil in his laboratory and he had voted for
+acquittal. His joy vanished as Professor Litton went on:
+
+"But"--he spoke the word with emphasis--"but waiving all questions of
+propriety, I do feel that we should administer a stinging rebuke to the
+use of such appallingly infantile language by one of our students.
+Surely a man's culture should show itself, above all, in the addresses
+he pays to the young lady of his choice. What vanity to build and
+conduct a great institution of learning, such as this aims to be, and
+then permit one of its pupils to express his regard for a student from
+the Annex in such language as even Mr. Kraus was reluctant to quote:
+'Mezie-wezie loves oozie-woozie bestest!'--if I remember rightly.
+Really, gentlemen, if this is permitted we might as well change the
+university to a kindergarten. For his own sake I vote that Mr. Teed be
+given six months of meditation at home; and I trust that the faculty of
+the Woman's College will have a similar regard for its ideals and the
+welfare of the misguided young woman."
+
+Professor Mackail protested furiously, but his advocacy only embittered
+Litton--for Mackail was the leader of the faction that had tried for
+years to place Webster University in line with others by removing Latin
+and Greek from the position of required studies.
+
+Mackail and his crew pretended that French and German, or science, were
+appropriate substitutes for the classic languages in the case of those
+whose tastes were not scholastic; but to Litton it was a religion that
+no man should be allowed to spend four years in college without at
+least rubbing up against Homer, AEschylos, Vergil, and Horace.
+
+As Litton put it: "No man has a right to an Alma Mater who doesn't know
+what the words mean; and nobody has a right to graduate without knowing
+at least enough Latin to read his own diploma."
+
+This old war had been fought with all the bitterness and professional
+jealousies of scholarship, which rival those of religion and exceed
+those of the stage. For yet a while Litton and his followers had
+vanquished opposition. He little dreamed what he was preparing for
+himself in punishing Teed.
+
+Teed accepted his banishment with poor grace, but a magnificent
+determination to come back and graduate. The effect of his punishment
+was shown when, after six months of rustic meditation, he set out for
+the university, leaving behind him his Fannie, who had been too timid to
+return to the scene of her discomfiture. Teed's good-by words ran
+something like this:
+
+"Bess its ickle heartums! Don't se care! Soonie as Teedle-weedle gets
+graduated he'll get fine job and marry his Fansy-pansy very first sing."
+Then he kissed her "Goo'byjums"--and went back with the face of a
+Regulus returning to be tortured by the enemy.
+
+
+II
+
+Teed had a splendid mind for everything material and modern, but he
+could not and would not master the languages he called dead. His
+mistranslations of the classics were themselves classics. They sent the
+other students into uproars; but Litton saw nothing funny in them. When
+he received Teed's examination papers he marked them with a pitiless
+exactitude.
+
+Teed reached the end of his junior year with a heap of conditions in the
+classics. Litton insisted that he should not be allowed to graduate
+until he cleaned them up. This meant that Teed must tutor all through
+his last vacation or carry double work throughout his senior year--when
+he expected to play some patriotic or Alma-Matriotic football.
+
+Teed had no intention of enduring either of these inconveniences; he
+trusted to fate to inspire him somehow with some scheme for attaining
+his diploma without delay. His future job depended on his diploma--and
+his girl depended on his job.
+
+He did not intend to be kept from either by any ancient authors. He had
+not the faintest idea how he was going to bridge that chasm--but, as he
+wrote his Fansy-pansy, "Love will find the way."
+
+While Teed was taking thought for the beginning of his life-work Litton
+was completing his--or at least he thought he was. With the splendid
+devotion of the scholar he had selected for his contribution to human
+welfare the best possible edition of the work least likely to be read by
+anybody. A firm of publishers had kindly consented to print it--at
+Litton's expense.
+
+Litton would donate a copy to his own university; two or three college
+libraries would purchase copies out of respect to the learned professor;
+and Litton would give away a few more. The rest would stand in an
+undisturbed stack of increasing dust, there to remain unread as long
+perhaps as the myriads of Babylonian classics that Assurbani-pal had
+copied in brick volumes for his great library at Nineveh.
+
+Professor Litton had chosen for his life-work a recension of the
+ponderous epic in forty-eight books that old Nonnus wrote in Egypt, the
+labyrinthine Dionysiaka describing the voyage of Bacchus to India and
+back.
+
+A pretty theme for an old water-drinker who had never tasted wine! But
+Litton toiled over the Greek text, added copious notes as to minute
+variants, appallingly learned prolegomena, an index, and finally an
+English version in prose. He had begun to translate it into hexameters,
+but he feared that he would never live to finish it. It was hard enough
+for a man like Litton to express at all the florid spirit of an author
+whose theme was "the voluptuous phalanxes" of Bacchus' army--"the heroic
+race of such unusual warriors; the shaggy satyrs; the breed of centaurs;
+the tribes of Sileni, whose legs bristle with hair; and the battalions
+of Bassarids."
+
+He had kept at it all these years, however, and it was ready now for the
+eyes of a world that would never see it. He had watched it through the
+compositors' hands, keeping a tireless eye on the infinite nuisance of
+Greek accents. He had read the galley proofs, the page proofs, and now
+at last the black-bordered foundry proofs. He scorned to write the
+bastard "O. K." of approval and wrote, instead, a stately "Imprimatur."
+He placed the proofs in their envelope and sealed it with lips that
+trembled like a priest's when giving an illuminated Gospel a ritual
+kiss.
+
+The hour was late when Professor Litton finished. He stamped the
+brown-paper envelope and went down the steps of the boarding-house that
+had been for years his nearest approach to a home. He left the precious
+envelope on the hall-tree, whence it would be taken to the post-office
+for the first mail.
+
+Feeling the need of a breath of air, he stepped out on the porch. It was
+a spring midnight and the college roofs were wonderful under the
+quivering moon--or _tremulo sub lumine_, as he remembered it. And he
+remembered how Quintus Smyrnaeus had said that the Amazon queen walked
+among her outshone handmaidens, "as when, on the wide heavens, among the
+stars, the divine Selene moves pre-eminent among them all."
+
+He thought of everything in terms of the past; yet, when he heard,
+mingled with the vague murmur of the night, a distant song of befuddled
+collegians, among whose voices Teed's soared pre-eminent above the key,
+he was not pleasantly reminded of the tipsy army of Dionysus. He was
+revolted and, returning to his solitude, closed an indignant door on
+the disgrace.
+
+Poor old Litton! His learning had so frail a connection with the life
+about him! Steeped in the classics and acquainted with the minutest
+details of their texts, he never caught their spirit; never seemed to
+realize that they are classics because their authors were so close to
+life and imbued them with such vitality that time has not yet rendered
+them obsolete.
+
+He had hardly suspected the mischief that is in them. A more innocent
+man could hardly be imagined or one more versed in the lore of evil.
+Persons who believe that what is called immoral literature has a
+debasing effect must overlook such men as Litton. He dwelt among those
+Greek and Roman authors who excelled in exploiting the basest emotions
+and made poems out of putridity.
+
+He read in the original those terrifying pages that nobody has ever
+dared to put into English without paraphrase--the polished infamies of
+Martial; the exquisite atrocities of Theocritus and Catullus. Yet these
+books left him as unsullied as water leaves a duck's back. They infected
+him no more than a medical work gives the doctor that studies it the
+diseases it describes. The appallingly learned Professor Litton was a
+babe in arms compared with many of his pupils, who read little--or with
+the janitor, who read nothing at all.
+
+And now, arrived at a scant forty and looking a neglected fifty,
+short-sighted, stoop-shouldered and absent-minded to a proverb, he cast
+a last fond look at the parcel containing his translation of the Bacchic
+epic and climbed the stairs to his bachelor bedroom, took off his shabby
+garments, and stretched himself out in the illiterate sleep of a tired
+farm-hand.
+
+Just one dream he had--a nightmare in which he read a printed copy of
+his work, and a wrongly accented enclitic stuck out from one of the
+pages like a sore thumb. He woke in a cold sweat, ran to his duplicate
+proofs, found that his text was correct--and went back to bed contented.
+
+Of such things his terrors and his joys had consisted all his years.
+
+
+III
+
+The next morning he felt like a laborer whose factory has closed. Every
+day would be Sunday hereafter until he got another job. In this unwonted
+sloth he dawdled over his porridge, his weak tea, and his morning paper.
+
+Head-lines caught his eyes shouting the familiar name of Joel
+Brown--familiar to the world at large because of the man's tremendous
+success and relentless severity in business. Brown fell in love with one
+of those shy, sly young women who make a business of millionaires. He
+fell out with a thud and his Flossie entered a suit for breach of
+promise, submitting selected letters of Brown's as proofs of his guile
+and of her weak, womanly trust.
+
+The newspapers pounced on them with joy, as cats pounce and purr on
+catnip. The whole country studied Brown's letters with the rapture of
+eavesdropping. Such letters! Such oozing molasses of sentiment! Such
+elephantine coquetry! Joel weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds and
+called himself Little Brownie and Pet Chickie!
+
+This was the literature that the bewildered Litton found in the first
+paper he had read carefully since he came up for air. One of the letters
+ran something like this:
+
+     Angel of the skies! My own Flossie-dovelet! Your Little Brownie has
+     not seenest thee for a whole half a day, and he is pining,
+     starving, famishing, perishing for a word from your blushing
+     liplets. Oh, my Peaches and Cream! Oh, my Sugar Plum! How can your
+     Pet Chickie live the eternity until he claspeths thee again this
+     evening? When can your Brownie-wownie call you all his ownest only
+     one? Ten billion kisses I send you from
+
+                  Your own, owner, ownest
+
+                                       Pet Chickie-Brownie.
+
+       x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
+
+The X's, Flossie explained, indicated kisses--a dozen to an X.
+
+The jury laughed Little Brownie out of court after pinning a
+twenty-five-thousand-dollar verdict to his coat-tail. The nation elected
+him the Pantaloon of the hour and pounded him with bladders and
+slap-sticks.
+
+Professor Litton had heard nothing of the preliminary fanfare of the
+suit. As he read of it now he was too much puzzled to be amused. He
+read with the same incredulity he had felt when he heard the janitor
+quote Teed's remarks to his fiancee. Litton called his landlady's
+attention to the remarkable case. She had been reading it, with greedy
+glee, every morning. She had had such letters herself in her better
+days. She felt sorry for poor Mr. Brown and sorrier for the poor
+professor when he said:
+
+"Poor Mr. Brown must have gone quite insane. Nobody could have built up
+such wealth without brains; yet nobody with brains could have written
+such letters. Ergo, he has lost his brains."
+
+"You'll be late to prayers," was all the landlady said. She treated
+Litton as if he were a half-witted son. And he obeyed her, forsook his
+unfinished tea and hurried away to the chapel. Thence he went to his
+class-room, where Teed achieved some further miracles of mistranslation.
+Litton thought how curious it was that this young man, of whom his
+scientific professor spoke so highly, should have fallen into the same
+delirium of amorous idiocy as the famous plutocrat, Joel Brown.
+
+When the class was dismissed he sank back in his chair by the class-room
+window. It was wide ajar to-day for the first time since winter. April,
+like an early-morning housemaid, was throwing open all the windows of
+the world. Litton felt a delicious lassitude; he was bewildered with
+leisure. A kind of sweet loneliness fell on him. He had made no
+provision for times like these.
+
+He sat back and twiddled his thumbs. His eyes roved lazily about the
+campus. The wind that fluttered the sparse forelock on his overweening
+forehead hummed in his ears. It had a distance in it. It brought soft
+cadences of faint voices from the athletic field. They seemed to come
+from no place nearer than the Athenian Academe.
+
+Along the paths of the campus a few women were sauntering, for the
+students and teachers in the Women's Annex had the privilege of the
+libraries, the laboratories, and lecture-rooms.
+
+Across Litton's field of view passed a figure that caught his eye.
+Absently he followed it as it enlarged with approach. He realized that
+it was Prof. Martha Binley, Ph.D., who taught Greek over there in the
+Annex.
+
+"How well she is looking!" he mused.
+
+The very thought startled him, as if some one had spoken unexpectedly.
+He wondered that he had noticed her appearance. After the window-sill
+blotted her from view he still wondered, dallying comfortably with the
+reverie.
+
+
+IV
+
+There was a knock at his door and in response to his call the door
+opened--and she stood there.
+
+"May I come in?" she said.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Before he knew it some impulse of gallantry hoisted him to his feet. He
+lifted a bundle of archeological reviews from a chair close to his desk
+and waited until she sat down. The chair was nearer his than he
+realized, and as Professor Binley dropped into it she was so close that
+Professor Litton pushed his spectacles up to his forehead.
+
+It was the first time she had seen his eyes except through glasses
+darkly. She noted their color instantly, woman-like. They were not dull,
+either, as she had imagined. A cloying fragrance saluted his nostrils.
+
+"What are the flowers you are wearing, may I ask?" he said. He hardly
+knew a harebell from a peony.
+
+"These are hyacinths," she said. "One of the girls gave them to me. I
+just pinned them on."
+
+"Ah, hyacinths!" he murmured. "Ah yes; I've read so much about them. So
+these are hyacinths! Such a pretty story the Greeks had. You remember
+it, no doubt?"
+
+She said she did; but, schoolmaster that he was, he went right on:
+
+"Apollo loved young Hyacinthus--or Huakinthos, as the Greeks called
+it--and was teaching him to throw the discus, when a jealous breeze blew
+the discus aside. It struck the boy in the forehead. He fell dead, and
+from his blood this flower sprang. The petals, they said, were marked
+with the letters Ai, Ai!--Alas! Alas! And the poet Moschus, you
+remember, in his 'Lament for Bion,' says:
+
+     "Nun huakinthe lalei ta sa grammata kai pleon aiai!
+
+"Or, as I once Englished it--let me see, I put it into hexameters--it
+was a long while ago. Ah, I have it!"
+
+And with the orotund notes a poet assumes when reciting his own words,
+he intoned:
+
+     "Now, little hyacinth, babble thy syllables--louder yet--Aiai!
+     Whimper with all of thy petals; a beautiful singer has perished."
+
+Professor Binley stared at him in amazement and cried: "Charming!
+Beautiful! Your own translation, you say?"
+
+And he, somewhat shaken by her enthusiasm, waved it aside.
+
+"A little exercise of my Freshman year. But to get back to
+our--hyacinths: Theocritus, you remember, speaks of the 'lettered
+hyacinth.' May I see whether we can find the words there?"
+
+He bent forward to take and she bent forward to give the flowers. Her
+hair brushed his forehead with a peculiar influence; and when their
+fingers touched he noted how soft and warm her hand was. He flushed
+strangely. She was flushed a little, too, possibly from
+embarrassment--possibly from the warmth of the day, with its insinuation
+of spring.
+
+He pulled his spectacles over his eyes in a comfortable discomfiture and
+peered at the flowers closely. And she peered, too, breathing foolishly
+fast. When he could not find the living letters he shook his head and
+felt again the soft touch of her hair.
+
+"I can't find the words--can you? Your eyes are brighter than mine."
+
+She bent closer and both their hands held the flowers. He looked down
+into her hair. It struck him that it was a remarkably beautiful idea--a
+woman's hair--especially hers, streaked as it was with white--silken
+silver. When she shook her head a snowy thread tickled his nose
+amusingly.
+
+"I can't find anything like it," she confessed.
+
+Then he said: "I've just remembered. Theocritus calls the hyacinth
+black--_melan_--and so does Vergil. These cannot be hyacinths at all."
+
+He was bitterly disappointed. It would have been delightful to meet the
+flower in the flesh that he knew so well in literature. Doctor Martha
+answered with quiet strength:
+
+"These are hyacinths."
+
+"But the Greeks--"
+
+"Didn't know everything," she said; "or perhaps they referred to another
+flower. But then we have dark-purple hyacinths."
+
+"Ah!" he said. "Sappho speaks of the hyacinth as purple--_porphuron_."
+
+Thus the modern world was reconciled with the Greek and he felt easier;
+but there was a gentle forcefulness about her that surprised him. He
+wondered whether she would not be interested in hearing about his
+edition of Nonnus. He assumed that she would be, being evidently
+intelligent. So he told her. He told her and told her, and she listened
+with almost devout interest. He was still telling her when the students
+in other classes stampeded to lunch with a many-hoofed clatter. When
+they straggled back from lunch he was still telling her.
+
+It was not until he was interrupted by an afternoon class of his own
+that he realized how long he had talked. He apologized to Professor
+Binley; but she said she was honored beyond words. She had come to ask
+him a technical question in prosody, as from one professor to another;
+but she had forgotten it altogether--at least she put it off to another
+visit. She hastened away in a flutter, feeling slightly as if she had
+been to a tryst.
+
+Litton went without his lunch that day, but he was browsing on memories
+of his visitor. He had not talked so long to a woman since he could
+remember. This was the only woman who had let him talk uninterruptedly
+about himself--a very superior woman, everybody said.
+
+When he went to his room that night he was still thinking of hyacinths
+and of her who had brought them to his eyes.
+
+He knocked from his desk a book. It fell open at a page. As he picked it
+up he noted that it was a copy of the anonymous old spring rhapsody, the
+_Pervigilium Veneris_, with its ceaselessly reiterated refrain,
+"To-morrow he shall love who never loved before." As he fell asleep it
+was running through his head like a popular tune: _Cras amet qui nunquam
+amavit; quique amavit cras amet_.
+
+It struck him as an omen; but it did not terrify him.
+
+
+V
+
+Professor Martha called again to ask her question in verse technic. The
+answer led to further talk and the consultation of books. She was a
+trifle nearsighted and too proud to wear glasses, so she had to bend
+close to the page; and her hair tickled his nose again foolishly.
+
+Conference bred conference, and one day she asked him whether she would
+dare ask him to call. He rewarded her bravery by calling. She lived in a
+dormitory, with a parlor for the reception of guests. Male students were
+allowed to call on only two evenings a week. Litton did not call on
+those evenings; yet the fact that he called at all swept through the
+town like a silent thunderbolt. The students were mysteriously apprised
+of the fact that old Professor Litton and Prof. Martha Binley were
+sitting up and taking notice. To the youngsters it looked like a
+flirtation in an old folks' home.
+
+Litton's very digestion was affected; his brain was in a whirl. He was
+the prey of the most childish alarms; gusts of petulant emotion swept
+through him if Martha were late when he called; he was mad with jealousy
+if she mentioned another professor.
+
+She was growing more careful of her appearance. A new youth had come to
+her. She took fifteen years off her looks by simply fluffing her hair
+out of its professorial constriction. Professor Mackail noticed it and
+mentioned to Professor Litton that Professor Binley was looking ever so
+much better.
+
+"She's not half homely for such an old maid!" he said.
+
+Professor Litton felt murder in his heart. He wanted to slay the
+reprobate twice--once for daring to observe Martha's beauty and once for
+his parsimony of praise.
+
+That evening when he called on Martha he was tortured with a sullen
+mood. She finally coaxed from him the astounding admission that he
+suspected her of flirting with Mackail. She was too new in love to
+recognize the ultimate compliment of his distress. She was horrified by
+his distrust, and so hurt that she broke forth in a storm of tears and
+denunciation. Their precious evening ended in a priceless quarrel of
+amazing violence. He stamped down the outer steps as she stamped up the
+inner.
+
+For three days they did not meet and the university wore almost visible
+mourning for its pets. Poor Litton had not known that the human heart
+could suffer such agony. He was fairly burned alive with loneliness and
+resentment--like another Hercules blistering in the shirt of Nessus. And
+Martha was suffering likewise as Jason's second wife was consumed in
+the terrible poisoned robe that Medea sent her.
+
+One evening a hollow-eyed Litton crept up the dormitory steps and asked
+the overjoyed maid for Professor Binley. When she appeared he caught her
+in his arms as if she were a spar and he a drowning sailor. They made up
+like young lovers and swore oaths that they would never quarrel
+again--oaths which, fortunately for the variety of their future
+existence, they found capable of infinite breaking and mending.
+
+Each denied that the other could possibly love each. He decried himself
+as a stupid, ugly old fogy; and she cried him up as the wisest and most
+beautiful and best of men. Since best sounded rather weak, she called
+him the bestest; and he did not charge the impossible word against her
+as he had against Teed. He did not remember that Teed had ever used such
+language. Nobody could ever have used such language, because nobody was
+ever like her!
+
+And when she said that he could not possibly love a homely, scrawny old
+maid like her, he delivered a eulogy that would have struck Aphrodite,
+rising milkily from the sea, as a slight exaggeration. And as for old
+maid, he cried in a curious blending of puerility and scholasticism:
+
+"Old maid, do you say? And has my little Margy-wargles forgotten what
+Sappho said of an old maid? We'd have lost it if some old scholiast on
+the stupid old sophist Hermogenes hadn't happened to quote it to
+explain the word glukumalon--an apple grafted on a quince. Sappho said
+this old maid was like--let me see!--'like the sweet apple that blushes
+on the top of the bough--on the tip of the topmost; and the
+apple-gatherers forgot it--no, they did not forget it; they just could
+not get it!' And that's you, Moggles mine! You're an old maid because
+you've been out of reach of everybody. I can't climb to you; so you're
+going to drop into my arms--aren't you?"
+
+She said she supposed she was. And she did.
+
+Triumphantly he said, "Hadn't we better announce our engagement?"
+
+This threw her into a spasm of fear. "Oh, not yet! Not yet! I'm afraid
+to let the students all know it. A little later--on Commencement Day
+will be time enough."
+
+He bowed to her decision--not for the last time.
+
+For a time Litton had taken pleasure in employing his learning in the
+service of Martha's beauty. He called her classic names--_Meae Deliciae_,
+or _Glukutate_, or _Melema_. A poem that he had always thought the last
+word in silliness became a modest expression of his own emotions--the
+poem in which Catallus begs Lesbia, "Give me a thousand kisses, then a
+hundred, then a thousand more, then a second hundred; then, when we have
+made up thousands galore, we shall mix them up so that we shall not
+know--nor any enemy be able to cast a spell because he knows--how many
+kisses there are."
+
+His scholarship began to weary her, however, and it began to seem an
+affectation to him; so that he was soon mangling the English language in
+speech and in the frequent notes he found it necessary to send his idol
+on infinitely unimportant matters that could not wait from after lunch
+to after dinner.
+
+She coined phrases for him, too, and his heart rejoiced when she
+achieved the epoch-making revision of Stuart into Stookie-tookie! He had
+thought that Toodie was wonderful, but it was a mere stepping-stone to
+Stookie-tookie.
+
+Her babble ran through his head like music, and it softened his heart,
+so that almost nothing could bring him to earth except the recitations
+of Teed, who crashed through the classics like a bull in a china-shop
+or, as Litton's Greeks put it, like an ass among beehives.
+
+During those black days when Litton had quarreled with Martha he had
+fiercely reminded Teed that only a month remained before his final
+examinations, and warned him that he would hold him strictly to account.
+No classics, no diploma!
+
+Teed had sulked and moped while Litton sulked and moped; but when Litton
+was reconciled to Martha the sun seemed to come out on Teed's clouded
+world, too. He took a sudden extra interest in his electrical studies
+and obtained permission to work in the laboratory overtime. He obtained
+permission even to visit the big city for certain apparatus. And he
+wrote the despondent, distant Fannie Newman that there would "shortly
+be something doing in the classics."
+
+
+VI
+
+One afternoon Professor Litton, having dismissed his class--in which he
+was obliged to rebuke Teed more severely than usual--fell to remembering
+his last communion with Martha, the things he had said--and heard! He
+wondered, as a philologist, at the strange prevalence of the "oo" sound
+in his love-making. It was plainly an onomatopoeic word representing
+the soul's delight. Oo! was what Ah! is to the soul in exaltation and
+Oh! to the soul in surprise. If the hyacinths babbled _Ai, Ai!_ the
+roses must murmur Oo! Oo!
+
+The more he thought it over, the more nonsense it became, as all words
+turn to drivel on repetition; but chiefly he was amazed that even love
+could have wrought this change in him. In his distress he happened to
+think of Dean Swift. Had not that fierce satirist created a dialect of
+his own for his everlastingly mysterious love affairs?
+
+Eager for the comfort of fellowship in disgrace he hurried to the
+library and sought out the works of the Dean of St. Patrick's. And in
+the "Journal to Stella" he found what he sought--and more. Expressions
+of the most appalling coarseness alternated with the most insipid
+tendernesses.
+
+The old dean had a code of abbreviations: M.D. for "My dear," Ppt. for
+"Poppet," Pdfr. for "Poor dear foolish rogue," Oo or zoo or loo stood
+for "you," Deelest for "Dearest," and Rettle for "Letter," and Dallars
+for "Girl," Vely for "Very," and Hele and Lele for "Here and there."
+Litton copied out for his own comfort and Martha's this passage.
+
+     Do you know what? When I am writing in my own language I make up my
+     mouth just as if I was speaking it: "Zoo must cly Lele and Hele,
+     and Hele aden. Must loo mimitate Pdfr., pay? Iss, and so la shall!
+     And so leles fol ee rettle. Dood mollow."
+
+And Dean Swift had written this while he was in London two hundred years
+before, a great man among great men. With such authority back of him
+Litton returned to his empty class-room feeling as proud as Gulliver in
+Lilliput. A little later he was Gulliver in Brobdingnag.
+
+Alone at his desk, with none of his students in the seats before him, he
+took from his pocket--his left pocket--a photograph of Prof. Martha
+Binley. It had been taken one day on a picnic far from the spying eyes
+of pupils. Her hair was all wind-blown, her eyes frowned gleamingly into
+the sun, and her mouth was curled with laughter.
+
+He sat there alone--the learned professor--and talked to this snapshot
+in a dialogue he would have recently accepted as a perfect examination
+paper for matriculation in an insane-asylum.
+
+"Well, Margy-wargy, zoo and Stookie-tookie is dust like old Dean
+Swiffikins, isn't we?"
+
+There was a rap on the door and the knob turned as he shot the
+photograph into his pocket and pretended to be reading a volume of
+Bacchylides--upside down. The intruder was Teed. Litton was too much
+startled and too throbbing with guilt to express his indignation. He
+stammered:
+
+"We-well, Teed?" He almost called him teed-leums, his tongue had so
+caught the rhythm of love.
+
+Teed came forward with an ominous self-confidence bordering on
+insolence. There was a glow in his eye that made his former tyrant
+quail.
+
+"Professor, I'd like a word with you about those conditions. I wish
+you'd let me off on 'em."
+
+"Let you off, T-Teed?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I can't get ready for the exams. I've boned until my skull's
+cracked and it lets the blamed stuff run out faster than I can cram it
+in. The minute I leave college I expect to forget everything I've
+learned here, anyway; so I'd be ever so much obliged if you'd just pass
+me along."
+
+"I don't think I quite comprehend," said Litton, who was beginning to
+regain his pedagogical dignity.
+
+"All you've gotta do," said Teed, "is to put a high enough mark on my
+papers. You gimme a special examination and I'll make the best stab I
+can at answering the questions; then you just shut one eye and mark it
+just over the failure line. That'll save you a lot o' time and fix me
+hunky-dory."
+
+Litton was glaring at him, hearing the uncouth "gimme" and "gotta," and
+wondering that a man could spend four years in college and scrape off
+so little paint. Then he began to realize the meaning of Teed's
+proposal. His own honor was in traffic. He groaned in suffocation:
+
+"Do you dare to ask me to put false marks on examination-papers, sir?"
+
+"Aw, Professor, what's the dif? You couldn't grind Latin and Greek into
+me with a steel-rolling machine. Gimme a chance! There's a little girl
+waiting for me outside and a big job. I can't get one without the
+other--and I don't get either unless you folks slip me the sheepskin."
+
+"Impossible, sir! Astounding! Insulting! Impossible!"
+
+"Have a heart, can't you?"
+
+"Leave the room, sir, at once!"
+
+"All right!" Teed sighed, and turned away. At the door he paused to
+murmur, "All right for you, Stookie-tookie!"
+
+Litton's spectacles almost exploded from his nose.
+
+"What's that?" he shrieked.
+
+Teed turned and came back, with an intolerable smirk, straight to the
+desk. He leaned on it with odious familiarity and grinned.
+
+"Say, Prof, did you ever hear of the dictagraph?"
+
+"No! And I don't care to now."
+
+"You ought to read some of the modern languages, Prof! Dictagraph comes
+from two perfectly good Latin words: dictum and graft--well, you'll know
+'em. But the Greeks weren't wise to this little device. I got part of it
+here."
+
+He took from his pocket the earpiece of the familiar engine of
+latter-day detective romance. He explained it to the horribly fascinated
+Litton, whose hair stood on end and whose voice stuck in his throat in
+the best Vergilian manner. Before he quite understood its black magic
+Litton suspected the infernal purpose it had been put to. His wrath had
+melted to a sickening fear when Teed reached the conclusion of his
+uninterrupted discourse:
+
+"The other night I was calling on a pair of girls at the dormitory where
+your--where Professor Binley lives. They pointed out the sofa near the
+fireplace where you and the professoress sit and hold hands and make
+googoo eyes."
+
+There was that awful "oo" sound again! Litton was in an icy
+perspiration; but he was even more afraid for his beloved, precious
+sweetheart than for himself--and that was being about as much afraid as
+there is. Teed went on relentlessly, gloating like a satyric mask:
+
+"Well, I had an idea, and the girls fell for it with a yip of joy. The
+next evening I called I carried a wire from my room across to that
+dormitory and nobody paid any attention while I brought it through a
+window and under the carpet to the back of the sofa. And there it
+waited, laying for you. And over at my digs I had it attached to a
+phonograph by a little invention of my own.
+
+"Gosh! It was wonderful! It even repeated the creak of those old, rusty
+springs while you waited for her. And when she came--well, anyway, I
+got every word you said, engraved in wax, like one of those old poets of
+yours used to write on."
+
+Litton was afraid to ask evidence in verification. Teed supplied the
+unspoken demand:
+
+"For instance, the first thing she says to you is: 'Oh, there you are,
+my little lover! I thought you'd never come!' And you says, 'Did it miss
+its stupid old Stookie?' And she says: 'Hideously! Sit down, honey
+heart.' And splung went the spring--and splung again! Then she says:
+'Did it have a mis'ble day in hateful old class-room? Put its boo'ful
+head on Margy-wargy's shojer.' Then you says--"
+
+"Stop!" Litton cried, raising the only missile he could find, an
+inkstand. "Who knows of this infamy besides you?"
+
+"Nobody yet--on my word of honor."
+
+"Honor!" sneered Litton, so savagely that Teed's shameless leer vanished
+in a glare of anger.
+
+"Nobody yet! The girls are dying to hear and some of the fellows knew
+what I was up to; but I was thinking that I'd tell 'em that the blamed
+thing didn't work, provided--provided--"
+
+"Provided?" Litton wailed, miserably.
+
+"Provided you could see your way clear to being a little careless with
+your marks on my exam-papers."
+
+Litton sat with his head whirling and roaring like a coffee-grinder. A
+multitude of considerations ran through and were crushed into
+powder--his honor; her honor; the standards of the university; the
+standards of a lover; the unimportance of Teed; the all-importance of
+Martha; the secret disloyalty to the faculty; the open disloyalty to his
+best-beloved. He heard Teed's voice as from far off:
+
+"Of course, if you can't see your way to sparing my sweetheart's
+feelings I don't see why I'm expected to spare yours--or to lie to the
+fellows and girls who are perishing to hear how two professors talk when
+they're in love."
+
+Another long pause. Then the artful Teed moved to the door and turned
+the knob. Litton could not speak; but he threw a look that was like a
+grappling-iron and Teed came back.
+
+"How do I know," Litton moaned, "how do I know that you will keep your
+word?"
+
+"How do I know that you'll keep yours?" Teed replied, with the insolence
+of a conqueror.
+
+"Sir!" Litton flared, but weakly, like a sick candle.
+
+"Well," Teed drawled, "I'll bring you the cylinders. I'll have to trust
+you, as one gentleman to another."
+
+"Gentleman!" Litton snarled in hydrophobic frenzy.
+
+"Well, as one lover to another, then," Teed laughed. "Do I get my
+diploma?"
+
+Litton's head was so heavy he could not nod it.
+
+"It's my diploma in exchange for your records. Come on, Professor--be a
+sport! And take it from me, it's no fun having the words you whisper in
+a girl's ear in the dark shouted out loud in the open court. And mine
+were repeated in a Dutch dialect! I got yours just as they came from
+your lips--and hers."
+
+That ended it. Litton surrendered, passed himself under the yoke;
+pledged himself to the loathsome compact, and Teed went to fetch the
+price of his degree of Bachelor of Arts.
+
+Litton hung dejected beyond feeling for a long while. His heart was
+whimpering _Ai, Ai!_ He felt himself crushed under a hundred different
+crimes. He felt that he could never look up again. Then he heard a soft
+tap at the door. He could not raise his eyes or his voice. He heard the
+door open and supposed it was Teed bringing him the wages of his shame;
+but he heard another voice--an unimaginably beautiful, tragically tender
+voice--crooning:
+
+"Oo-oo! Stookie-tookie!"
+
+He looked up. How radiant she was! He could only sigh. She came across
+to him as gracefully and lightly as Iris running down a rainbow. She was
+murmuring:
+
+"I just had to slip over and tell you something."
+
+"Well, Martha!" he sighed.
+
+She stopped short, as if he had struck her.
+
+"'Martha'? What's the matter? You aren't mad at me, are you, Stookie?"
+
+"How could I be angry with you, Marg--er--Martha?"
+
+"Then why don't you call me Margy-wargleums?"
+
+He stared at her. Her whimsical smile, trembling to a piteously pretty
+hint of terror, overwhelmed him. He hesitated, then shoved back his
+chair and, rising, caught her to him so tightly that she gasped out,
+"Oo!" There it was again! He laughed like an overgrown cub as he cried:
+
+"Why don't I call you Margy-wargleums? Well, what a darned fool I'd be
+not to! Margy-wargleums!"
+
+To such ruin does love--the blind, the lawless, the illiterate
+child--bring the noblest intelligences and the loftiest principles.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUTH OF THE GIFT HORSE
+
+I
+
+
+The town of Wakefield was--is--suffering from growing pains--from
+ingrowing pains, according to its rival, Gatesville.
+
+Wakefield has long been guilty of trying to add a cubit to its stature
+by taking thought. Established, like thousands of other pools left in
+the prairies by that tidal wave of humanity sweeping westward in the
+middle of the last century, it passed its tenth thousand with a rush;
+then something happened.
+
+For decades the decennial census dismally tolled the same knell of
+fifteen thousand in round numbers. The annual censuses but echoed the
+reverberations. A few more cases of measles one year, and the population
+lapsed a little below the mark; an easy winter, and it slipped a little
+above. No mandragora of bad times or bad health ever quite brought it so
+low as fourteen thousand. No fever of prosperity ever sent the
+temperature quite so high as sixteen thousand.
+
+The iteration got on people's nerves till a commercial association was
+formed under the name of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club, with a motto of
+"Boom or Bust." Many individuals accomplished the latter, but the town
+still failed of the former. The chief activity of the club was in the
+line of decoying manufacturers over into Macedonia by various bribes.
+
+Its first capture was a cutlery company in another city. Though
+apparently prosperous, it had fallen foul of the times, and its
+president adroitly allowed the Wide-a-Wakefield Club to learn that, if a
+building of sufficient size were offered rent free for a term of years,
+the cutlery company might be induced to move to Wakefield and conduct
+its business there, employing at least a hundred laborers, year in, year
+out.
+
+There was not in all Wakefield a citizen too dull to see the individual
+and collective advantage of this hundred increase. It meant money
+in the pocket of every doctor, lawyer, merchant, clothier,
+boarding-house-keeper, saloon-keeper, soda-water-vender--whom not?
+
+Every establishment in town would profit, from the sanatorium to the
+"pantatorium"--as the institution for the replenishment of trousers was
+elegantly styled.
+
+Commercial fervor rose to such heights in Wakefield that in no time at
+all enough money was subscribed to build a convenient factory and to
+purchase as many of the shares of cutlery stock as the amiable president
+cared to print. In due season the manufacture of tableware and penknives
+began, and the pride of the town was set aglow by the trade-mark
+stamped on every article issued from the cutlery factory. It was an
+ingenious emblem--a glorious Cupid in a sash marked "Wakefield,"
+stabbing a miserable Cupid in a sash marked "Sheffield."
+
+It was Sheffield that survived. In fact, the stupid English city
+probably never heard of the Wakefield Cutlery Company. Nor did Wakefield
+hear of it long. For the emery dust soon ceased to glisten in the air
+and the steel died of a distemper.
+
+It was a very real shock to Wakefield, and many a boy that had been
+meant for college went into his father's store instead, and many a girl
+who had planned to go East to be polished stayed at home and polished
+her mother's plates and pans, because the family funds had been invested
+in the steel-engravings of the cutlery stock certificates. They were
+very handsome engravings.
+
+Hope languished in Wakefield until a company from Kenosha consented to
+transport its entire industry thither if it could receive a building
+rent free. It was proffered, and it accepted, the cutlery works. For a
+season the neighboring streets were acrid with the aroma of the
+passionate pickles that were bottled there. And then its briny deeps
+ceased to swim with knobby condiments. A tin-foil company abode awhile,
+and yet again a tamale-canning corporation, which in its turn sailed on
+to the Sargasso Sea of missing industries.
+
+Other factory buildings in Wakefield fared likewise. They were but
+lodging-houses for transient failures. The population swung with the
+tide, but always at anchor. The lift which the census received from an
+artificial-flower company, employing seventy-five hands, was canceled by
+the demise of a more redolent pork-packing concern of equal pay-roll.
+People missed it when the wind blew from the west.
+
+But Wakefield hoped on. One day the executive committee of the
+Wide-a-Wakefield Club, having nothing else to do, met in executive
+session. There were various propositions to consider. All of them were
+written on letter-heads of the highest school of commercial art, and all
+of them promised to endow Wakefield with some epoch-making advantage,
+provided merely that Wakefield furnish a building rent free, tax free,
+water free, and subscribe to a certain amount of stock.
+
+The club regarded these glittering baits with that cold and clammy gaze
+with which an aged trout of many-scarred gills peruses some newfangled
+spoon.
+
+But if these letters were tabled with suspicion because they offered too
+much for too little, what hospitality could be expected for a letter
+which offered still more for still less? The chairman of the committee
+was Ansel K. Pettibone, whose sign-board announced him as a "practical
+house-painter and paper-hanger." He read this letter, head-lines and
+all:
+
+MARK A. SHELBY     JOHN R. SHELBY     LUKE B. SHELBY
+
+SHELBY PARADISE POWDER COMPANY
+
+SPRINGFIELD, MASS., U. S. A.
+
+MAKES WASHDAY WELCOME.     SIDESTEP SUBSTITUTES.
+WIDE-A-WAKEFIELD CLUB, Wakefield:
+
+     DEAR SIRS,--The undersigned was born in your city, and left same
+     about twenty years ago to seek his fortune. I have finally found it
+     after many ups and downs. Us three brothers have jointly perfected
+     and patented the famous Paradise Powder. It is generally conceded
+     to be the grandest thing of its kind ever put on the market, and,
+     in the words of the motto, "Makes Washday Welcome." Ladies who have
+     used it agree that our statement is not excessive when we say,
+     "Once tried, you will use no other."
+
+     It is selling at such a rate in the East that I have a personal
+     profit of two thousand dollars a week. We intend to push it in the
+     West, and we were talking of where would be the best place to
+     locate a branch factory at. My brothers mentioned Chicago, St.
+     Louis, Omaha, Denver, and such places, but I said, "I vote for
+     Wakefield." My brothers said I was cracked. I says maybe I am, but
+     I'm going back to my old home town and spend the rest of my life
+     there and my surplus money, too. I want to beautify Wakefield, and
+     as near as I can remember there is room for improvement. It may not
+     be good business, but it is what I want to do. And also what I want
+     to know is, can I rely on the co-operation of the Wide-a-Wakefield
+     Club in doing its share to build up the old town into a genuine
+     metropolis? Also, what would be the probable cost of a desirable
+     site for the factory?
+
+     Hoping to receive a favorable reply from you at your earliest
+     convenience,
+                                         Yours truly,
+                                                       LUKE B. SHELBY.
+
+The chairman's grin had grown wider as he read and read. When he had
+finished the letter he tossed it along the line. Every member read it
+and shook with equal laughter.
+
+"I wonder what kind of green goods he sells?" said Joel Spate, the owner
+of the Bon-Ton Grocery.
+
+"My father used to say to me," said Forshay, of the One-Price Emporium,
+"whatever else you do, Jake, always suspicion the fellow that offers you
+something for nothing. There's a nigger in the woodpile some'eres."
+
+"That's so," said Soyer, the swell tailor, who was strong on second
+thought.
+
+"He says he's goin' to set up a factory here, but he don't ask for rent
+free, tax free, light free--nothin' free," said the practical
+house-painter.
+
+"What's the name again?" said Spate.
+
+"Shelby--Luke B. Shelby," answered Pettibone. "Says he used to live here
+twenty years ago. Ever hear of him? I never did."
+
+Spate's voice came from an ambush of spectacles and whiskers: "I've
+lived here all m' life--I'm sixty-three next month. I don't remember any
+such man or boy."
+
+"Me, neither," echoed Soyer, "and I'm here going on thirty-five year."
+
+The heads shook along the line as if a wind had passed over a row of
+wheat.
+
+"It's some new dodge for sellin' stock," suspicioned One-Price Forshay,
+who had a large collection of cutlery certificates.
+
+"More likely it's just a scheme to get us talking about his Paradise
+Powder. Seems to me I've had some of their circulars," said Bon-Ton
+Spate.
+
+Pettibone, the practical chairman, silenced the gossip with a brisk,
+"What is the pleasure of the meeting as regards answering it?"
+
+"I move we lay it on the table," said Eberhart of the Furniture Palace.
+
+"I move we lay it under the table," said Forshay, who had a keen sense
+of humor.
+
+"Order, gentlemen! Order," rapped Pettibone, as the room rocked with the
+laughter in which Forshay led.
+
+When sobriety was restored it was moved, seconded, and passed that the
+secretary be instructed to send Shelby a copy of the boom number of the
+Wakefield _Daily Eagle_.
+
+And in due time the homesick Ulysses, waiting a welcome from Ithaca,
+received this answer to his letter:
+
+     LUKE B. SHELBY, Springfield, Mass.
+
+     SIR,--Yours of sixteenth inst. rec'd and contents noted. In reply
+     to same, beg to state are sending last special number _Daily
+     Eagle_, giving full information about city and sites.
+
+                                              Yours truly,
+
+                                        JOEL SPATE, _Secy. Exec. Comm._
+
+Shelby winced. The hand he had held out with pearls of price had been
+brushed aside. His brothers laughed.
+
+"We said you were cracked. They don't want your old money or your
+society. Go somewheres where they do."
+
+But Luke B. Shelby had won his success by refusing to be denied, and he
+had set his heart on refurbishing his old home town. The instinct of
+place is stronger than any other instinct in some animals, and Shelby
+was homesick for Wakefield--not for anybody, any house, or any street in
+particular there, but just for Wakefield.
+
+Without further ado he packed his things and went.
+
+
+II
+
+There was no brass band to meet him. At the hotel the clerk read his
+name without emotion. When he required the best two rooms in the hotel,
+and a bath at that, the clerk looked suspicious:
+
+"Any baggage?"
+
+"Three trunks and a grip."
+
+"What line do you carry? Will you use the sample-room?"
+
+"Don't carry any line. Don't want any sample-room."
+
+He walked out to see the town. It had so much the same look that it
+seemed to have been embalmed. Here were the old stores, the old signs,
+apparently the same fly-specked wares in the windows.
+
+He read Doctor Barnby's rusty shingle. Wasn't that the same swaybacked
+horse dozing at the hitching-post?
+
+Here was the rough hill road where he used to coast as a child. There
+stood Mrs. Hooker on the lawn with a hose, sprinkling the street, the
+trees, the grass, the oleander in its tub and the moon-flower on the
+porch. He seemed to have left her twenty years ago in that attitude with
+the same arch of water springing from the nozzle.
+
+He paused before the same gap-toothed street-crossing of yore, and he
+started across it as across the stepping-stones of a dry stream. A
+raw-boned horse whirled around the corner, just avoiding his toes. It
+was followed by a bouncing grocery-wagon on the side of whose seat
+dangled a shirt-sleeved youth who might have been Shelby himself a score
+of years ago.
+
+Shelby paused to watch. The horse drew up at the home of Doctor
+Stillwell, the dentist. Before the wagon was at rest the delivery-boy
+was off and half-way around the side of the house. Mrs. Stillwell opened
+the screen door to take in the carrots and soap and washing-powder
+Shelby used to bring her. Shelby remembered that she used washing-powder
+then. He wondered if she had heard of the "Paradise."
+
+As he hung poised on a brink of memory the screen door flapped shut, the
+grocery-boy was hurrying back, the horse was moving away, and the boy
+leaped to his side-saddle seat on the wagon while it was in motion. The
+delivery-wagons and their Jehus were the only things that moved fast in
+Wakefield, now as then.
+
+Shelby drifted back to the main street and found the Bon-Ton Grocery
+where it had been when he deserted the wagon. The same old vegetables
+seemed to be sprawling outside. The same flies were avid at the
+strawberry-boxes, which, he felt sure, the grocer's wife had arranged as
+always, with the biggest on top. He knew that some Mrs. Spate had so
+distributed them, if it were not the same who had hectored him, for old
+Spate had a habit of marrying again. His wives lasted hardly so long as
+his hard-driven horses.
+
+Shelby paused to price some of the vegetables, just to draw Spate into
+conversation. The old man was all spectacles and whiskers, as he had
+always been. Shelby thought he must have been born with spectacles and
+whiskers.
+
+Joel Spate, never dreaming who Shelby was, was gracious to him for the
+first time in history. He evidently looked upon Shelby as a new-comer
+who might be pre-empted for a regular customer before Mrs. L. Bowers,
+the rival grocer, got him. It somehow hurt Shelby's homesick heart to be
+unrecognized, more than it pleased him to enjoy time's topsy-turvy. Here
+he was, returned rich and powerful, to patronize the taskmaster who had
+worked him hard and paid him harder in the old years. Yet he dared not
+proclaim himself and take his revenge.
+
+He ended the interview by buying a few of the grocer's horrible cigars,
+which he gave away to the hotel porter later.
+
+All round the town Shelby wandered, trying to be recognized. But age and
+prosperity had altered him beyond recall, though he himself knew almost
+every old negro whitewash man, almost every teamster, he met. He was
+surer of the first names than of the last, for the first names had been
+most used in his day, and it surprised him to find how clearly he
+recalled these names and faces, though late acquaintances escaped his
+memory with ease.
+
+The women, too, he could generally place, though many who had been
+short-skirted tomboys were now heavy-footed matrons of embonpoint with
+children at their skirts, children as old as they themselves had been
+when he knew them. Some of them, indeed, he recognized only by the
+children that lagged alongside like early duplicates.
+
+As he sauntered one street of homely homes redeemed by the opulence of
+their foliage, he saw coming his way a woman whose outlines seemed but
+the enlargement of some photograph in the gallery of remembrance. Before
+she reached him he identified Phoebe Carew.
+
+Her mother, he remembered, had been widowed early and had eked out a
+meager income by making chocolate fudge, which the little girl peddled
+about town on Saturday afternoons. And now the child, though she must be
+thirty or thereabouts, had kept a certain grace of her youth, a wistful
+prettiness, a girlish unmarriedness, that marked her as an old maid by
+accident or choice, not by nature's decree.
+
+He wondered if she, at least, would pay him the compliment of
+recognition. She made no sign of it as she approached. As she passed he
+lifted his hat.
+
+"Isn't this Miss Phoebe Carew?"
+
+Wakefield women were not in danger from strangers' advances; she paused
+without alarm and answered with an inquiring smile:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't remember me?"
+
+She studied him. "I seem to, and yet--"
+
+"I'm Luke Shelby."
+
+"Luke Shelby! Oh yes! Why, how do you do?" She gave him her beautiful
+hand, but she evidently lacked the faintest inkling of his identity.
+Time had erased from recollection the boy who used to take her sliding
+on his sled, the boy who used to put on her skates for her, the boy who
+used to take her home on his grocery-wagon sometimes, pretending that he
+was going her way, just for the benizon of her radiant companionship,
+her shy laughter.
+
+"I used to live here," he said, ashamed to be so forgettable. "My mother
+was--my stepfather was A. J. Stacom, who kept the hardware-store."
+
+"Oh yes," she said; "they moved away some years ago, didn't they?"
+
+"Yes; after mother died my stepfather went back to Council Bluffs, where
+we came from in the first place. I used to go to school with you,
+Phoebe--er--Miss Carew. Then I drove Spate's delivery-wagon for a
+while before I went East."
+
+"Oh yes," she said; "I think I remember you very well. I'm very glad to
+see you again, Mr.--Mr. Stacom."
+
+"Shelby," he said, and he was so heartsick that he merely lifted his hat
+and added, "I'm glad to see you looking so well."
+
+"You're looking well, too," she said, and smiled the gracious, empty
+smile one visits on a polite stranger. Then she went her way. In his
+lonely eyes she moved with a goddess-like grace that made clouds of the
+uneven pavements where he stumbled as he walked with reverted gaze.
+
+He went back to the hotel lonelier than before, in a greater loneliness
+than Ulysses felt ending his Odyssey in Ithaca. For, at least, Ulysses
+was remembered by an old dog that licked his hand.
+
+Once in his room, Shelby sank into a patent rocker of most uncomfortable
+plush. The inhospitable garishness of a small-town hotel's luxury
+expelled him from the hateful place, and he resumed the streets, taking,
+as always, determination from rebuff and vowing within himself:
+
+"I'll make 'em remember me. I'll make the name of Shelby the biggest
+name in town."
+
+On the main street he found one lone, bobtailed street-car waiting at
+the end of its line, its horse dejected with the ennui of its career,
+the driver dozing on the step.
+
+Shelby decided to review the town from this seedy chariot; but the
+driver, surly with sleep, opened one eye and one corner of his mouth
+just enough to inform him that the next "run" was not due for fifteen
+minutes.
+
+"I'll change that," said Shelby. "I'll give 'em a trolley, and open cars
+in summer, too."
+
+He dragged his discouraged feet back to the hotel and asked when dinner
+would be served.
+
+"Supper's been ready sence six," said the clerk, whose agile toothpick
+proclaimed that he himself had banqueted.
+
+Shelby went into the dining-room. A haughty head waitress, zealously
+chewing gum, ignored him for a time, then piloted him to a table where
+he found a party of doleful drummers sparring in repartee with a damsel
+of fearful and wonderful coiffure.
+
+She detached herself reluctantly and eventually brought Shelby a supper
+contained in a myriad of tiny barges with which she surrounded his plate
+in a far-reaching flotilla.
+
+When he complained that his steak was mostly gristle, and that he did
+not want his pie yet, Hebe answered:
+
+"Don't get flip! Think you're at the Worldoff?"
+
+Poor Shelby's nerves were so rocked that he condescended to complain to
+the clerk. For answer he got this:
+
+"Mamie's all right. If you don't like our ways, better build a hotel of
+your own."
+
+"I guess I will," said Shelby.
+
+He went to his room to read. The gas was no more than darkness made
+visible. He vowed to change that, too.
+
+He would telephone to the theater. The telephone-girl was forever in
+answering, and then she was impudent. Besides, the theater was closed.
+Shelby learned that there was "a movin'-pitcher show going"! He went,
+and it moved him to the door.
+
+The sidewalks were full of doleful loafers and loaferesses. Men placed
+their chairs in the street and smoked heinous tobacco. Girls and women
+dawdled and jostled to and from the ice-cream-soda fountains.
+
+The streets that night were not lighted at all, for the moon was abroad,
+and the board of aldermen believed in letting God do all He could for
+the town. In fact, He did nearly all that the town could show of charm.
+The trees were majestic, the grass was lavishly spread, the sky was
+divinely blue by day and angelically bestarred at night.
+
+Shelby compared his boyhood impressions with the feelings governing his
+mind now that it was adult and traveled. He felt that he had grown, but
+that the town had stuck in the mire. He felt an ambition to lift it and
+enlighten it. Like the old builder who found Rome brick and left it
+marble, Shelby determined that the Wakefield which he found of plank he
+should leave at least of limestone. Everything he saw displeased him and
+urged him to reform it altogether, and he said:
+
+"I'll change all this. And they'll love me for it."
+
+And he did. But they--did they?
+
+
+III
+
+One day a greater than Shelby came to Wakefield, but not to stay. It was
+no less than the President of these United States swinging around the
+circle in an inspection of his realm, with possibly an eye to the
+nearing moment when he should consent to re-election. As his special
+train approached each new town the President studied up its statistics
+so that he might make his speech enjoyable by telling the citizens the
+things they already knew. He had learned that those are the things
+people most like to hear.
+
+His encyclopaedia informed him that Wakefield had a population of about
+fifteen thousand. He could not know how venerable an estimate this was,
+for Wakefield was still fifteen thousand--now and forever, fifteen
+thousand and insuperable.
+
+The President had a mental picture of just what such a town of fifteen
+thousand would look like, and he wished himself back in the White House.
+
+He was met at the train by the usual entertainment committee, which in
+this case coincided with the executive committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield
+Club. It had seemed just as well to these members to elect themselves as
+anybody else.
+
+Mr. Pettibone, the town's most important paper-hanger, was again
+chairman after some lapses from office. Joel Spate, the Bon-Ton Grocer,
+was once more secretary, after having been treasurer twice and president
+once. The One-Price Emporium, however, was now represented by the
+younger Forshay, son of the founder, who had gone to the inevitable
+Greenwood at the early age of sixty-nine. Soyer, the swell tailor, had
+yielded his place to the stateliest man in town, Amasa Harbury,
+president of the Wakefield Building and Loan Association. And Eberhart,
+of the Furniture Palace, had been supplanted by Gibson Shoals, the bank
+cashier.
+
+To the President's surprise the railroad station proved to be, instead
+of the doleful shed usual in those parts, a graceful edifice of
+metropolitan architecture. He was to ride in an open carriage, of
+course, drawn by the two spanking dapples which usually drew the hearse
+when it was needed. But this was tactfully kept from the President.
+
+There had been some bitterness over the choice of the President's
+companions in the carriage, since it was manifestly impossible for the
+entire committee of seven to pile into the space of four, though young
+Forshay, who had inherited his father's gift of humor, volunteered to
+ride on the President's lap or hold him on his.
+
+The extra members were finally consoled by being granted the next
+carriage, an equipage drawn by no less than the noble black geldings
+usually attached to the chief mourners' carriage.
+
+As the President was escorted to his place he remarked that a
+trolley-car was waiting at the station.
+
+"I see that Wakefield boasts an electric line," he beamed.
+
+"Yes," said Pettibone, "that's some of Shelby's foolishness."
+
+A look from Spate silenced him, but the President had not caught the
+slip.
+
+The procession formed behind the town band, whose symphony suffered
+somewhat from the effort of the musicians to keep one eye on the music
+and throw the other eye backward at the great visitor.
+
+"What a magnificent building!" said the President as the parade turned a
+corner. Nobody said anything, and the President read the name aloud.
+"The Shelby House. A fine hotel!" he exclaimed, as he lifted his hat to
+the cheers from the white-capped chambermaids and the black-coated
+waiters in the windows. They were male waiters.
+
+"And the streets are lighted by electricity! And paved with brick!" the
+President said. "Splendid! Splendid! There must be very enterprising
+citizens in Gatesville--I mean Wakefield." He had visited so many towns!
+
+"That's a handsome office-building," was his next remark. "It's quite
+metropolitan." The committee vouchsafed no reply, but they could see
+that he was reading the sign:
+
+THE SHELBY BLOCK:
+SHELBY INDEPENDENT TELEPHONE COMPANY
+SHELBY'S PARADISE POWDER COMPANY
+SHELBY ARTESIAN WELL COMPANY
+SHELBY PASTIME PARK COMPANY
+SHELBY OPERA HOUSE COMPANY
+SHELBY STREET RAILWAY COMPANY
+
+The committee was not used to chatting with Presidents, and even the
+practical Pettibone, who had voted against him, had an awe of him in the
+flesh. He decided to vote for him next time; it would be comforting to
+be able to say, "Oh yes, I know the President well; I used to take long
+drives with him--once."
+
+There were heartaches in the carriage as the President, who commented on
+so many things, failed to comment on the banner of welcome over
+Pettibone's shop, painted by Pettibone's own practical hand; or the
+gaily bedighted Bon-Ton Grocery with the wonderful arrangement of
+tomato-cans into the words, "Welcome to Wakefield." The Building and
+Loan Association had stretched a streamer across the street, too, and
+the President never noticed it. His eyes and tongue were caught away by
+the ornate structure of the opera-house.
+
+"Shelby Opera House. So many things named after Mr. Shelby. Is he the
+founder of the city or--or--"
+
+"No, just one of the citizens," said Pettibone.
+
+"I should be delighted to meet him."
+
+Three votes fell from the Presidential tree with a thud.
+
+Had the committee been able to imagine in advance how Shelbyisms would
+obtrude everywhere upon the roving eye of the visitor, whose one aim was
+a polite desire to exclaim upon everything exclaimable, they might have
+laid out the line of march otherwise.
+
+But it was too late to change now, and they grew grimmer and grimmer as
+the way led to the stately pleasure-dome which Shelby Khan had decreed
+and which imported architects and landscape-gardeners had established.
+
+Here were close-razored lawns and terraces, a lake with spouting
+fountains, statues of twisty nymphs, glaring, many-antlered stags and
+couchant lions, all among cedar-trees and flower-beds whose perfumes
+saluted the Presidential nostril like a gentle hurrah.
+
+Emerging through the trees were the roofs, the cupola and ivy-bowered
+windows of the home of Shelby, most homeless at home. For, after all his
+munificence, Wakefield did not like him. The only tribute the people had
+paid him was to boost the prices of everything he bought, from land to
+labor, from wall-paper to cabbages. And now on the town's great day he
+had not been included in any of the committees of welcome. He had been
+left to brood alone in his mansion like a prince in ill favor exiled to
+his palace.
+
+He did not know that his palace had delighted even the jaded eye of the
+far-traveled First Citizen. He only knew that his fellow-townsmen
+sneered at it with dislike.
+
+Shelby was never told by the discreet committeemen in the carriage that
+the President had exclaimed on seeing his home:
+
+"Why, this is magnificent! This is an estate! I never dreamed
+that--er--Wakefield was a city of such importance and such wealth. And
+whose home is this?"
+
+Somebody groaned, "Shelby's."
+
+"Ah yes; Shelby's, of course. So many things here are Shelby's. You must
+be very proud of Mr. Shelby. Is he there, perhaps?"
+
+"That's him, standing on the upper porch there, waving his hat,"
+Pettibone mumbled.
+
+The President waved his hat at Shelby.
+
+"And the handsome lady is his wife, perhaps?"
+
+"Yes, that's Mrs. Shelby," mumbled Spate. "She was Miss Carew. Used to
+teach school here."
+
+Phoebe Shelby was clinging to her husband's side. There were tears in
+her eyes and her hands squeezed mute messages upon his arm, for she knew
+that his many-wounded heart was now more bitterly hurt than in all his
+knowledge of Wakefield. He was a prisoner in disgrace gazing through the
+bars at a festival.
+
+He never knew that the President suggested stopping a moment to
+congratulate him, and that it was his own old taskmaster Spate who
+ventured to say that the President could meet him later. Spate could
+rise to an emergency; the other committeemen thanked him with their
+eyes.
+
+As the carriage left the border of the Shelby place the President turned
+his head to stare, for it was beautiful, ambitiously beautiful. And
+something in the silent attitude of the owner and his wife struck a
+deeper note in the noisy, gaudy welcome of the other citizens.
+
+"Tell me about this Mr. Shelby," said the President.
+
+Looks were exchanged among the committee. All disliked the task, but
+finally Spate broke the silence.
+
+"Well, Mr. President, Shelby is a kind of eccentric man. Some folks say
+he's cracked. Used to drive a delivery-wagon for me. Ran away and tried
+his hand at nearly everything. Finally, him and his two brothers
+invented a kind of washing-powder. It was like a lot of others, but they
+knew how to push it. Borrowed money to advertise it big. Got it started
+till they couldn't have stopped it if they'd tried. Shelby decided to
+come back here and establish a branch factory. That tall chimney is it.
+No smoke comin' out of it to-day. He gave all the hands a holiday in
+your honor, Mr. President."
+
+The President said: "Well, that's mighty nice of him. So he's come back
+to beautify his old home, eh? That's splendid--a fine spirit. Too many
+of us, I'm afraid, forget the old places when ambition carries us away
+into new scenes. Mr. Shelby must be very popular here."
+
+There was a silence. Mr. Pettibone was too honest, or too something, to
+let the matter pass.
+
+"Well, I can't say as to that, Mr. President. Shelby's queer. He's very
+pushing. You can't drive people more 'n so fast. Shelby is awful fussy.
+Now, that trolley line--he put that in, but we didn't need it."
+
+"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," Spate added, anxiously.
+
+Pettibone nodded and went on: "People used to think the old bobtailed
+horse-car--excuse my language--wasn't much, but the trolley-cars are a
+long way from perfect. Service ain't so very good. People don't ride on
+'em much, because they don't run often enough."
+
+The President started to say, "Perhaps they can't run oftener because
+people don't ride on 'em enough," but something counseled him to
+silence, and Pettibone continued:
+
+"Same way with the electric light. People that had gas hated to change.
+He made it cheap, but it's a long way from perfect. He put in an
+independent telephone. The old one wasn't much good and it was
+expensive. Now we can have telephones at half the old price. But result
+is, you've got to have two, or you might just as well not have one.
+Everybody you want to talk to is always on the other line."
+
+The President nodded. He understood the ancient war between the simple
+life and the strenuous. He wished he had left the subject unopened, but
+Pettibone had warmed to the theme.
+
+"Shelby built an opery-house and brought some first-class troupes here.
+But this is a religious town, and people don't go much to shows. In the
+first place, we don't believe in 'em; in the second place, we've been
+bit by bad shows so often. So his opery-house costs more 'n it takes in.
+
+"Then he laid out the Pastime Park--tried to get up games and things;
+but the vacant lots always were good enough for baseball. He tried to
+get people to go out in the country and play golf, too; but it was too
+much like following the plow. Folks here like to sit on their porches
+when they're tired.
+
+"He brought an automobile to town--scared most of the horses to death.
+Our women folks got afraid to drive because the most reliable old nags
+tried to climb trees whenever Shelby came honking along. He built two or
+three monuments to famous citizens, but that made the families of other
+famous citizens jealous.
+
+"He built that big home of his, but it only makes our wives envious.
+It's so far out that the society ladies can't call much. Besides, they
+feel uneasy with all that glory.
+
+"Mrs. Shelby has a man in a dress-suit to open the door. The rest of
+us--our wives answer the door-bell themselves. Our folks are kind of
+afraid to invite Mr. and Mrs. Shelby to their parties for fear they'll
+criticize; so Mrs. Shelby feels as if she was deserted.
+
+"She thinks her husband is mistreated, too; but--well, Shelby's
+eccentric. He says we're ungrateful. Maybe we are, but we like to do
+things our own way. Shelby tried to get us to help boost the town, as he
+calls it. He offered us stock in his ventures, but we've got taken in so
+often that--well, once bit is twice shy, you know, Mr. President. So
+Wakefield stands just about where she did before Shelby came here."
+
+"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," Mr. Spate repeated.
+
+The President's curiosity overcame his policy. He asked one more
+question:
+
+"But if you citizens didn't help Mr. Shelby, how did he manage all
+these--improvements, if I may use the word?"
+
+"Did it all by his lonesome, Mr. President. His income was immense. But
+he cut into it something terrible. His brothers in the East began to row
+at the way he poured it out. When he began to draw in advance they were
+goin' to have him declared incompetent. Even his brothers say he's
+cracked. Recently they've drawn in on him. Won't let him spend his own
+money."
+
+A gruesome tone came from among Spate's spectacles and whiskers:
+
+"He won't last long. Health's giving out. His wife told my wife, the
+other day, he don't sleep nights. That's a bad sign. His pride is set on
+keepin' everything going, though, and nothing can hold him. He wants the
+street-cars to run regular, and the telephone to answer quick, even if
+the town don't support 'em. He's cracked--there's nothing to it."
+
+Amasa Harbury, of the Building and Loan Association, leaned close and
+spoke in a confidential voice:
+
+"He's got mortgages on 'most everything, Mr. President. He's borrowed on
+all his securities up to the hilt. Only yesterday I had to refuse him a
+second mortgage on his house. He stormed around about how much he'd put
+into it. I told him it didn't count how much you put into a hole, it was
+how much you could get out. You can imagine how much that palace of his
+would bring in this town on a foreclosure sale--about as much as a white
+elephant in a china-shop."
+
+"Not but what Wakefield is enterprising," insisted Spate.
+
+The lust for gossip had been aroused and Pettibone threw discretion to
+the winds.
+
+"Shelby was hopping mad because we left him off the committee of
+welcome, but we thought we'd better stick to our own crowd of
+represent'ive citizens. Shelby don't really belong to Wakefield,
+anyway. Still, if you want to meet him, it can be arranged."
+
+"Oh no," said the President. "Don't trouble."
+
+And he was politic--or politician--enough to avoid the subject
+thenceforward. But he could not get Shelby out of his mind that night as
+his car whizzed on its way. To be called crazy and eccentric and to be
+suspected, feared, resisted by the very people he longed to
+lead--Presidents are not unaware of that ache of unrequited affection.
+
+The same evening Shelby and Phoebe Shelby looked out on their park.
+The crowds that had used it as a vantage-ground for the pageant had all
+vanished, leaving behind a litter of rubbish, firecrackers, cigar stubs,
+broken shrubs, gouged terraces. Not one of them had asked permission,
+had murmured an apology or a word of thanks.
+
+For the first time Phoebe Shelby noted that her husband did not take
+new determination from rebuff. His resolution no longer made a
+springboard of resistance. He seemed to lean on her a little.
+
+
+IV
+
+The perennially empty cutlery-works gave the Wide-a-Wakefield Club no
+rest. Year after year the anxiously awaited census renewed the old note
+of fifteen thousand and denied the eloquent argument of increased
+population. The committee in its letters continued to refer to
+Wakefield as "thriving" rather than as "growing." Its ingeniously
+evasive circulars finally roused a curiosity in Wilmer Barstow, a
+manufacturer of refrigerators, dissatisfied with the taxes and freight
+rates of the city of Clayton.
+
+Barstow was the more willing to leave Clayton because he had suffered
+there from that reward which is more unkind than the winter wind. He
+loved a woman and paid court to her, sending her flowers at every
+possible excuse and besetting her with gifts.
+
+She was not much of a woman--her very lover could see that; but he loved
+her in his own and her despite. She was unworthy of his jewels as of his
+infatuation, yet she gave him no courtesy for his gifts. She behaved as
+if they bored her; yet he knew no other way to win her. The more
+indifference she showed the more he tried to dazzle her.
+
+At last he found that she was paying court herself to a younger man--a
+selfish good-for-naught who made fun of her as well as of Barstow, and
+who borrowed money from her as well as from Barstow.
+
+When Barstow fully realized that the woman had made him not only her own
+booby, but the town joke as well, he could not endure her or the place
+longer. He cast about for an escape. But he found his factory no
+trifling baggage to move.
+
+It was on such fertile soil that one of the Wide-a-Wakefield circulars
+fell.
+
+It chimed so well with Barstow's mood that he decided at least to look
+the town over.
+
+He came unannounced to make his own observations, like the spies sent
+into Canaan. The trolley-car that met his train was rusty, paintless,
+forlorn, untenanted. He took a ramshackle hack to the best hotel. Its
+sign-board bore this legend: "The Palace, formerly Shelby
+House--entirely new management."
+
+He saw his baggage bestowed and went out to inspect the factory building
+described to him. The cutlery-works proved smaller than his needs, and
+it had a weary look. Not far away he found a far larger factory, idle,
+empty, closed. The sign declared it to be the Wakefield Branch of the
+Shelby Paradise Powder Company. He knew the prosperity of that firm and
+wondered why this branch had been abandoned.
+
+In the course of time the trolley-car overtook him, and he boarded it as
+a sole passenger.
+
+The lonely motorman was loquacious and welcomed Barstow as the Ancient
+Mariner welcomed the wedding guest. He explained that he made but few
+trips a day and passengers were fewer than trips. The company kept it
+going to hold the franchise, for some day Wakefield would reach sixteen
+thousand and lift the hoodoo.
+
+The car passed an opera-house, with grass aspiring through the chinks of
+the stone steps leading to the boarded-up doors.
+
+The car passed the Shelby Block; the legend, "For Rent, apply to Amasa
+Harbury," hid the list of Shelby enterprises.
+
+The car grumbled through shabby streets to the outskirts of the town,
+where it sizzled along a singing wire past the drooping fences, the
+sagging bleachers, and the weedy riot of what had been a
+pleasure-ground. A few dim lines in the grass marked the ghost of a
+baseball diamond, a circular track, and foregone tennis-courts.
+
+Barstow could read on what remained of the tottering fence:
+
+HELBY'S PAST    ARK
+
+When the car had reached the end of the line Barstow decided to walk
+back to escape the garrulity of the motorman, who lived a lonely life,
+though he was of a sociable disposition.
+
+Barstow's way led him shortly to the edge of a curious demesne, or
+rather the debris of an estate. A chaos of grass and weeds thrust even
+through the rust of the high iron fence about the place. Shrubs that had
+once been shapely grew raggedly up and swept down into the tall and
+ragged grass. A few evergreen trees lifted flowering cones like funeral
+candles in sconces. What had been a lake with fountains was a great,
+cracked basin of concrete tarnished with scabious pools thick with the
+dead leaves of many an autumn.
+
+Barstow entered a fallen gate and walked along paths where his feet
+slashed through barbaric tangles clutching at him like fingers. As he
+prowled, wondering what splendor this could have been which was so
+misplaced in so dull a town and drooping into so early a neglect, birds
+took alarm and went crying through the branches. There were lithe
+escapes through the grass, and from the rim of the lake ugly toads
+plounced into the pool and set the water-spiders scurrying on their
+frail catamarans.
+
+Two bronze stags towered knee-deep in verdure; one had a single antler,
+the other none. A pair of toothless lions brooded over their lost
+dignity. Between their disconsolate sentry, mounted flight on flight of
+marble steps to the house of the manor. It lay like an old frigate
+storm-shattered and flung aground to rot. The hospitable doors were
+planked shut, the windows, too; the floors of the verandas were broken
+and the roof was everywhere sunken and insecure.
+
+At the portal had stood two nymphs, now almost classic with decay. One
+of them, toppling helplessly, quenched her bronze torch in weeds. Her
+sister stood erect in grief like a daughter of Niobe wept into stone.
+
+The scene somehow reminded Barstow of one of Poe's landscapes. It was
+the corpse of a home. Eventually he noticed a tall woman in black,
+seated on a bench and gazing down the terraces across the dead lake.
+Barstow was tempted to ask her whose place this had been and what its
+history was, but her mien and her crepe daunted him.
+
+He made his way out of the region, looking back as he went. When he
+approached the most neighboring house a grocery-wagon came flying down
+the road. Before it stopped the slanted driver was off the seat and
+half-way across the yard. In a moment he was back again. Barstow called
+out:
+
+"Whose place is that?"
+
+"Shelby's."
+
+"Did he move away?"
+
+But the horse was already in motion, and the youth had darted after,
+leaping to the side of the seat and calling back something which Barstow
+could not hear.
+
+Shelby, who had given the town everything he could, had even endowed it
+with a ruins.
+
+When Barstow had reached the hotel again he went in to his supper. A
+head waitress, chewing gum, took him to a table where a wildly coiffed
+damsel brought him a bewildering array of most undesirable foods in a
+flotilla of small dishes.
+
+After supper Barstow, following the suit of the other guests, took a
+chair on the sidewalk, for a little breeze loafed along the hot street.
+Barstow's name had been seen upon the hotel register and the executive
+committee of the Wide-a-Wakefield Club waited upon him in an august
+body.
+
+Mr. Pettibone introduced himself and the others. They took chairs and
+hitched them close to Barstow, while they poured out in alternate
+strains the advantages of Wakefield. Barstow listened politely, but the
+empty factory and the dismantled home of Shelby haunted him and made a
+dismal background to their advertisements.
+
+It was of the factory that he spoke first:
+
+"The building you wrote me about and offered me rent-free looks a little
+small and out of date for our plant. I saw Shelby's factory empty. Could
+I rent that at a reasonable figure, do you suppose?"
+
+The committee leaped at the idea with enthusiasm. Spate laughed through
+his beard:
+
+"Lord, I reckon the company would rent it to you for almost the price of
+the taxes."
+
+Then he realized that this was saying just a trifle too much. They began
+to crawfish their way out. But Barstow said, with unconviction:
+
+"There's only one thing that worries me. Why did Shelby close up his
+Paradise Powder factory and move away?"
+
+Pettibone urged the reason hastily: "His brothers closed it up for him.
+They wouldn't stand any more of his extravagant nonsense. They shut down
+the factory and then shut down on him, too."
+
+"So he gave up his house and moved away?" said Barstow.
+
+"He gave up his house because he couldn't keep it up," said Amasa
+Harbury. "Taxes were pretty steep and nobody would rent it, of course.
+It don't belong in a town like Wakefield. Neither did Shelby."
+
+"So he moved away?"
+
+"Moved away, nothin'," sneered Spate. "He went to a boardin'-house and
+died there. Left his wife a lot of stock in a broken-down street-car
+line, and a no-good electric-light company, and an independent telephone
+system that the regulars gobbled up. She's gone back to teachin' school
+again. We used our influence to get her old job back. We didn't think we
+ought to blame her for the faults of Shelby."
+
+"And what had Shelby done?"
+
+They told him in their own way--treading on one another's toes in their
+anxiety; shutting one another up; hunching their chairs together in a
+tangle as if their slanders were wares they were trying to sell.
+
+But about all that Barstow could make of the matter was that Shelby had
+been in much such case as his own. He had been hungry for human
+gratitude, and had not realized that it is won rather by accepting than
+by bestowing gifts.
+
+Barstow sat and smoked glumly while the committee clattered. He hardly
+heard what they were at such pains to emphasize. He was musing upon a
+philosophy of his father's:
+
+"There's an old saying, 'Never look a gift horse in the mouth.' But
+sayings and doings are far apart. If you can manage to sell a man a
+horse he'll make the best of the worst bargain; he'll nurse the nag and
+feed him and drive him easy and brag about his faults. He'll overlook
+everything from spavin to bots; he'll learn to think that a hamstrung
+hind leg is the poetry of motion. But a gift horse--Lord love you! If
+you give a man a horse he'll look him in the mouth and everywhere else.
+The whole family will take turns with a microscope. They'll kick because
+he isn't run by electricity, and if he's an Arabian they'll roast him
+because he holds his tail so high. If you want folks to appreciate
+anything don't give it to 'em; make 'em work for it and pay for
+it--double if you can."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shelby had mixed poetry with business, had given something for nothing;
+had paid the penalty.
+
+
+
+
+THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME
+
+I
+
+
+The old road came pouring down from the wooded hills to the westward,
+flowed round the foot of other hills, skirting a meadow and a pond, and
+then went on easterly about its business. Almost overhanging the road,
+like a mill jutting upon its journeyman stream, was an aged house. Still
+older were the two lofty oaks standing mid-meadow and imaged again in
+the pond. Younger than oaks or house or road, yet as old as Scripture
+allots, was the man who stalked across the porch and slumped into a
+chair. He always slumped into a chair, for his muscles still remembered
+the days when he had sat only when he was worn out. Younger than oaks,
+house, road, or man, yet older than a woman wants to be, was the woman
+in the garden.
+
+"What you doin', Maw?" the man called across the rail, though he could
+see perfectly well.
+
+"Just putterin' 'round in the garden. What you been doin', Paw?"
+
+"Just putterin' 'round the barn. Better come in out the hot sun and rest
+your old back."
+
+Evidently the idea appealed to her, for the sunbonnet overhanging the
+meek potato-flowers like a flamingo's beak rose in air, as she stood
+erect, or as nearly erect as she ever stood nowadays. She tossed a few
+uprooted weeds over the lilac-hedge, and, clumping up the steps of the
+porch, slumped into a chair. Chairs had once been her luxury, too. She
+carried a dish-pan full of green peas, and as her gaze wandered over the
+beloved scene her wrinkled fingers were busy among the pods, shelling
+them expertly, as if they knew their way about alone.
+
+The old man sighed, the deep sigh of ultimate contentment. "Well, Maw,
+as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."
+
+"Here we are again, Paw."
+
+They always said the same thing about this time of year, when they
+wearied of the splendid home they had established as the capital of
+their estate and came back to the ground from which they had sprung.
+James Coburn always said:
+
+"Well, Maw, as the fellow says in the circus, here we are again."
+
+And Sarah Gregg Coburn always answered:
+
+"Here we are again, Paw."
+
+This place was to them what old slippers are to tired feet. Here they
+put off the manners and the dignities their servants expected of them,
+and lapsed into shabby clothes and colloquialisms, such as they had been
+used to when they were first married, long before he became the master
+of a thousand acres, of cattle upon a hundred hills, of blooded
+thoroughbreds and patriarchal stallions, of town lots and a bank, and
+of a record as Congressman for two terms. This pilgrimage had become a
+sort of annual elopement, the mischief of two white-haired runaways. Now
+that the graveyard or the city had robbed them of all their children,
+they loved to turn back and play at an Indian-summer honeymoon.
+
+This year, for the first time, Maw had consented to the aid of a "hired
+girl." She refused to bring one of the maids or the cook from the big
+house, and engaged a woman from the village nearest at hand--and then
+tried to pretend the woman wasn't there. It hurt her to admit the
+triumph of age in her bones, but there was compensation in the privilege
+of hearing some one else faintly clattering over the dish-washing of
+evenings, while she sat on the porch with Paw and watched the sunset
+trail its gorgeous banners along the heavens and across the little toy
+sky of the pond.
+
+It was pleasant in the mornings, too, to lie abed in criminal indolence,
+hearing from afar the racket of somebody else building the fire. After
+breakfast she made a brave beginning, only to turn the broom and the
+bedmaking over to Susan and dawdle about after Paw or celebrate matins
+in the green aisles of the garden. But mostly the old couple just
+pretended to do their chores, and sat on the porch and watched the
+clouds go by and the frogs flop into the pond.
+
+"Mail come yet, Maw?"
+
+"Susan's gone for it."
+
+He glanced up the road to a sunbonneted figure blurred in the glare, and
+sniffed amiably. "Humph! Country's getting so citified the morning
+papers are here almost before breakfast's cleared off. Remember when we
+used to drive eleven mile to get the _Weekly Tribune_, Maw?"
+
+"I remember. And it took you about a week to read it. Sometimes you got
+one number behind. Nowadays you finish your paper in about five
+minutes."
+
+"Nothing much in the papers nowadays except murder trials and divorce
+cases. I guess Susan must have a mash on that mail-carrier."
+
+"I wish she'd come on home and not gabble so much."
+
+"Expectin' a letter from the boy?"
+
+"Ought to be one this morning."
+
+"You've said that every mornin' for three weeks. I s'pose he's so busy
+in town he don't realize how much his letters mean to us."
+
+"I hate to have him in the city with its dangers--he's so reckless with
+his motor, and then there's the temptations and the scramble for money.
+I wish Stevie had been contented to settle down with us. We've got
+enough, goodness knows. But I suppose he feels he must be a millionaire
+or nothing, and what you've made don't seem a drop in the bucket."
+
+The old man winced. He thought how often the boy had found occasion to
+draw on him for help in financing his "sure things" and paying up the
+losses on the "sure things" that had gone wrong. Those letters had been
+sent to the bank in town and had not been mentioned at home, except now
+and then, long afterward, when the wife pressed the old man too hard
+about holding back money from the boy. Then he would unfold a few
+figures. They dazed her, but they never convinced her.
+
+Who ever convinced a woman? Persuaded? Yes, since Eve! Convinced? Not
+yet!
+
+It hurts a man's pride to hear his wife impliedly disparage his own
+achievements in contrast with his son's. Not that he is jealous of his
+son; not that he does not hope and expect that the boy will climb to
+peaks he has never dared; not that he would not give his all and bend
+his own back as a stepping-stone to his son's ascension; but just that
+comparisons are odious. This disparagement is natural, though, to wives,
+for they compare what their husbands have done with what their sons are
+going to do.
+
+It was an old source of peevishness with Paw Coburn, and he was moved to
+say--answering only by implication what she had unconsciously implied,
+and seeming to take his theme from the landscape about them:
+
+"When my father died all he left me was this little--bungalow they'd
+call it nowadays, I suppose, and a few acres 'round it. You remember,
+Maw, how, when the sun first came sneakin' over that knob off to the
+left, the shadow of those two oaks used to just touch the stone wall on
+the western border of father's property, and when the sun was just
+crawlin' into bed behind those woods off yonder the shadow of the oaks
+just overlapped the rail fence on the eastern border? That's all my
+father left me--that and the mortgage. That's all I brought you home to,
+Maw. I'm not disparaging my father. He was a great man. When he left his
+own home in the East and came out here all this was woods, woods, woods,
+far as you can see. Even that pond wasn't there then. My father cleared
+it all--cut down everything except those two oak-trees. He used to call
+them the Twin Oaks, but they always seemed to me like man and wife. I
+kind o' like to think that they're you and me. And like you and me
+they're all that's left standin' of the old trees. They were big trees,
+too, and those were big days."
+
+The greatness of his thoughts rendered him mute. He was a plain man, but
+he was hearing the unwritten music of the American epic of the ax and
+the plow, the more than Trojan war, the more than ten years' war,
+against forests and savages. His wife brought him back from
+hyper-Homeric vision to the concrete.
+
+"Thank Heaven, Susan's finished gossipin' and started home."
+
+The mail-carrier in his little umbrellaed cart was vanishing up the
+hill, and the sunbonnet was floating down the road. The sky was an
+unmitigated blue, save for a few masses of cloud, like piles of new
+fleece on a shearing-floor. Green woods, gray road, blue sky, pale
+clouds, all were steeped in heat and silence so intense it seemed that
+something must break. And something broke.
+
+Appallingly, abruptly, came a shattering crash, a streak of blinding
+fire, an unendurable noise, a searing blast of blaze as if the sun had
+been dynamite exploded, splintering the very joists of heaven. The whole
+air rocked like a tidal wave breaking on a reef; the house writhed in
+all its timbers. Then silence--unbearable silence.
+
+The old woman, made a child again by a paralytic stroke of terror, found
+herself on her knees, clinging frantically to her husband. The cheek
+buried in his breast felt the lurch and leap of his pounding heart.
+Manlike, he found courage in his woman's fright, but his hand quivered
+upon her hair; she heard his shaken voice saying:
+
+"There, there, Maw, it's all over."
+
+When he dared to open his eyes he was blinded and dazed like the
+stricken Saul. When he could see again he found the world unchanged. The
+sky was still there, and still azure; the clouds swam serenely; the road
+still poured down from the unaltered hills. He tried to laugh; it was a
+sickly sound he made.
+
+"I guess that was what the fellow calls a bolt from the blue. I've often
+heard of 'em, but it's the first I ever saw. No harm's done, Maw,
+except to Susan's feelings. She's pickin' herself up out the dust and
+hurryin' home like two-forty. I guess the concussion must have knocked
+her over."
+
+The old woman, her heart still fluttering madly, rose from her knees
+with the tremulous aid of the old man and opened her eyes. She could
+hardly believe that she would not find the earth an apocalyptic ruin of
+uprooted hills. She breathed deeply of the relief, and her eyes ran
+along the remembered things as if calling the roll. Suddenly her eyes
+paused, widened. Her hand went out to clutch her husband's arm.
+
+"Look, Paw! The oaks, the oaks!"
+
+The lightning had leaped upon them like a mad panther, rending their
+branches from them, ripping off great strips of bark, and leaving long,
+gaping wounds, dripping with the white blood of trees. The lesser of the
+two oaks had felt the greater blow, and would have toppled to the ground
+had it not fallen across its mate; and its mate, though grievously
+riven, held it up, with branches interlocking like cherishing arms.
+
+To that human couple the tragedy of the trees they had looked upon as
+the very emblems of stability was pitiful. The old woman's eyes swam
+with tears. She made no shame of her sobs. The old man tried to comfort
+her with a commonplace:
+
+"I was readin' only the other day, Maw, that oaks attract the lightning
+more than any other trees," and then he broke down. "Father always
+called 'em the Twin Oaks, but I always called 'em you and me."
+
+The panic-racked Susan came stumbling up the steps, gasping with
+experiences. But the aged couple either did not hear or did not heed.
+With old hand embracing old hand they sat staring at the rapine of the
+lightning, the tigerish atrocity that had butchered and mutilated their
+beloved trees. Susan dropped into Mrs. Coburn's lap what mail she
+brought and hurried inside to faint.
+
+The old couple sat in a stupor long and long before Mrs. Coburn found
+that she was idly fingering letters and papers. She glanced down, and a
+familiar writing brought her from her trance.
+
+"Oh, Paw, here's a letter from the boy! Here's a letter from Stevie. And
+here's your paper."
+
+He took the paper, but did not open it, turning instead to ask, "What
+does the boy say?"
+
+With hands awkwardly eager she ripped the envelope, tore out the letter,
+and spread it open on her lap, then pulled her spectacles down from her
+hair, and read with loving inflection:
+
+     "MY DARLING MOTHER AND DAD,--It is simply heinous the way I neglect
+     to write you, but somehow the rush of things here keeps me putting
+     it off from day to day. If remembrances were letters you would have
+     them in flocks, for I think of you always and I am homesick for the
+     sight of your blessed faces.
+
+     "I should like to come out and see you in your little old nest, but
+     business piles up about me till I can't see my way out at present.
+     I do wish you could run down here and make me a good long visit,
+     but I suppose that is impossible, too. There are two or three big
+     deals pending that look promising, and if any one of them wins out
+     I shall clean up enough to be a gentleman of leisure. The first
+     place I turn will be home. My heart aches for the rest and comfort
+     of your love.
+
+     "Write me often and tell me how you both are, and believe me, with
+     all the affection in the world,
+
+                                        "Your devoted son,
+                                                             "STEPHEN."
+
+She pushed her dewy spectacles back in her gray hair and pressed the
+letter to her lips; she was smiling as only old mothers smile over
+letters from their far-off children. The man's face softened, too, with
+the ache that battle-scarred fathers feel, thinking of their sons in the
+thick of the fight. Then he unfolded his paper, set his glasses on his
+big nose, and pursed his lips to read what was new in the world at
+large. His wife sat still, just remembering, perusing old files and back
+numbers of the gazettes of her boy's past, remembering him from her
+first vague thrill of him to his slow youth, to manhood, and the last
+good-by kiss.
+
+Nothing was heard from either of them for a long while, save the creak
+of her chair and the rustle of his paper as he turned to the page
+recording the results in the incessant Gettysburgs over the prices of
+corn, pork, poultry, butter, and eggs. They were history to him. He
+could grow angry over a drop in December wheat, and he could glow at a
+sign of feverishness in oats. To-day he was profoundly moved to read
+that October ribs had opened at 10.95 and closed at 11.01, and
+depressed to see that September lard had dropped from 11.67 to 11.65.
+
+As he turned the paper his eye was caught by the head-lines of an old
+and notorious trial at law, and he was confirmed in his wrath. He
+growled:
+
+"Good Lord, ain't that dog hung yet?"
+
+"What you talkin' about, Paw?"
+
+"I was just noticin' that the third trial of Tom Carey is in full swing
+again. It's cost the State a hundred thousand dollars already, and the
+scoundrel ain't punished yet."
+
+"What did he do, Paw?"
+
+The old man blushed like a boy as he stammered: "You're too young to
+know all he did, Maw. If I told you, you wouldn't understand. But it
+ended in murder. If he'd been a low-browed dago they'd have had him
+railroaded to Jericho in no time. But the lawyers are above the law, and
+they've kept this fellow from his deserts till folks have almost forgot
+what it was he did. It's disgraceful. It makes our courts the
+laughing-stock of the world. It gives the anarchists an excuse for
+saying that there's one law for the poor and another for the rich."
+
+After the thunder of his ire had rolled away there was a gentle murmur
+from the old woman. "It's a terrible thing to put a man to death."
+
+"So it is, Maw, and if this fellow had only realized it he'd have kept
+out of trouble."
+
+"He was excited, most likely, and out of his head. What I mean is, it's
+a terrible thing for a judge and a jury to try a man and take his life
+away from him."
+
+"Oh, it's terrible, of course, Maw, but we've got to have laws to hold
+the world together, ain't we? And if we don't enforce 'em, what's the
+use of havin' 'em?"
+
+Silence and a far-away look on the wrinkled face resting on the wrinkled
+hand and then a quiet question:
+
+"Suppose it was our Steve?"
+
+"I won't suppose any such thing. Thank God there's been no stain on any
+of our family, either side; just plain hard-workin' folks--no crazy
+ones, no criminals."
+
+"But supposing it was our boy, Paw?"
+
+"Oh, what's the use of arguin' with a woman! I love you for it, Maw,
+but--well, I'm sorry I spoke."
+
+He returned to his paper, growling now and then as he read of some new
+quibble devised by the attorneys for the defense. As softly and as
+surreptitiously as it begins to rain on a cloudy day, she was crying. He
+turned again with mock indignation.
+
+"Here, here! What you turning up about now?"
+
+"I want to see my boy. I'm worried. He may be sick. He'd never let us
+know."
+
+The old man tried to cajole her from her forebodings, tried to reason
+them away, laugh them away. At last he said, with a poor effort at
+gruffness:
+
+"Well, for the Lord's sake, why don't you go? He's always askin' us to
+come and see him. I'm kind o' homesick for a sight of the boy m'self.
+You haven't been to town for a month of Sundays. Throw a few things in a
+valise and I'll hitch up. We'll just about make the next train from the
+village."
+
+She needed no coercion from without. She rose at once. As she opened the
+squeaky screen-door he was clumping down the steps. He paused to call
+back:
+
+"Oh, Maw!"
+
+"Yes, Paw!"
+
+"Better tuck in a jar of those preserves you been puttin' up. The boy
+always liked those better 'n most anything. Don't wrap 'em in my
+nightshirt, though."
+
+She called out, "All right," and the slap of the screen-door was echoed
+a moment later by a similar sound in the barn, accompanied by the old
+man's voice:
+
+"Give over, Fan."
+
+
+II
+
+The elevator-boy hesitated. "Oh, yes-sum, I got a pass-key, all right,
+but I can't hahdly let nobody in Mista Coburn's 'pahtment 'thout his
+awdas."
+
+"But we're his mother and father."
+
+"Of co'se I take yo' wud for that, ma'am, but, you see, I can't hahdly
+let nobody--er--um'm--thank you, sir--well, I reckon Mista Coburn might
+be mo' put out ef I didn't let you-all in than ef I did."
+
+The elevator soared silently to the eighth floor, and there all three
+debarked. The boy was so much impressed with the tip the old man had
+slipped him that he unlocked the door, put the hand-baggage into the
+room, snapped the switch that threw on all the lights, and said, "Thank
+you, sir," again as he closed the door.
+
+Paw opened it to give the boy another coin and say: "Don't you let on
+that we're here. It's a surprise."
+
+The boy, grinning, promised and descended, like an imp through a trap.
+
+The old couple stood stock-still, hesitating to advance. So many
+feelings, such varied timidities, urged them forward, yet held them
+back. It was the home of the son they had begotten, conceived, tended,
+loved, praised, punished, feared, prayed for, counseled, provisioned,
+and surrendered. Years of separation had made him almost a stranger, and
+they dreaded the intrusion into the home he had built for himself,
+remote from their influence. Poor, weak, silly old things, with a
+boy-and-girlish gawkishness about them, the helpless feeling of
+uninvited guests!
+
+"You go first, Paw."
+
+And Paw went first. On the sill of the drawing-room he paused and swept
+a glance around. He would have given an arm to be inspired with some
+scheme for whisking his wife away or changing what she must see. But she
+was already crowding on his heels, pushing him forward. There was no
+retreat. He tried to laugh it off.
+
+"Well, here we are at last, as the fellow doesn't say in the circus."
+
+There was nothing to do but sit down and wait. The very chairs were of
+an architecture and upholstery incongruous to them. They knew something
+of luxury, but not of this school. There was nowhere for them to look
+that something alien did not meet their eyes. So they looked at the
+floor.
+
+"It gets awful hot in town, don't it?" said Paw, mopping his beaded
+forehead.
+
+"Awful," said Maw, dabbing at hers.
+
+Eventually they heard the elevator door gride on its grooves. All the
+way in on the train they had planned to hide and spring out on the boy.
+They had giggled like children over the plot. It was rather their
+prearrangement than their wills that moved them to action. Automatically
+they hid themselves, without laughter, rather with a sort of guilty
+terror. They found a deep wardrobe closet and stepped inside, drawing
+the door almost shut.
+
+They heard a key in the lock, the click of a knob, the sound of a door
+closed. Then a pause. They had forgotten to turn off the lights.
+Hurrying footsteps, loud on the bare floor, muffled on the rugs. How
+well they knew that step! But there was excitement in its rhythm. They
+could hear the familiar voice muttering unfamiliarly as the footsteps
+hurried here and there. He came into the room where they were. They
+could hear him breathe now, for he breathed heavily, as if he had been
+running. From place to place he moved with a sense of restless stealth.
+At length, just as they were about to sally forth, he hurried forward
+and flung open their door.
+
+Standing among the hanging clothes, the light strong on their faces,
+they seemed to strike him at first as ghosts. He stared at them aghast,
+and recoiled. Then the old ghosts smiled and stepped forward with open
+arms. But he recoiled again, and his welcome to his far-come,
+heart-hungry parents was a groan.
+
+They saw that he had a revolver in his hand. His eyes recurred to it,
+and he turned here and there for a place to lay it, but seemed unable to
+let it go. His mother flung forward and threw her arms about him, her
+lips pursed to kiss him, but he turned away with lowered eyes. His
+father took him by the shoulders and said:
+
+"Why, what's the matter, boy? Ain't you glad to see your Maw--and me?"
+
+For answer he only breathed hard and chokingly. His eyes went to the
+revolver again, then roved here and there, always as if searching for a
+place to hide it.
+
+"Give that thing to me, Steve," the old man said. And he took it in his
+hands, forcing from the cold steel the colder fingers that clung as if
+frozen about the handle.
+
+Once he was free of the weapon, the boy toppled into a chair, his mother
+still clasping him desperately.
+
+The old man knew something about firearms. He found the spring, broke
+the revolver, and looked into the cylinder. In every chamber was the
+round eye of a cartridge. Three of them bore the little scar of the
+firing-pin.
+
+Old Coburn leaned hard against the wall. He looked about for a place to
+hide the horrible machine, but he, too, could not let go of it. His
+mouth was full of the ashes of life. He would have been glad to drop
+dead. But beyond the sick, clammy face of his son he saw the face of his
+wife, an old face, a mother's face, witless with bewilderment. The old
+man swallowed hard.
+
+"What's happened, Steve? What's been goin' on?"
+
+The young man only shook his head, ran his dry tongue along his lips,
+tore a piece of loose skin from the lower one with his teeth, and
+breathed noisily through nostrils that worked like a dog's. He pushed
+his mother's hands away as if they irked him. The old man could have
+struck him to the ground for that roughness, but the prayers in the
+mother's eyes restrained him.
+
+"Better tell us, Steve. Maybe we might help you."
+
+The young man's head worked as if he were gulping at a hard lump; his
+lips moved without sound, his gaze leaped from place to place, lighting
+everywhere but on his father's waiting, watching eyes, and always coming
+back to the revolver with a loathing fascination. At last he spoke, in a
+whisper like the rasp of chafed husks:
+
+"I had to do it. He deserved it."
+
+The mother had not seen the nicks on the cartridges, but she needed no
+such evidence. She wailed:
+
+"You don't mean that you--no--no--you didn't k-kill-ill-ill--"
+
+The word rattled in her throat, and she went to the floor like a
+toppling bolster. It was the old man that lifted her face from the rug,
+ran to fetch water, and knelt to restore her. The son just wavered in
+his chair and kept saying:
+
+"I had to do it. He was making her life a--"
+
+"Her life?" the old man groaned, looking up where he knelt. "Then
+there's a woman in it?"
+
+"Yes, it was for her. She's had a hard time. She's been horribly
+misunderstood. She may have been indiscreet--still she's a noble woman
+at heart. Her husband was a vile dog. He deserved it."
+
+But the old man's head had dropped as if his neck were cracked. He saw
+what it all meant and would mean. He would have sprawled to the floor,
+but he caught sight of the pitiful face of his old love still white with
+the half-death of her swoon. He clenched his will with ferocity,
+resolving that he must not break, could not, would not break. He laid a
+hand on his son's knee and said, appealingly, in a low tone, as if he
+were the suppliant for mercy:
+
+"Better not mention anything about--about her--the woman you know,
+Steve--before your mother, not just now. Your mother's kind of poorly
+the last few days. Understand, Steve?"
+
+The answer was a nod like the silly nodding of a toy mandarin.
+
+It was a questionable mercy, restoring the mother just then from the
+bliss of oblivion, but she came gradually back through a fog of daze to
+the full glare of fact. Her thoughts did not run forward upon the
+scandal, the horror of the public, the outcry of all the press; she had
+but one thought, her son's welfare.
+
+"Did anybody see you, Steve?"
+
+"No. I went to his room. I don't think anybody s-saw me--yes, maybe the
+man across the hall did. Yes, I guess he saw me. He was at his door when
+I came out. He looked as if he sus-suspected-ed me. I suppose he heard
+the shots. And probably he s-saw the revol-ver. I couldn't seem to let
+it drop--to le-let it drop."
+
+The mother turned frantic. "They'll come here for you, Stevie. They'll
+find it out. You must get away--somewhere--for just now, till we can
+think up something to do. Father will find some way of making everything
+all right, won't you, Paw? He always does, you know. Don't be scared, my
+boy. We must keep very calm." Her hands were wavering over him in a
+palsy. "Where can he go, Paw? Where's the best place for him to go? I'll
+tell you, Steve. Is your--your car anywhere near?"
+
+"It's outside at the door. I came back in it."
+
+She got to her feet, and her urgency was ferocious. "Then you get right
+in this minute and go up to the old place--the little old house opposite
+the pond. Go as fast as you can. You know the place--where we lived
+before you were born. There's two big oak-trees st-standing there, and a
+pond just across the road. You go there and tell Susan--what shall he
+tell Susan, father? What shall he tell Susan? We'll stay here, and--and
+we'll bribe the elevator-boy to say you haven't come home at all, and if
+the po-po-lice come here we'll say we're expecting you, but we haven't
+seen you for ever so long. Won't we, Paw? That's what we'll say, won't
+we, Paw?"
+
+The old man stood up to the lightning like an old oak. Trees do not run.
+They stand fast and take what the sky sends them. Old Coburn shook his
+white hair as a tree its leaves in a blast of wind before he spoke.
+
+"Steve, my boy, I don't know what call you had to do this, but it's no
+use trying to run away and hide. They'll get you wherever you go. The
+telegraph and the cable and the detectives--no, it's not a bit of use.
+It only makes things look worse. Put on your hat and come with me. We'll
+go to the police before they come for you. I'll go with you, and I'll
+see you through."
+
+But flight, not fight, was the woman's one hope. She was wild with
+resistance to the idea of surrender. Her panic confirmed the young man
+in his one impulse--to get away. He dashed out into the hall, and when
+the father would have pursued, the mother thrust him aside, hurried
+past, and braced herself against the door. He put off her clinging,
+clutching hands as gently as he might, but she resisted like a tigress
+at bay, and before he could drag her aside they heard the iron-barred
+door of the elevator glide open and clang shut. And there they stood in
+the strange place, the old man staggered with the realization of the
+future, the old woman imbecile with fear.
+
+What harm is it the honest oaks do, that Heaven hates them so and its
+lightnings search them out with such peculiar frenzy?
+
+
+III
+
+Having no arenas where captive gladiators and martyrs satisfy the public
+longing for the sight of bleeding flesh and twitching nerve, the people
+of our day flock to the court-rooms for their keenest excitements.
+
+The case of "The People _vs._ Stephen Coburn" had been an intensely
+popular entertainment. This day the room was unusually stuffed with men
+and women. At the door the officers leaned like buttresses against the
+thrust of a solid wall of humanity. Outside, the halls, the stairs, and
+the sidewalk were jammed with the mob crushing toward the door for a
+sight of the white-haired mother pilloried in the witness-box and
+fighting with all her poor wits against the shrewdest, calmest, fiercest
+cross-examiner in the State.
+
+In the jury-box the twelve silent prisoners of patience sat in awe of
+their responsibilities, a dozen extraordinarily ordinary, conspicuously
+average persons condemned to the agony of deciding whether they should
+consign a fellow-man to death or release a murderer among their
+fellow-men.
+
+Next the judge sat Sarah Coburn, her withered hands clenched bonily in
+the lap where, not so many years ago, she had cuddled the babe that was
+now the culprit hunted down and abhorred. The mere pressure of his first
+finger had sent a soul into eternity and brought the temple of his own
+home crashing about his head.
+
+Next the prisoner sat his father, veteran now with the experience that
+runs back to the time when the first father and mother found the first
+first-born of the world with hands reddened in the blood of the earliest
+sacrifice on the altar of Cain.
+
+People railed in the street and in the press against the law's delay
+with Stephen Coburn's execution and against the ability of a rich father
+to postpone indefinitely the vengeance of justice. Old Coburn had forced
+the taxpayers to spend vast sums of money. He had spent vaster sums
+himself. The public and the prosecution, his own enormously expensive
+lawyers, his son and his very wife, supposed that he still had vast sums
+to spend. It was solely his own secret that he had no more. He had built
+his fortune as his father had built the stone wall along his fields,
+digging each boulder from the ground with his hands, lugging it across
+the irregular turf and heaving it to its place. Every dollar of his had
+its history of effort, of sweat and ache. And now the whole wall was
+gone, carried away in wholesale sweeps as by a landslide.
+
+In his business he had been so shrewd and so close that people had said,
+"Old Coburn will fight for five days for five minute's interest on five
+cents." When his son's liberty was at stake he signed blank checks, he
+told his lawyers to get the best counsel in the nation. He did not ask,
+"How much?" He asked, "How good?" Every technical ruse that could be
+employed to thwart the prosecution he employed. He bribed everybody
+bribable whose silence or speech had value. Dangerous witnesses were
+shipped to places whence they could not be summonsed. Blackmailers and
+blackguards fattened on his generosity and his fear.
+
+The son, Stephen Coburn, had gone to the city, warm-hearted, young,
+venturesome, not vicious, had learned life in a heap, sowed his wild
+oats all at once, fallen among evil companions, and drifted by easy
+stages into an affair of inexcusable ugliness, whence he seemed unable
+to escape till a misplaced chivalry whispered him what to do. He had
+found himself like Lancelot with "his honor rooted in dishonor" and
+"faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." But Stephen Coburn was no
+Lancelot, any more than his siren was a Guinevere or her slain husband a
+King Arthur. He was simply a well-meaning, hot-headed, madly enamoured
+young fool. The proof of this last was that he took a revolver to his
+Gordian knot. Revolvers, as he found too late, do not solve problems.
+They make a far-reaching noise, and their messengers cannot be recalled.
+
+His parents had not known the city phase of their son. They had known
+the adorable babe he had been, the good boy weeping over a broken-winged
+robin tumbled from a nest, running down-stairs in his bare feet for one
+more good-night kiss, crying his heart out when he must be sent away to
+school, remembering their birthdays and abounding in gentle graces. This
+was the Stephen Coburn they had known. They believed it to be the real,
+the permanent, Stephen Coburn; the other was but the victim of a
+transient demon. They could not believe that their boy would harm the
+world again. They could not endure the thought that his repentance and
+his atonement should be frustrated by a dishonorable end.
+
+The public knew only the wicked Stephen Coburn. His crime had been his
+entrance into fame. All the bad things he had done, all the bad people
+he had known, all the bad places he had gone, were searched out and
+published by the detectives and the reporters. To blacken Stephen
+Coburn's repute so horribly that the jurors would feel it their
+inescapable duty to scavenge him from the offended earth, that was the
+effort of the prosecution. To prevent that blackening was one of the
+most vital and one of the most costly features of the defense. To deny
+the murder and tear down the web of circumstantial evidence as fast as
+the State could weave it was another.
+
+The Coburn case had become a notorious example of that peculiarly
+American institution, the serial trial. The first instalment had ended
+in a verdict of guilty. It had been old Coburn's task to hold up his
+wife and his son in the collapse of their mad despair, while he managed
+and financed the long, slow struggle with the upper courts till he wrung
+from them an order for a new trial. This had ended, after weeks of
+torment in the court-room and forty-eight hours of almost unbearable
+suspense, in a disagreement of the jury. The third trial found the
+prosecution more determined than ever, and acquainted with all the
+methods of the defense. The only flaw was the loss of an important
+witness, "the man across the hall," whom impatient time had carried off
+to the place where subpoenas are not respected. His deposition and his
+testimony at the previous trials were as lacking in vitality as himself.
+
+And now once more old Coburn must carry everything upon his back, aching
+like a world-weary Atlas who dares not shift his burden. But now he was
+three years weaker, and he had no more money to squander. His house, his
+acres, the cattle upon his hills, his blooded thoroughbreds, his
+patriarchal stallions, his town lots, his bank-building, his bonds and
+stocks, all were sold, pawned as collateral, or blanketed with
+mortgages.
+
+As he had comforted his wife when they had witnessed the bolt from the
+blue, so now he sat facing her in her third ordeal. Only now she was not
+on the home porch, but in the arena. He could not hold her hands. Now
+she dared not close her eyes and cry; it was not the work of one
+thunderbolt she had to see. Now, under the darting questions of the
+court-examiner, she was like a frightened girl lost in the woods and
+groping through a tempest, with lightning thrusts pursuing her on every
+side, stitching the woods with fire like the needle in a sewing-machine
+stabbing and stabbing at the dodging shuttle.
+
+The old woman had gone down into the pit for her son. She had been led
+through the bogs and the sewers of vice. Almost unspeakable, almost
+unthinkable wickedness had been taught to her till she had become deeply
+versed in the lore that saddens the eyes of the scarlet women of
+Babylon. But still her love purified her, and almost sanctified the
+strategy she practised, the lies she told, the truths she concealed, the
+plots she devised with the uncanny canniness of an old peasant. People
+not only felt that it was her duty to fight for her young like a mad
+she-wolf, but they would have despised her for any failure of sacrifice.
+
+She sat for hours baffling the inquisitor, foreseeing his wiles by
+intuition, evading his masked pitfalls by instinct. She was terribly
+afraid of him, yet more afraid of herself, afraid that she would break
+down and become a brainless, weeping thing. It was the sincerity of her
+fight against this weakness that made her so dangerous to the
+prosecuting attorney. He wanted to compel her to admit that her son had
+confessed his deed to her. She sought to avoid this admission. She had
+not guessed that he was more in dread of her tears than of her guile. He
+was gentler with her than her own attorneys had been. At all costs he
+felt that he must not succeed too well with her.
+
+The whole trial had become by now as academic as a game of chess, to all
+but the lonely, homesick parents. The prosecuting attorney knew that the
+mother was not telling the truth; the judge and the jury knew that she
+was not telling the truth. But unless this could be geometrically
+demonstrated the jury would disregard its own senses. Yet the prosecutor
+knew that if he succeeded in trapping the mother too abruptly into any
+admission dangerous to her son she would probably break down and cry her
+dreary old heart out, and then those twelve superhuman jurors would weep
+with her and care for nothing on earth except her consolation.
+
+The crisis came as crises love to come, without warning. The question
+had been simple enough, and the tone as gentle as possible: "You have
+just stated, Mrs. Coburn, that your son spoke to you in his apartment
+the day he is alleged to have committed this act, but I find that at the
+first and second trials you testified that you did not see him in his
+apartment at all. Which, please, is the correct statement?"
+
+In a flash she realized what she had done. It is so hard to build and
+defend a fortress of lies, and she was very old and not very wise, tired
+out, confused by the stare of the mob and the knowledge that every word
+she uttered endangered the life she had borne. Now she felt that she had
+undone everything. She blamed herself for ruining the work of years. She
+saw her son led to death because of her blunder. Her answer to the
+question and the patient courtesy of the attorney was to throw her hands
+into the air, toss her white head to and fro, and give up the battle.
+The tears came like a gush of blood from a deep wound; they poured
+through the lean fingers she pressed against her gaunt cheeks, and she
+shook with the dry, weak weeping of senility and utter desolation. Then
+her old arms yearned for him as when a babe.
+
+"I want my boy! I want my boy!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The judge grew very busy among his papers, the prosecuting attorney
+swallowed hard. The jurymen thought no more of evidence and of the
+stability of the laws. They all had mothers, or memory-mothers, and they
+only resolved that whatever crime Stephen Coburn might have committed,
+it would be a more dastardly crime for them to drive their twelve
+daggers into the aching breast that had suckled him. On the instant the
+trial had resolved itself into "The People _vs._ One Poor Old Mother."
+The jury's tears voted for them, and their real verdict was surging up
+in one thought:
+
+"This white haired saint wants her boy: he may be a black sheep, but she
+wants him, and she shall have him, by--" whatever was each juryman's
+favorite oath.
+
+When the judge had finished his charge the jury stumbled on one
+another's heels to get to their sanctum. There they reached a verdict so
+quickly that, as the saying is, the foreman was coming back into the
+court-room before the twelfth man was out of it. Amazed at their own
+unanimity, they were properly ashamed, each of the other eleven, for
+their mawkish weakness, and their treachery to the stern requirements of
+higher citizenship. But they went home not entirely unconsoled by the
+old woman's cry of beatitude at that phrase, "Not Guilty."
+
+She went among them sobbing with ecstasy, and her tears splashed their
+hands like holy water. It was all outrageously illegal, and sentimental,
+and harmful to the sanctity of the law. And yet, is it entirely
+desirable that men should ever grow unmindful of the tears of old
+mothers?
+
+
+IV
+
+The road came pouring down from the wooded hills, and the house faced
+the pond as before. But there was a new guest in the house. Up-stairs,
+in a room with a sloping wall and a low ceiling and a dormer window, sat
+a young man whose face had been prominent so long in the press and in
+the court-room that now he preferred to keep away from human eyes. So he
+sat in the little room and read eternally. He had acquired the habit of
+books in the whitewashed cell where he had spent the three of his years
+that should have been the happiest, busiest, best of all. He read
+anything he could find now--old books, old magazines, old newspapers.
+Finally he read even the old family Bible his mother had toted into his
+room for his comfort. It was a bulky tome with print of giant size and
+pictures of crude imagery, with here and there blank pages for recording
+births, deaths, marriages. Here he found the names of all his brothers
+and sisters, and all of them were entered among the deaths. The manners
+of the deaths were recorded in the shaky handwriting of fresh grief:
+Alice Anne, scarlet fever; James Arthur, Jr., convulsions; Andrew
+Morton, whooping-cough; Cicely Jane, typhoid; Amos Turner, drowned
+while saving his brother Stephen's life; Edward John, killed in train
+wreck.
+
+Sick at heart, he turned away from the record, but the book fell open of
+itself at a full-page insert of the Decalogue, illuminated by some
+artless printer with gaudy splotches of gold, red and blue and green
+initials, and silly curlicues of arabesque, as if the man had been
+ignorant of what they meant, those ten pillars of the world.
+
+Stephen smiled wanly at the bad taste of the decoration, till one line
+of fire leaped from the text at him, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." But he
+needed no further lessoning in that wisdom. He retreated from the
+accusing page and went to lean against the dormer window and look out
+upon the world from the jail of his past. No jury could release him from
+that. Everywhere he looked, everywhere he thought, he saw evidence of
+the penalty he had brought upon his father and mother, more than upon
+himself and his future. He knew that his father's life-work had been
+ruined, and that his honorable career would be summed up in the
+remembrance that he was the old man who bankrupted himself to save his
+son from the gallows. He knew that this very house, which remained as
+the last refuge, was mortgaged again as when his father and mother had
+come into it before he was born. The ironic circle was complete.
+
+Down-stairs he could hear the slow and heavy footsteps of his father,
+and the creak of the chair as he dropped heavily into it. Then he heard
+the screen-door flap and heard his mother's rocking-chair begin its
+seesaw strain. He knew that their tired old hands would be
+clasped and that their tired old eyes would be staring off at the
+lightning-shattered oaks. He heard them say, just about as always:
+
+"What you been doin', Paw?"
+
+"Just putterin' 'round the barn. What you been doin', Maw?"
+
+"Just putterin' 'round the kitchen gettin' supper started. I went
+up-stairs and knocked at Stevie's door. He didn't answer. Guess he's
+asleep."
+
+"Guess so."
+
+"It seems awful good, Paw, to be back in this old place, don't it?--you
+and me just settin' here and our boy safe and sound asleep up-stairs."
+
+"That's so. As the fellow says in the circus, here we are again, Maw."
+
+"Here we are again, Paw."
+
+
+
+
+AND THIS IS MARRIAGE
+
+
+His soul floated upward from the lowermost depths of oblivion, slowly,
+as a water-plant, broken beneath, drifts to the surface. And then he was
+awake and unutterably afraid.
+
+His soul opened, as it were, its eyes in terror and his fleshly eyelids
+went ajar. There was nothing to frighten him except his own thoughts,
+but they seemed to have waited all ready loaded with despair for the
+instant of his waking.
+
+The room was black about him. The world was black. He had left the
+window open, but he could not see outdoors. Only his memory told him
+where the window was. Never a star pinked the heavens to distinguish it.
+He could not tell casement from sky, nor window from wall, nor wall from
+ceiling or floor. He was as one hung in primeval chaos before light had
+been decreed.
+
+He could not see his own pillow. He knew of it only because he felt it
+where it was hot under his hot cheek. He could not see the hand he
+raised to push the hair from his wet brow. He knew that he had a hand
+and a brow only from their contact, from the sense of himself in them,
+from the throb of his pulse at the surface of himself.
+
+He felt almost completely disembodied, poised in space, in infinite
+gloom, alone with complete loneliness. As the old phrase puts it, he was
+all by himself.
+
+The only sound in his universe, besides the heavy surf of his own blood
+beating in his ears, was the faint, slow breathing of his wife, asleep
+in the same bed, yet separated from him by a sword of hostility that
+kept their souls as far apart as planets are.
+
+He laughed in bitter silence to think how false she was to the devoted
+love she had promised him, how harsh her last words had been and how
+strange from the lips that used to murmur every devotion, every
+love-word, every trust.
+
+He wanted to whirl on her, shake her out of the cowardly refuge of
+sleep, and resume the wrangle that had ended in exhaustion.
+
+He wanted to gag her so that she would hear him out for once and not
+break into every phrase. He wanted to tell her for her own good in one
+clear, cold, logical, unbroken harangue how atrocious she was, how
+futile, fiendish, heartless. But he knew that she would not listen to
+him. Even if he gagged her mouth her mind would still dodge and buffet
+him. How ancient was the experience that warned a man against argument
+with a woman! And that wise old saw, "Let sleeping dogs lie," referred
+even better to wives. He would not let her know that he was
+awake--awake, perhaps, for hours of misery.
+
+This had happened often of late. It had been a hard week, day after day
+of bitter toil wearing him down in body and fraying his every nerve.
+
+His business was in a bad way, and he alone could save it, and he could
+save it only by ingenuity and inspiration. But the inspiration, he was
+sure, would not come to him till he could rest throughout.
+
+Sleep was his hope, his passion, food, drink, medicine. He was heavily
+pledged at the bank. He could borrow no more. The president had
+threatened him if he did not pay what was overdue. Bigger businesses
+than his were being left to crash. A financial earthquake was rocking
+every tower in the world.
+
+Though he needed cash vitally to further his business, there was a
+sharper and sharper demand upon him from creditors desperately harried
+by their own desperate creditors. He must find with his brain some new
+source of cash. He must fight the world. But how could he fight without
+rest? Even pugilists rested between rounds.
+
+He had not slept a whole night for a week. To-night he had gone to bed
+sternly resolved on a while of annihilation. Anything for the brief
+sweet death with the morning of resurrection.
+
+And then she had quarreled with him. And now he was awake, and he felt
+that he would not sleep.
+
+He wondered what the hour was. He was tempted to rise and make a light
+and look at his watch, but he felt that the effort and the blow of the
+glare on his eyes might confirm his insomnia. He lay and wondered,
+consumed with curiosity as to the hour--as if that knowledge could be of
+value.
+
+By and by, out of the stillness and the widespread black came the
+slumbrous tone of a far-off town clock. Three times it rumored in the
+air as if distance moaned faintly thrice.
+
+Three o'clock! He had had but two hours' sleep, and would have no more!
+And he needed ten! To-morrow morning--this morning!--he must join battle
+for his very existence.
+
+He lay supine, trying not to clench a muscle, seeking to force his
+surrender to inanition; but he could not get sleep though he implored
+his soul for it, prayed God for it.
+
+At length he ceased to try to compel slumber. He lay musing. It is a
+strange thing to lie musing in the dark. His soul seemed to tug and
+waver outside his body as he had seen an elephant chained by one leg in
+a circus tent lean far away from its shackles, and sway and put its
+trunk forth gropingly. His soul seemed to be under his forehead, pushing
+at it as against a door. He felt that if he had a larger, freer forehead
+he would have more soul and more room for his mind to work.
+
+Then the great fear came over him again. In these wakeful moods he
+suffered ecstasies of fright.
+
+He was appalled with life. He felt helpless, bodyless, doomed.
+
+On his office wall hung a calendar with a colored picture showing
+fishermen in a little boat in a fog looking up to see a great Atlantic
+liner just about to run them down. So the universe loomed over him now,
+rushed down to crush him. The other people of the world were asleep in
+their places; his creditors, his rivals were resting, gaining strength
+to overwhelm him on the morrow, and he must face them unrefreshed.
+
+He dreamed forward through crisis after crisis, through bankruptcy,
+disgrace, and mortal illness. He thought of his family, the children
+asleep in their beds under the roof that he must uphold like an Atlas.
+Poor little demanding, demanding things! What would become of them when
+their father broke down and was turned out of his factory and out of his
+home? How they would hamper him, cling to him, cry out to him not to let
+them starve, not to let them go cold or barefoot, not to turn them
+adrift.
+
+Yet they did not understand him. They loved their mother infinitely
+more. She watched over them, played with them, cuddled and kissed them,
+while he had to leave the house before they were up, and came home at
+night too fagged to play their games or endure their noise. And if they
+were to be punished, she used him as a threat, and saved them up for him
+to torment and denounce.
+
+They loved her and were afraid of him. Yet what had she done for them?
+She had conceived them, borne them, nourished them for a year at most.
+Thereafter their food, their shelter, their clothes, their education,
+their whole prosperity must come from their father. Yet the very
+necessities of the struggle for their welfare kept him from giving them
+the time that would win their favor. They complained because he did not
+buy them more. They were discontented with what they had, and covetous
+of what the neighbors' children had, even where it was less than their
+own.
+
+He busied himself awhile at figuring out how much, all told, his
+children's upbringing had cost him. The total was astounding. If he had
+half of that sum now he would not be fretting about his pay-roll or his
+notes. He would triumph over every obstacle. Next he made estimate of
+what the children would cost him in the future. As they grew their
+expenses grew with them. He could not hope for the old comfort of sons,
+when they made a man strong, for nowadays grown sons must be started in
+business at huge cost with doubtful results and no intention of repaying
+the investment. And daughters have to be dressed up like holiday
+packages, expensive gifts that must be sent prepaid and may be returned,
+collect.
+
+He could see nothing but vanity back of him and a welter of cost ahead.
+He could see no hope of ever catching up, of ever resting. His only rest
+would come when he died.
+
+If he did not sleep soon he would assuredly die or go mad. Perhaps he
+was going mad already. He had fought too long, too hard. He would begin
+to babble and giggle soon and be led away to twiddle his fingers and
+talk with phantoms. He saw himself as he had seen other witless,
+slavering spectacles that had once been human, and a nausea of fear
+crushed big sweat out of his wincing skin.
+
+Better to die than to play the living burlesque of himself. Better to
+die than to face the shame of failure, the shame of reproach and
+ridicule; the epitaph of his business a few lines in the small type of
+"Business Troubles." Better to kill himself than risk the danger of
+going mad and killing perhaps his own children and his wife. He knew a
+man once, a faithful, devoted, gentle struggler with the world, whom a
+sudden insanity had led to the butchery of his wife and three little
+boys. They found him tittering among his mangled dead, and calling them
+pet names, telling the shattered red things that he had wrought God's
+will upon them.
+
+What if this should come to him! Better to end all the danger of that by
+removing himself from the reach of mania or shame. It would be the final
+proof of his love for his flock. And they would not think bitterly of
+him. All things are forgiven the dead. They would miss him and remember
+the best of him.
+
+They would appreciate what they had cost him, too, when they no longer
+had him to draw on. He felt very sorry for himself. Grown man as he was,
+he was driven back into infancy by his terrors, and like a pouting,
+supperless boy, he wanted to die to spite the rest of the family and
+win their apologies even if he should not hear them.
+
+He wondered if, after all, his wife would not be happier to be rid of
+him. No, she would regret him for one thing at least, that he left her
+without means.
+
+Well, she deserved to be penniless. Why should she expect a man to kill
+himself for her sake and leave her a wealthy widow to buy some other
+man? Let her practise then some of the economies he had vainly begged of
+her before. If she had been worthy of his posthumous protection she
+would not have treated him so outrageously at a time of such stress as
+this.
+
+She knew he was dog-tired, yet she allowed him to be angered, and she
+knew just what themes were sure to provoke his wrath. So she had harped
+on these till she had rendered him to a frenzy.
+
+They had stood about or paced the floor or dropped in chairs and fought
+as they flung off their clothes piecemeal. She had combed and brushed
+her hair viciously as she raged, weeping the unbeautiful tears of wrath.
+But he had not had that comfort of tears; his tears ran down the inside
+of his soul and burned. She goaded him out of his ordinary
+self-control--knew just how to do it and reveled in it.
+
+No doubt he had said things to her that a gentleman does not say to a
+lady, that hardly any man would say to any woman. He was startled to
+remember what he had said to her. He abhorred the thought of such
+things coming from his lips--and to the mother of his children. But the
+blame for these atrocities was also hers. She had driven him frantic;
+she would have driven a less-dignified man to violence, to blows,
+perhaps. And she had had the effrontery to blame him for driving her
+frantic when it was she that drove him.
+
+Finally they had stormed themselves out, squandered their vocabularies
+of abuse, and taken resort to silence in a pretended dignity. That is,
+she had done this. He had relapsed into silence because he realized how
+impervious to truth or justice she was. Facts she would not deal in.
+Logic she abhorred. Reasoning infuriated her.
+
+And then in grim, mutual contempt they had crept into bed and lain as
+far apart as they could. He would have gone into another room, but she
+would have thought he was afraid to hear more of her. Or she would have
+come knocking at the door and lured him back only to renew the war at
+some appeal of his to that sense of justice he was forever hoping to
+find in her soul.
+
+He was aligned now along the very edge of the mattress. It was childish
+of her to behave so spitefully, but what could he do except repay her in
+kind? She would not have understood any other behavior. She had turned
+her back on him, too, and stretched herself as thin as she could as
+close to the edge as she could lie without falling out.
+
+What a vixen she was! And at this time of all when she should have been
+gentle, soothing. Even if she had thought him wrong and misinterpreted
+his natural vehemence as virulence, she should have been patient. What
+was a wife for but to be a helpmeet? She knew how easily his temper was
+assuaged, she knew the very words. Why had she avoided them?
+
+And she was to blame for so many of his problems. Her bills and her
+children's bills were increasing. She took so much of his time. She
+needed so much entertaining, so much waiting on, so much listening to.
+Neither she nor the children produced. They simply spent. In a crisis
+they never gave help, but exacted it.
+
+In business, as in a shipwreck, strong and useful men must step back and
+sacrifice themselves that the women and children might be saved--for
+other men to take care of. And what frauds these women were! All
+allurement and gentleness till they had entrapped their victims, then
+fiends of exaction, without sympathy for the big work of men, without
+interest in the world's problems, alert to ridiculous suspicions,
+reckless with accusations, incapable of equity, and impatient of
+everything important.
+
+Marriage was a trap, masking its steel jaws and its chain under flowers.
+What changelings brides were! A man never led away from the altar the
+woman he led thither. Before marriage, so interested in a man's serious
+talk and the business of his life! After marriage, unwilling to listen
+to any news of import, sworn enemies of achievement, putting an
+ingrowing sentiment above all other nobilities of the race.
+
+And his wife was of all women the most womanish. She had lost what early
+graces she had. In the earlier days they had never quarreled. That is,
+of course, they had quarreled, but differently. They had left each other
+several times, but how rapturously they had returned. And then she had
+craved his forgiveness and granted hers without asking. She had always
+forgiven him for what he had not done, said, or thought, or for the
+things he had done and said most justly. But there had been a charm
+about her, a sweet foolishness that was irresistible.
+
+In the dark now he smiled to think how dear and fascinating she had been
+then. Oh, she had loved him then, had loved the very faults she had
+imagined in him. Perhaps after he was dead she would remember him with
+her earlier tenderness. She would blame herself for making him the
+irascible, hot-tempered brute he had been--perhaps--at times.
+
+And now he had slain and buried himself, and his woe could burrow no
+farther down. His soul was at the bottom of the pit. There was no other
+way to go but upward, and that, of course, was impossible.
+
+As he wallowed in the lugubrious comfort of his own post-mortem revenge
+he wished that he had left unsaid some of the things he had said.
+Quelled by the vision of his wife weeping over him and repenting her
+cruelties, they began to seem less cruel. She was absolved by remorse.
+
+He heard her sobbing over his coffin and heard her recall her ferocious
+words with shame. His white, set face seemed to try to console her. He
+heard what he was trying to tell her in all the gentle understanding of
+the tomb:
+
+"I said worse things, honey. I don't know how I could have used such
+words to you, my sweetheart. A longshoreman wouldn't have called a
+fishwife what I called you, you blessed child. But it was my love that
+tormented me. If a man had quarreled with me, we'd have had a knock-down
+and drag-out and nothing more thought of it. If any woman but you had
+denounced me as you did I'd have shrugged my shoulders and not cared
+a--at all.
+
+"It was because I loved you, honey, that your least frown hurt me so.
+But I didn't really mean what I said. It wasn't true. You're the best,
+the faithfulest, the prettiest, dearest woman in all the world, and you
+were a precious wife to me--so much more beautiful, more tender, more
+devoted than the wives of the other men I knew. I will pray God to bring
+you to me in the place I'm going to. I could not live without you
+anywhere."
+
+This was what he was trying to tell her, and could not utter a word of
+it. He seemed to be lying in his coffin, staring up at her through
+sealed eyelids. He could not purse his cold lips to kiss her warm mouth.
+He could not lift an icy hand to bless her brow. They would come soon
+to lay the last board over his face and screw down the lid. She would
+scream and fight, but they would drag her away. And he could not answer
+her wild cries. He could not go to her rescue. He would be lifted in the
+box from the trestles and carried out on the shoulders of other men, and
+slid into the waiting hearse; and the horses would trot away with him,
+leaving her to penury, with her children and his at the mercy of the
+merciless world, while he was lowered into a ditch and hidden under
+shovelfuls of dirt, to lie there motionless, useless, hideously idle
+forever.
+
+This vision of himself dead was so vivid that his heart jumped in his
+breast and raced like a propeller out of water. The very pain and the
+terror were joyful, for they meant that he still lived.
+
+Whatever other disasters overhung him, he was at least not dead. Better
+a beggar slinking along the dingiest street than the wealthiest
+Rothschild under the stateliest tomb. Better the sneers and pity of the
+world in whispers about his path than all the empty praise of the most
+resounding obituary.
+
+The main thing was to be alive. Before that great good fortune all
+misfortunes were minor, unimportant details. And, after all, he was not
+so pitiable. His name was still respected. His factory was still
+running. Whatever his liabilities, he still had some assets, not least
+of them health and experience and courage.
+
+But where had his courage been hiding that it left him whimpering
+alone? Was he a little girl afraid of the dark, or was he a man?
+
+There were still men who would lend him money or time. What if he was in
+trouble? Were not the merchant princes of the earth sweating blood?
+There had been a rich men's panic before the poor were reached. Now
+everybody was involved.
+
+After all, what if he failed? Who had not failed? What if he fell
+bankrupt?--that was only a tumble down-stairs. Could he not pick himself
+up and climb again? Some of the biggest industries in the world had
+passed through temporary strain. The sun himself went into eclipse.
+
+If his factory had to close, it could be opened again some day. Or even
+if he could not recover, how many better men than he had failed? To be
+crushed by the luck of things was no crime. There was a glory of defeat
+as well as of victory.
+
+The one great gleaming truth was that he was still alive, still in the
+ring. He was not dead yet. He was not going to die. He was going to get
+up and win.
+
+There was no shame in the misfortunes he had had. There was no disgrace
+in the fears he had bowed to. All the nations and all the men in them
+were in a night of fear. But already there was a change of feeling. The
+darker the hour, the nearer the dawn. The worse things were, the sooner
+they must mend.
+
+People had been too prosperous; the world had played the spendthrift
+and gambled too high. But economy would restore the balance for the
+toilers. What had been lost would soon be regained.
+
+Fate could not down America yet. And he was an American. What was it
+"Jim" Hill had said to the scare-mongers: "The man who sells the United
+States short is a damned fool." And the man who sells himself short is a
+damneder fool.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus he struggled through the bad weather of his soul. The clouds that
+had gathered and roared and shuttled with lightnings had emptied their
+wrath, and the earth still rolled. The mystery of terror was subtly
+altered to a mystery of surety.
+
+Lying in the dark, motionless, he had wrought out the miracle of
+meditation. Within the senate chamber of his mind he had debated and
+pondered and voted confidence in himself and in life.
+
+His eyes, still open, still battling for light, had found none yet. The
+universe was still black. He could not distinguish sky from window, nor
+casement from ceiling. Yet the gloom was no longer terrible. The
+universe was still a great ship rushing on, but he was no longer a
+midget in a little cockleshell about to be crushed. He was a passenger
+on the ship. The night was benevolent, majestic, sonorous with music.
+The sea was glorious and the voyage forward.
+
+And now that his heart was full of good news, he had a wild desire to
+rush home with it to her who was his home. How often he had left her in
+the morning after a wrangle, and hurried back to her at night bearing
+glad tidings, the quarrel forgotten beyond the need of any treaty. And
+she would be there among their children, beaming welcome from her big
+eyes.
+
+And she was always so glad when he was glad. She took so much blame on
+herself; though how was she to blame for herself? Yet she took no credit
+to herself for being all the sweet things she was. She was the flowers
+and the harvest, and the cool, amorous evening after the hard day was
+done. And he was the peevish, whining, swearing imbecile that chose a
+woman for wife because she was a rose and then clenched her thorns and
+complained because she was not a turnip.
+
+He felt a longing to tell her how false his croakings had been in that
+old dead time so long ago as last night. But she was asleep. And she
+needed sleep. She had been greatly troubled by his troubles. She had
+been anxious for him and the children. She had so many things to worry
+over that never troubled him. She had wept and been angry because she
+could not make him understand. Her very wrath was a way of crying: "I
+love you! You hurt me!"
+
+He must let her sleep. Her beauty and her graces needed sleep. It was
+his blessed privilege to guard her slumbers, his pride to house her well
+and to see that she slept in fabrics suited to the delicate fabric of
+her exquisite body.
+
+But if only she might chance to be awake that he might tell her how
+sorry he was that he had been weak and wicked enough to torment her with
+his baseless fears and his unreasonable ire. At least he must touch her
+with tenderness. Even though she slept, he must give her the benediction
+of one light caress.
+
+He put his hand out cautiously toward her. He laid his fingers gently on
+her cheek. How beautiful it was even in the dark! But it was wet! with
+tears! Suddenly her little invisible fingers closed upon his hand like
+grape tendrils.
+
+But this did not prove her awake. So habited they were to each other
+that even in their sleep their bodies gave or answered such endearments.
+
+He waited till his loneliness for her was unendurable, then he breathed,
+softly:
+
+"Are you asleep, honey?"
+
+For answer she whirled into his bosom and clenched him in her arms and
+wept--in whispers lest the children hear. He petted her tenderly and
+kissed her hair and her eyelids and murmured:
+
+"Did I wake you, honey?"
+
+"No, no!" she sobbed. "I've been awake for hours."
+
+"But you didn't move!"
+
+"I was afraid to waken you. You need your rest so much. I've been
+thinking how hard you work, how good you are. I'm so ashamed of myself
+for--"
+
+"But it was all my fault, honey."
+
+"Oh no, no, my dear, my dear!"
+
+He let her have the last word; for an enormous contentedness filled his
+heart. He drew the covers about her shoulder and held her close and
+breathed deep of the companionship of the soul he had chosen. He
+breathed so deeply that his head drooped over hers, his cheek upon her
+hair. The night seemed to bend above them and mother them and say to
+them, "Hush! hush! and sleep!"
+
+There are many raptures in the world, and countless beautiful moments,
+and not the least of them is this solemn marriage in sleep of the man
+and woman whose days are filled with cares, and under whose roof at
+night children and servants slumber aloof secure.
+
+While these two troubled spirits found repose and renewal, locked each
+in the other's arms, the blackness was gradually withdrawn from the air.
+In the sky there came a pallor that grew to a twilight and became a
+radiance and a splendor. And night was day. It would soon be time for
+the father to rise and go forth to his work, and for the mother to rise
+to the offices of the home.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
+
+I
+
+
+In the tame little town of Hillsdale he seemed the tamest thing of all,
+Will Rudd--especially appropriate to a kneeling trade, a shoe clerk by
+election. He bent the pregnant hinges to anybody soever that entered the
+shop, with its ingenious rebus on the sign-board:
+
+[Illustration: CLAY KITTREDGE and Emporium Nobby Footwear]
+
+He not only untied the stilted Oxfords or buttoned in the arching
+insteps of those who sat in the "Ladies' and Misses' Dept.," which was
+the other side of the double-backed bench whose obverse was the "Gents'
+Dept.," but also he took upon the glistening surface of his trousers the
+muddy soles of merchants, the clay-bronzed brogans of hired men, the
+cowhide toboggans of teamsters, and the brass-toed, red-kneed boots of
+little boys ecstatic in their first feel of big leather.
+
+Rudd was a shoe clerk to be trusted. He never revealed to a soul that
+Miss Clara Lommel wore shoes two sizes too small, and when she bit her
+lip and blenched with agony as he pried her heel into the protesting
+dongola, he seemed not to notice that she was no Cinderella.
+
+And one day, when it was too late, and Miss Lucy Posnett, whose people
+lived in the big brick mansard, realized that she had a hole in her
+stocking, what did Rudd do? Why, he never let on.
+
+Stanch Methodist that he was, William Rudd stifled _in petto_ the fact
+that the United Presbyterian parson's wife was vain and bought little,
+soft black kids with the Cuban heel and a patent-leather tip to the
+opera toe! The United Presbyterian parson himself had salved his own
+vanity by saying that shoes show so plainly on the pulpit, and it was
+better to buy them a trifle too small than a trifle too large,
+but--umm!--er, hadn't you better put in a little more of that powder,
+Mr. Rudd? I have on--whew!--unusually thick socks to-day.
+
+Clay Kittredge, Rudd's employer, valued him, secretly, as a man who
+brought in customers and sold them goods. But he never mentioned this
+to his clerk lest Rudd be tempted to the sin of vanity, and
+incidentally to demanding an increase in that salary which had remained
+the same since he had been promoted from delivery-boy.
+
+Kittredge found that Rudd kept his secrets as he kept everybody's else.
+Professing church member as he was, Rudd earnestly palmed off shopworn
+stock for fresh invoices, declared that the obsolete Piccadillies which
+Kittredge had snapped up from a bankrupt sale were worn on all the best
+feet on Fifth Avenoo, and blandly substituted "just as good" for
+advertised wares that Kittredge did not carry.
+
+Besides, when no customer was in the shop he spent the time at the back
+window, doctoring tags--as the King of France negotiated the hill--by
+marking up prices, then marking them down.
+
+But when he took his hat from the peg and set it on his head, he put on
+his private conscience. Whatever else he did, he never lied or cheated
+to his own advantage.
+
+And so everybody in town liked William Rudd, and nobody admired him. He
+was treated with the affectionate contempt of an old family servant. But
+he had his ambitions and great ones, ambitions that reached past himself
+into the future of another generation. He felt the thrill that stirs the
+acorn, fallen into the ground and hidden there, but destined to father
+an oak. His was the ambition beyond ambition that glorifies the seed in
+the loam and ennobles the roots of trees thrusting themselves downward
+and gripping obscurity in order that trunks and branches, flowers and
+fruits, pods and cones, may flourish aloft.
+
+Eventually old Clay Kittredge died, and the son chopped the "Jr."
+curlicue from the end of his name and began a new regime. The old
+Kittredge had sought only his own aggrandizement, and his son was his
+son. The new Clay Kittredge had gone to public school with Rudd and they
+continued to be "Clay" and "Will" to each other; no one would ever have
+called Rudd by so demonstrative a name as "Bill."
+
+When Clay second stepped into his father's boots--and shoes--he began to
+enlarge the business, hoping to efface his father's achievements by his
+own. The shop gradually expanded to a department store for covering all
+portions of the anatomy and supplying inner wants as well.
+
+Rudd was so overjoyed at not being uprooted and flung aside to die that
+he never observed the shrewd irony of Kittredge's phrase, "You may
+remain, Will, with no reduction of salary."
+
+To have lost his humble position would have frustrated his dream, for he
+was doing his best to build for himself and for Her a home where they
+could fulfil their destinies. He cherished no hope, hardly even a
+desire, to be a great or rich man himself. He was one of the
+nest-weavers, the cave-burrowers, the home-makers, who prepare the way
+for the greater than themselves who shall spring from themselves.
+
+He was of those who become the unknown fathers of great men. And so, on
+a salary that would have meant penury to a man of self-seeking tastes,
+he managed to save always the major part of his earning. At the bank he
+was a modest but regular visitor to the receiving-teller, and almost a
+total stranger to the paying-teller.
+
+His wildest dissipation being a second pipeful of tobacco before he went
+to bed--or "retired," as he would more gently have said it--he
+eventually heaped up enough money and courage to ask Martha Kellogg to
+marry him. Martha, who was the plainest woman in plain Hillsdale,
+accepted William, and they were made one by the parson. The wedding was
+accounted "plain" even in Hillsdale.
+
+The groomy bridegroom and the unbridy bride spent together all the time
+that Rudd could spare from the store. He bought for her a little frame
+house with a porch about as big as an upper berth, a patch of grass with
+a path through it to the back door, some hollyhocks of startling color,
+and a highly unimportant woodshed. It spelled HOME to them, and they
+were as happy as people usually are. He did all he could to please her.
+At her desire he even gave up his pipe without missing it--much.
+
+Mrs. Martha Rudd was an ambitious woman, or at least restless and
+discontented. Having escaped her supreme horror, that of being an old
+maid, she began to grow ambitious for her husband. She nagged him for a
+while about his plodding ways, the things that satisfied him, the salary
+he endured. But it did no good. Will Rudd was never meant to put boots
+and spurs on his own feet and splash around in gore. He was for carpet
+slippers, round-toed shoes, and on wet days, rubbers; on slushy days he
+even descended to what he called "ar'tics."
+
+Not understanding the true majesty of her husband's long-distance
+dreams, and baffled by his unresponse to her ambitions for him, Martha
+grew ambitious for the child that was coming. She grew frantically,
+fantastically ambitious. Here was something William Rudd could respond
+to. He could be ambitious as Caesar--but not for himself. He was a
+groundling, but his son should climb.
+
+Husband and wife spent evenings and evenings debating the future of the
+child. They never agreed on the name--or the alternative names. For it
+is advisable to have two ready for any emergency. But the future was
+rosy. They were unanimous on that--President of the United States,
+mebbe; or at least the President's wife.
+
+Mrs. Rudd, who occasionally read the continued stories in the evening
+paper, had happened on a hero named "Eric." She favored that name--or
+Gwendolynne (with a "y"), as the case might be. In any event, the
+child's future was so glowing that it warmed Mrs. Rudd to asking one
+evening, forgetful of her earlier edict:
+
+"Why don't you smoke your pipe any more, Will?"
+
+"I'd kind o' got out of the habit, Marthy," he said, and added, hastily,
+"but I guess I'll git back in."
+
+Thereafter they sat of evenings by the lamp, he smoking, she sewing
+things--holding them up now and then for him to see. They looked almost
+too small to be convincing, until he brought home from the store a pair
+of shoes--"the smallest size made, Marthy, too small for some of the
+dolls you see over at Bostwick's."
+
+It was the golden period of his life. Rudd never sold shoes so well.
+People could hardly resist his high spirits. Anticipation is a great
+thing--it is all that some people get.
+
+To be a successful shoe clerk one must acquire the patience of Job
+without his gift of complaint, and Rudd was thoroughly schooled. So he
+waited with a hope-lit serenity the preamble to the arrival of
+his--her--their child.
+
+And then fate, which had previously been content with denying him
+comforts and keeping him from luxuries, dealt him a blow in the face,
+smote him on his patient mouth. The doctor told him that the little body
+of his son had been born still. After that it was rather a stupor of
+despair than courage that carried him through the vain struggle for life
+of the worn-out housewife who became only almost a mother. It seemed
+merely the logical completion of the world's cruelty when the doctor
+laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and walked out of the door, without
+leaving any prescription to fill. Rudd stood like a wooden Indian, too
+dazed to understand or to feel. He opened the door to the undertaker and
+waited outside the room, just twiddling his fingers and wondering. His
+world had come to an end and he did not know what to do.
+
+At the church, the offices of the parson, and the soprano's voice from
+behind the flowers, singing "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"--Marthy's
+favorite hymn--brought the tears trickling, but he could not believe
+that what had happened had happened. He got through the melancholy honor
+of riding in the first hack in the shabby pageant, though the town
+looked strange from that window. He shivered stupidly at the first sight
+of the trench in the turf which was to be the new lodging of his family.
+He kept as quiet as any of the group among the mounds while the
+bareheaded preacher finished his part.
+
+He was too numb with incredulity to find any expression until he heard
+that awfulest sound that ever grates the human ear--the first shovelful
+of clods rattling on a coffin. Then he understood--then he woke. When he
+saw the muddy spade spill dirt hideously above her lips, her cheeks, her
+brow, and the little bundle of futile flesh she cuddled with a rigid arm
+to a breast of ice--then a cry like the shriek of a falling tree split
+his throat and he dropped into the grave, sprawling across the casket,
+beating on its denying door, and sobbing:
+
+"You mustn't go alone, Marthy. I won't let you two go all by yourselves.
+It's so fur and so dark. I can't live without you and the--the baby.
+Wait! Wait!"
+
+They dragged him out, and the shovels concluded their venerable task. He
+was sobbing too loudly to hear them, and the parson was holding him in
+his arms and patting his back and saying "'Shh! 'Shh!" as if he were a
+child afraid of the dark.
+
+The sparse company that had gathered to pay the last devoir to the
+unimportant woman in the box in the ditch felt, most of all, amazement
+at such an unexpected outburst from so expectable a man as William Rudd.
+There was much talk about it as the horses galloped home, much talk in
+every carriage except his and the one that had been hers.
+
+Up to this, the neighbors had taken the whole affair with that splendid
+philosophy neighbors apply to other people's woes. Mrs. Budd Granger had
+said to Mrs. Ad. Peck when they met in Bostwick's dry-goods store, at
+the linen counter:
+
+"Too bad about Martha Rudd, isn't it? Plain little body, but nice. Meant
+well. Went to church regular. Yes, it's too bad. I don't think they
+ought to put off the strawb'ry fest'val, though, just for that, do you?
+Never would be any fun if we stopped for every funeral, would there?
+Besides, the strawb'ry fest'val's for charity, isn't it?"
+
+The strawberry festival was not put off and the town paper said that "a
+pleasant time was had by all." Most of the talk was about Will Rudd.
+The quiet shoe clerk had provided the town with an alarm, an
+astonishment. He was most astounded of all. As he rode back to the frame
+house in the swaying carriage he absolutely could not believe that such
+hopes, such plans, could be shattered with such wanton, wasteful
+cruelty. That he should have loved, married, and begotten, and that the
+new-made mother and the new-born child should be struck dead, nullified,
+returned to clay--such things were too foolish, too spendthrift, to
+believe.
+
+It is strange that people do not get used to death. It has come to
+nearly every being anybody has ever heard of; and whom it has not yet
+reached, it will. Every one of the two billions of us on earth to-day
+expects it to come to him, and (if he have them) to his son, his
+daughter, his man-servant, his maid-servant, his ox, his ass, the
+stranger within his gates, the weeds by the road. Kittens and kingdoms,
+potato-bugs, plants, and planets--all are on the visiting-list.
+
+Death is the one expectation that never fails to arrive. But it comes
+always as a new thing, an unheard-of thing, a miracle. It is the
+commonest word in the lexicon, yet it always reads as a _hapax
+legomenon_. It is like spring, though so unlike. For who ever believed
+that May would emerge from March this year? And who ever remembers that
+violets were suddenly abroad on the hills last April, too?
+
+William Rudd ought to have known better. In a town where funerals were
+social events dangerously near to diversion, he had been unusually
+frequent at them. For he belonged to the local chapter of the Knights of
+Pythias, and when a fellow-member in good standing was forced to resign,
+William Rudd donned his black suit, his odd-looking cocked hat with the
+plume, and the anachronous sword, which he carried as one would expect a
+shoe clerk to carry a sword. The man in the hearse ahead went to no
+further funerals, stopped paying his dues, made no more noise at the
+bowling-alley, and ceased to dent his pew cushion. Somebody got his job
+at once and, after a decent time, somebody else probably got his wife.
+The man became a remembrance, if that.
+
+Rudd had long realized that people eventually become dead; but he had
+never realized death. He had been an oblivious child when his mother and
+father had taken the long trip whose tickets read but one way, and had
+left him to the grudging care of an uncle with a large enough family.
+
+And now his own family was obliterated. He was again a single man, that
+familiar thing called a widower. He could not accept it as a fact. He
+denied his eyes. He was as incredulous as a man who sees a magician play
+some old vanishing trick. He had seen it, but he could not understand it
+enough to believe it. When the hack left him at his house he found it
+emptier than he could have imagined a house could be. Marthy was not on
+the porch, or in the settin'-room, the dinin'-room, the kitchen, or
+anywhere up-stairs. The bed was empty, the stove cold. The lamp had not
+been filled. The cruse of his life was dry, the silver cord loosened,
+the pitcher broken at the fountain, the wheel broken at the cistern.
+
+As he stumbled about filling the lamp, and covering his hands with
+kerosene, he wondered what he should do in those long hours between the
+closing of the shoe-shop of evenings and its opening of mornings. Men
+behave differently in this recurring situation. Some take to drink, or
+return to it. Rudd did not like liquor; at least he did not think he
+would have liked it if he had ever tasted it. Some take to gambling.
+Rudd did not know big casino from little, though he had once almost
+acquired a passion for checkers--the give-away game. Some submerge
+themselves in money-getting. Rudd would not have given up the serene
+certainty of his little salary for a speculator's chance to clean up a
+million, or lose his margin.
+
+If only the child had lived, he should have had an industry, an
+ambition, a use.
+
+Widowers have occasionally hunted consolation with the same sex that
+sent them grief. Rudd had never known any woman in town as well as he
+had known Martha, and it had taken him years to find courage to propose
+to her. The thought of approaching any other woman with intimate
+intention gave him an ague sweat.
+
+And how was he to think of taking another wife? Even if he had not been
+so confounded with grief for his helpmeet as to believe her the only
+woman on earth for him, how could he have accosted another woman when he
+had only debts for a dowry?
+
+Death is an expensive thing in every phase. The event that robbed Rudd
+of his wife, his child, his hope, had taken also his companion, his
+cook, his chambermaid, his washerwoman, the mender of his things; and in
+their place had left an appalling monument of bills. The only people he
+had permitted himself to owe money to were the gruesome committee that
+brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, the casket-maker, the
+sexton, and the dealer in the unreal estate who sold the tiny lots in
+the sad little town.
+
+His soul was too bruised to grope its way about, but instinct told him
+that bills must be paid. Instinct automatically set him to work clearing
+up his accounts. For their sakes he devoted himself to a stricter
+economy than ever. He engaged meals at Mrs. Judd's boarding-house. He
+resolved even to rent his home. But, mercifully, there was no one in
+town to take the place. In economy's name, too, he put away his
+pipe--for one horrible evening. The next day he remembered how Marthy
+had sung out, "Why don't you smoke your pipe any more, Will?" and he had
+answered: "I'd kind o' got out of the habit, Marthy, but I guess I'll
+git back in." And Lordy, how she laughed! The laughter of the dead--it
+made a lonely echo in the house.
+
+Gradually he found, as so many dismal castaways have found, that there
+is a mystic companionship in that weed which has come out of the
+vegetable world, as the dog from among the animals, to make fellowship
+with man. Rudd and his pipe were Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday on
+the desert island of loneliness. They stared out to sea; and imagined.
+
+Remembering how Martha and he used to dream about the child, in the
+tobacco twilight, and how they planned his future, Rudd's soul learned
+to follow the pipe smoke out from the porch, over the fence and to
+disappear beyond the horizons of the town and the sharp definition of
+the graveyard fence. He became addicted to dreams, habituated to dealing
+in futurities that could never come to pass.
+
+Being his only luxury on earth, by and by they became his necessities,
+realities more concrete than the shoes he sold or the board walk he
+plodded to and from his store.
+
+One Sunday Rudd was present at church when Mr. and Mrs. Budd Granger
+brought their fourth baby forward to be christened. The infant bawled
+and choked and kicked its safety-pins loose. Rudd was sure that Eric
+never would have misbehaved like that. Yet Eric had been denied the
+sacred rite.
+
+This reminded Rudd how many learned theologians had proved by rigid
+logic that unbaptized babies are damned forever. He spent days of horror
+at the frightful possibility, and nights of infernal travel across
+gridirons where babies flung their blistered hands in vain appeal to
+far-off mothers. He could not get it from his mind until, one evening,
+his pipe persuaded him to erect a font in the temple of his imagination.
+
+He mused through all the ritual, and the little frame house seemed to
+thrill as the vague preacher enounced the sonorous phrase:
+
+"I baptize thee Eric--in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
+the Holy Ghost."
+
+Marthy was there, too, of course, but it was the father that held the
+baby. And the child did not wince when the pastor's fingers moistened
+the tiny brow. He just clasped a geranium-petal hand round Rudd's thumb
+and stared at the sacrament with eyes of more than mortal understanding.
+
+The very next day Mrs. Ad. Peck walked into the store, proud as a
+peahen. She wanted shoes for her baby. The soles of the old pair were
+intact, but the stubby toes were protruding.
+
+"He crawls all over the house, Mr. Rudd! And he cut his first tooth
+to-day, too. Just look at it. Ain't it a beauty?"
+
+In her insensate conceit she pried the child's mouth apart as if he were
+a pony, to disclose the minute peak of ivory. It was nothing to make
+such a fuss over, Rudd thought, though he praised it as if it were a
+snow-capped Fuji-yama.
+
+That night Eric cut two teeth. And Marthy nearly laughed her head off.
+
+Rudd did not talk aloud to the family he had revened from the grave. He
+had no occult persuasions. He just sat in his rocker and smoked hard and
+imagined hard. He imagined the lives of his family not only as they
+might have been, but as they ought to have been. He was like a spectator
+at a play, mingling belief and make-belief inextricably, knowing it all
+untrue, yet weeping, laughing, thrilling as if it were the very image of
+fact.
+
+All mothers and some fathers have a sad little calendar in their hearts'
+cupboards where they keep track of the things that might have been.
+"October fifth," they muse. "Why, it's Ned's birthday! He'd have been
+twenty-one to-day if he'd lived. He'd have voted this year. December
+twenty-third? Alice would have been coming home from boarding-school
+to-day if--July fourth? Humph! How Harry loved the fireworks! But he'd
+be a Senator now and invited to his home town to make a speech in the
+park to-day if--" If! If!
+
+Everybody must keep some such if-almanac, some such diary of prayers
+denied. That was all Rudd did; only he wrote it up every evening. He
+would take from the lavender where he kept them the little things Martha
+had sewed for the child and the little shoes he had bought. The warm
+body had never wriggled and laughed in the tiny trousseau, the little
+shoes had never housed pink toes, but they helped him to pretend until
+they became to him things outgrown by a living, growing child. He
+cherished them as all parents cherish the first shoes and the first
+linens and woolens of their young.
+
+Marthy and Eric Rudd lived just behind the diaphanous curtain of the
+pipe smoke, or in the nooks of the twilight shadow, or in the heart of
+the settin'-room stove.
+
+The frame house had no fireplace, and in its lieu he was wont to open
+the door of the wood-stove, lean forward, elbows on knees, and gaze into
+the creamy core of the glow where his people moved unharmed and radiant,
+like the three youths conversing in the fiery furnace.
+
+In the brief period allotted them before bedtime they must needs live
+fast. The boy grew at an extraordinary rate and in an extraordinary
+manner, for sometimes Rudd performed for him that feat which God Himself
+seems not to achieve in His world; he turned back time and brought on
+yesterday again, or reverted the year before last, as a reaper may pause
+and return to glean some sheaf overlooked before.
+
+For instance, Eric was already a strapping lad of seven spinning through
+school at a rate that would have given brain fever to a less-gifted
+youngster, when, one day, Farmer Stebbins came to the Emporium with a
+four-year-old chub of a son who ran in ahead of his father, kicked his
+shoes in opposite directions and yelled, to the great dismay of an old
+maid in the "Ladies' and Misses' Dept.":
+
+"Hay, mister, gimme pair boots 'ith brass toes!"
+
+The father, after a formulaic pretense of reproving the lad, explained:
+
+"We'll have to excuse him, Rudd; it's his first pair of boots."
+
+Rudd's heart was sore within him, and he was oppressed with guilt. He
+had never bought Eric his first pair of brass-toed boots! And he a shoe
+clerk!
+
+So that night Eric had to be reduced several years, brought out of
+school, and taken to St. Louis. Rudd knew what an epoch-making event
+this was, and he wanted Eric to select from a larger stock than the
+meager and out-of-date supply of Kittredge's Emporium--though this
+admission was only for Rudd's own family. The thumb-screw could not have
+wrung it from him for the public.
+
+There was a similar mix-up about Eric's first long trousers which Rudd
+likewise overlooked. He accomplished the Irish miracle of the tight
+boots. Eric had worn his breeches a long while before he put them on for
+the first time.
+
+To the outer knowledge of the stranger or the neighbor, William Rudd's
+employer had all the good luck that was coming to him, and all of Rudd's
+besides. They were antitheses at every point.
+
+Where Rudd was without ambition, importance, family, or funds, Kittredge
+was the richest man in town, the man of most impressive family, and
+easily the leading citizen. People began to talk him up for Congressman,
+maybe for Senator. He had held all the other conspicuous offices in his
+church, his bank, his county. You could hardly say that he had ever run
+for any office; he had just walked up and taken it.
+
+Yet Rudd did not envy him his record or his family. Clay Kittredge had
+children, real children. The cemetery lodged none of them. Yet one of
+the girls or boys was always ill or in trouble with somebody; Mrs.
+Kittredge was forever cautioning her children not to play with Mrs.
+So-and-so's children and Mrs. So-and-so would return the compliment. The
+town was fairly torn up with these nursery Guelph and Ghibelline wars.
+
+Rudd compared the wickednesses of other people's children with the
+perfections of Eric. Sometimes his evil genius whispered a bitter
+thought that if Eric had lived to enter the world this side of the
+tobacco smoke, he, too, might have been a complete scoundrel in
+knee-breeches, instead of the clean-hearted, clear-skinned, studious,
+truthful little gentleman of light and laughter and love that he was.
+But Rudd banished the thought.
+
+Eric was never ill, or only ill enough at times to give the parents a
+little of the rapture of anxiety and of sitting by his bedside holding
+his hand and brushing his hair back from a hot forehead. Eric never was
+impolite, or cruel to an animal, or impudent to a teacher, or backward
+in a class.
+
+And Rudd's wife differed from Kittredge's wife and wives in general--and
+indeed from the old Martha herself--in staying young and growing more
+and more beautiful. The old Martha had been too shy and too cognizant of
+the truth ever to face a camera; and Rudd often regretted that he owned
+not even a bridal photograph such as the other respectable married folks
+of Hillsdale had on the wall, or in a crayon enlargement on an uneasy
+easel. He had no likeness of Martha except that in his heart. But
+thereby his fancy was unshackled and he was enabled to imagine her
+sweeter, fairer, every day.
+
+It was the boy alone that grew; the mother, having become perfect,
+remained stationary in charm like the blessed Greeks in the
+asphodel-fields of Hades.
+
+About the time Eric Rudd outgrew the public schools of Hillsdale and
+graduated from the high school with a wonderful oration of his own
+writing called "Night Brings Out the Stars," Kittredge announced that
+his eldest son would go to Harvard in the fall. Rudd determined that
+Eric should go to Yale. He even sent for catalogues. Rudd was appalled
+to see how much a person had to know before he could even get into
+college. And then, this nearly omniscient intellect was called a
+Freshman!
+
+The prices of rooms, of meals, of books, of extra fees, the estimated
+allowances for clothing and spending-money dazed the poor shoe clerk and
+nearly sent Eric into business. But, fortunately, the brier pipe came to
+the rescue with an unexpected legacy from an unsuspected uncle.
+
+The four years of college life were imagined with a good deal of
+elision and an amount of guesswork that would have amused a janitor. But
+Rudd and Martha were chiefly interested in the boy's vacations at home,
+and their own trips to New Haven, and the letters of approval from the
+professors.
+
+Eric had an athletic career seldom equaled since the days of Hercules.
+For Eric was a champion tennis-player, hockey-player, baseballist,
+boxer, swimmer, runner, jumper, shot-putter. And he was the best
+quoit-thrower in the New Haven town square. Rudd had rather dim notions
+of some of the games, so that Eric was established both as center rush
+of the football team and the cockswain in the crew.
+
+He was also a member of all the best fraternities. He was a "Bones" man
+in his Freshman year, and in his Sophomore year added the other Senior
+societies. And, of course, he stood at the head of all his
+classes--though he never condescended to take a single red apple to a
+professor.
+
+The boy's college life lasted Rudd a thousand and one evenings. It was
+in beautiful contrast with the career of Kittredge's children, some of
+whom were forever flunking their examinations, slipping back a year,
+requiring expensive tutors, acquiring bad habits, and getting into debt.
+Almost the only joy Kittredge had of them was in telegraphing them money
+in response to their telegrams for money--they never wrote. Their
+vacations either sent them scurrying on house parties or other
+excursions. Or if they came home they were discontented with house and
+parents. They corrected Kittredge's grammar, though his State accounted
+him an orator. They corrected Mrs. Kittredge's etiquette, though
+Hillsdale looked up to her as a social arbitrix.
+
+Kittredge poured a deal of his disappointment into Rudd's ear, because
+his hard heart was broken and breaking anew every day, and he had to
+tell somebody. He knew that his old clerk would keep it where he kept
+all the secrets of his business, but he never knew that Rudd still had a
+child of his own, forging ahead without failure. Rudd could give
+comfort, for he had it to spare, and he was empty of envy.
+
+It was a ghastly morning when Kittredge showed Rudd a telegram saying
+that his eldest son, Thomas, had thrown himself in front of a train
+because of the discovery that his accounts were wrong. Kittredge had
+found him a place in a New York bank, but the gambling fever had seized
+the young fellow. And now he was dead, in his sins, in his shame. Dives
+cried out to Lazarus:
+
+"It's hell to be a father, Will. It's an awful thing to bring children
+into the world and try to carry 'em through it. It's not a man's job.
+It's God's."
+
+At times like these, and when Rudd heard from the tattlers, or read in
+the printed gossip of the evening paper concerning the multifarious
+wickednesses of the children of men about the earth, he felt almost glad
+that his boy had never lived upon so plague-infected a world. But in the
+soothe of twilight the old pipe persuaded him to a pleasanter view of
+his boy, alive and always doing the right thing, avoiding the evil.
+
+His motto was, "Eric would have done different." He was sure of that. It
+was his constant conclusion.
+
+After graduating from an imaginary Yale Eric went to an imaginary
+law-school in New York City--no less. Then he was admitted to that
+imaginary bar where a lawyer never defends an unrighteous cause, never
+loses a case, yet grows rich. And, of course, like every other American
+boy that dreams or is dreamed of, in good time he had to become
+President.
+
+Eric lived so exemplary a life, was so busy in virtue, so unblemished of
+fault, that he could not be overlooked by the managers of the
+quadrennial national performance, searching with Demosthenes' lantern
+for a man against whom nothing could be said. They called Eric from
+private life to be headliner in their vaudeville.
+
+Rudd had watched Kittredge clambering to his success, or rather
+wallowing to it through a swamp of mud. All the wrong things Kittredge
+had ever done, and their name was legion, were hurled in his path. His
+family scandals were dug up by the double handful and splashed in his
+face. Against his opponent the same methods were used. It was like a
+race through a marsh; and when Kittredge reached his goal in the Senate
+he was so muck-bemired, his heart had been so lacerated, the nakedness
+of his past so exposed, that his laurel seemed more like a wreath of
+poison ivy. And once mounted on his high post, he was an even better
+target than when he was on the wing.
+
+Against Eric's blameless life the arrows of slander were like darts shot
+toward the sun. They fell back upon the archers' heads. That was a
+lively night in the tobacco lagoon when the election returns came in and
+State after State swung to Eric's column. Rudd made it as nearly
+unanimous as he could without making it stupid. The solid South he left
+unbroken; he just brought it over to Eric en bloc. For Eric, it seems,
+had devised what everybody else has looked for in vain, a solution of
+the negro problem to satisfy both North and South--and the negroes.
+Unfortunately the details have been lost.
+
+Marthy was there, of course; she rode in the same hack with their boy.
+Some of the politicians and the ex-President wanted to get in, but Eric
+said:
+
+"My mother and father ride with me or I won't be President."
+
+That settled 'em. Eric even wanted to ride backward, too, but Will, as
+his father, insisted; and of course Eric obeyed, though he was
+President. And the weather was more like June than March, no blizzards
+delaying trains and distributing pneumonia.
+
+Once the administration was begun, the newspapers differed strangely in
+their treatment of Eric from their attitude toward other Chief
+Magistrates, from Washington down. Realizing that Eric was an honorable
+man trying to do the right thing by the people, no editor or cartoonist
+dreamed of accusing him of an unworthy motive or an unwise act. As for
+the tariff labyrinth, a matter of some trouble to certain Presidents
+pulled in all directions at once by warring constituencies, Eric settled
+that in a jiffy. And the best of it was that everybody was satisfied,
+importers and exporters; East, West, and Middle; farmers, manufacturers,
+lumbermen, oilmen, painters--everybody.
+
+And when his first term was ended the Democrats and Republicans,
+realizing that they had at last found a perfectly wise and honorable
+ruler, nominated him by acclamation at both conventions. The result was
+delightful; both parties elected their candidate.
+
+Marthy and Will sat with Eric in the carriage at the second inaugural,
+too. There was an argument again about who should ride backward. Rudd
+said:
+
+"Eric, your Excellency, these here crowds came to see you, and you ought
+to face 'em. As your dad I order you to set there 'side of your mother."
+
+But Eric said, "Dad, your Majesty, the people have seen me often enough,
+and as the President of these here United States I order you to set
+there 'side of your wife."
+
+And of course Rudd had to do it. Folks looked very much surprised to see
+him and there was quite a piece in the papers about it.
+
+To every man his day's work and his night's dream. Will Rudd has poor
+nourishment of the former, but he is richly fed of the latter. His
+failures and his poverty and the monotony of his existence are public
+knowledge; his dream is his own triumph and the greater for being his
+secret.
+
+The Fates seemed to go out of their way to be cruel to Will Rudd, but he
+beat them at their own game. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos kept Jupiter
+himself in awe of their shears, and the old Norns, Urdur, Verdandi, and
+Skuld, ruined Wotan's power and his glory. But they could not touch the
+shoe clerk. They shattered his little scheme of things to bits, but he
+rebuilt it nearer to his heart's desire. He spread a sky about his
+private planet and ruled his little universe like a tribal god. He,
+alone of all men, had won the oldest, vainest prayer that was ever said
+or sung: "O God, keep the woman I love young and beautiful, and grant
+our child happiness and success without sin or sorrow."
+
+If, sometimes, the imagination of the matter-of-fact man wavers, and the
+ugliness of his loneliness overwhelms him, thrusts through his dream
+like a hideous mountainside when an avalanche strips the barren crags of
+their fleece; and if he then breaks down and calls aloud for his child
+and his wife to be given back to him from Out There--these panics are
+also his secret. Only the homely sitting-room of the lonely frame house
+knows them. He opens the door of the wood-stove or follows his pipe
+smoke and rallies his courage, resumes his dream. The next morning sees
+him emerge from his door and go briskly to the shop as always, whether
+his path is through rain or sleet, or past the recurrent lilacs that
+have scattered many a purple snow across his sidewalk since the
+bankruptcy of his ambitions.
+
+He would have been proud to be the unknown father of a great man. He was
+not permitted to be the father even of a humble man. Yet being denied
+the reality, he has taken sustenance in what might have been, and has
+turned "the saddest words of tongue or pen" into something almost sweet.
+If his child has missed the glories of what might have been, he has
+escaped the shames that might have been, and the bruises and heartaches
+and remorses that must have been, that always have been. That is the
+increasing consolation a bitter world offers to those who love and have
+lost. That was Rudd's solace. And he made the most of it; added to it a
+dream. He was a wise man.
+
+After he paid his sorrowful debts his next slow savings went to the
+building of a monument for his family. It is one of the handsomest
+shafts in the cemetery. If Rudd could brag of anything he would brag of
+that. The inscription took a long time to write. You could tell that by
+its simplicity. And you might notice the blank space left for his own
+name when all three shall be together again.
+
+Rudd is now saving a third fund against the encroaching time when he
+shall be too feeble to get up from his knees after he has dropped upon
+them to unlace somebody's sandal. Lonely old orphans like Rudd must
+provide their own pensions. There is a will, however, which bequeaths
+whatever is left of his funds to an orphan home. Being a sonless father,
+he thinks of the sons who have no fathers to do for them what he was so
+fain to do for his. It is not a large fund for these days when rich men
+toss millions as tips to posterity, but it is pretty good for a shoe
+clerk. And it will mean everything to some Eric that gets himself really
+born.
+
+If you drop in at the Emporium and ask for a pair of shoes or boots, or
+slippers or rubbers, or trees or pumps, and wait for old Rudd to get
+round to you, you will be served with deference, yet with a pride of
+occupation that is almost priestly. And you will probably buy something,
+whether you want it or not.
+
+The old man is slightly shuffly in his gaiters. His own elastics are
+less resilient than once they were. If you ask for anything on the top
+shelf he is a trifle slow getting the ladder and rather ratchety in
+clambering up and down, and his eyes are growing so tired that he may
+offer you a 6D when you ask for a 3A.
+
+But, above all things, don't hurt his pride by offering to help him to
+his feet if he shows some difficulty in rising when he has performed his
+genuflexion before you. Just pretend not to notice, as he would pretend
+not to notice any infirmity or vanity of yours. It is his vanity to be
+still the best shoe clerk in town--as he is. There is a gracious
+satisfiedness about the old man that radiates contentment and makes you
+comfortable for the time in most uncomfortable shoes. And as old Rudd
+says:
+
+"You'll find that the best shoe is the one that pinches at first and
+hurts a little; in time it will grow very comfortable and still be
+becoming."
+
+That is what Rudd says, and he ought to know.
+
+In these days he is so supremely comfortable in his old shoes that his
+own fellow-clerks hardly know what to make of him. If they only
+understood what is going on in his private world they would realize that
+Eric is about to be married--in the White House. The boy was so busy for
+the country and loved his mother so that he had no time to go sparkin'.
+
+But Marthy got after him and said: "Eric, they're goin' to make you
+President for the third term. Oh, what's that old tradition got to do
+with it? Can't they change it? Well, you mark my words, like as not
+you'll settle down and live in the White House the rest of your life.
+You'd ought to have a wife, Eric, and be raisin' some childern to
+comfort your declining years. What would Will and me have done without
+you? I'm gettin' old, Eric, and I'd kind o' like to see how it feels to
+be a grandmother, before they take me out to the--"
+
+But that was a word Rudd could never frame even in his thoughts.
+
+Eric, being a mighty good boy, listened to his mother, as always. And
+Marthy looked everywhere for an ideal woman, and when she found one,
+Eric fell in love with her right away. It is not every child that is so
+dutiful as that.
+
+The marriage is to take place shortly and Rudd is very busy with the
+details. He will go on to Washington, of course--of evenings. In fact,
+the wedding is to be in the evening, so that he won't have to miss any
+time at the shop. There are so many people coming in every day and
+asking for shoes, that he wouldn't dare be away.
+
+Martha is insisting on Will's buying a dress soot for the festivities,
+but he is in doubt about that. Martha, though, shall have the finest
+dress in the land, for she is more beautiful even than Eric's bride, and
+she doesn't look a day older than she did when she was a bride herself.
+A body would never guess how many years ago that was.
+
+The White House is going to be all lit up, and a lot of big folks will
+be there--a couple of kings, like as not. There will be fried chicken
+for dinner and ice-cream--mixed, maybe, chocolate and vanella, and
+p'raps a streak of strawb'ry. And there will be enough so's everybody
+can have two plates. Marthy will prob'ly bake the cake herself, if she
+can get that old White House stove to working right.
+
+Rudd has a great surprise in store for her. He's going to tell a good
+one on Marthy. At just the proper moment he's going to lean over--Lord,
+he hopes he can keep his face straight--and say, kind of offhand:
+
+"Do you remember, Marthy, the time when you was makin' little
+baby-clothes for the President of the United States here, and you says
+to me--you see, Eric, she'd made me quit smokin', herself, but she plumb
+forgot all about that--and she says to me, s'she, 'Why don't you smoke
+your pipe any more, Will?' she says. And I says, 'I'd kind o' got out of
+the habit, Marthy,' s'I, 'but I guess I'll git back in,' s'I. I said it
+right off like that, 'I guess I'll git back in!' s'I. Remember,
+Marthy?"
+
+
+
+
+THE HAPPIEST MAN IN IOWAY
+
+
+    Jes' down the road a piece, 'ith dust so deep
+      It teched the bay mare's fetlocks, an' the sun
+    So b'ilin' hot, the peewees dassn't peep,
+      Seemed like midsummer 'fore the spring's begun!
+    An' me plumb beat an' good-for-nothin'-like
+      An' awful lonedsome fer a sight o' you ...
+    I come to that big locus' by the pike,
+      An' she was all in bloom, an' trembly, too,
+    With breezes like drug-store perfumery.
+      I stood up in my sturrups, with my head
+    So deep in flowers they almost smothered me.
+      I kind o' liked to think that I was dead ...
+    An' if I hed 'a' died like that to-day,
+    I'd 'a' b'en the happiest man in Ioway.
+
+    For what's the use't o' goin' on like this?
+      Your pa not 'lowin' me around the place ...
+    Well, fust I knowed, I'd give' them blooms a kiss;
+      They tasted like Good-Night on your white face.
+    I reached my arms out wide, an' hugged 'em--say,
+      I dreamp' your little heart was hammerin' me!
+    I broke this branch off for a love-bo'quet;
+      'F I'd b'en a giant, I'd 'a' plucked the tree!
+    The blooms is kind o' dusty from the road,
+      But you won't mind. So, as the feller said,
+    "When this you see remember me"--I knowed
+      Another poem; but I've lost my head
+    From seein' you! 'Bout all that I kin say
+    Is--"I'm the happiest man in Ioway."
+
+    Well, comin' 'long the road I seen your ma
+     Drive by to town--she didn't speak to me!
+    An' in the farthest field I seen your pa
+      At his spring-plowin', like I'd ought to be.
+    But, knowin' you'd be here all by yourself,
+      I hed to come; for now's our livin' chance!
+    Take off yer apern, leave things on the shelf--
+      Our preacher needs what th' feller calls "romance."
+    'Ain't got no red-wheeled buggy; but the mare
+      Will carry double, like we've trained her to.
+    Jes' put a locus'-blossom in your hair
+      An' let's ride straight to heaven--me an' you!
+    I'll build y' a little house, an' folks'll say:
+    "There lives the happiest pair in Ioway."
+
+
+
+
+PRAYERS
+
+
+God leaned forward in His throne and bent His all-seeing gaze upon one
+of the least of the countless suns. A few tiny planets spun slowly about
+it like dead leaves around a deserted camp-fire.
+
+Almost the smallest of these planets had named itself the Earth. The
+glow of the central cinder brightened one side and they called that Day.
+And where the shadow was was Night.
+
+The creeping glimmer of Day woke, as it passed, a jangle in shops and
+factories, a racket and hurry of traffic, war and business, which the
+coming of the gloom hushed in its turn. As God's eyes pierced the shadow
+they found, between the dotted lines of street-lamps and under the roofs
+where the windows glimmered--revelry or solemnity. In denser shadows
+there was a murmur of the voices of lovers and of families at peace or
+at war.
+
+The All-hearing heard no chaos in this discord, but knew each instrument
+and understood each melody, concord, and clash. Loudest of all were the
+silences or the faint whimperings of those who knelt by their beds and
+bent their brows toward their own bosoms, communing with the various
+selves that they interpreted as the one God. He knew who prayed for
+what, and He answered each in His own wisdom, knowing that He would seem
+to have answered none and knowing why.
+
+Among the multitudinous prayers one group arrived at His throne from
+separate places, but linked together by their contradictions. He heard
+the limping effort to be formal as before a king or a court of justice.
+He heard the anxious fear break through the petition; He heard the
+selfish eagerness trembling in the pious phrases of altruism. He
+understood.
+
+
+I. A MAN'S VOICE
+
+Our Father which art in heaven let me come back to Thy kingdom. Bless my
+wife Edith and our little Marjorie and give them to me again. I am not
+worthy of them; I have sinned against them and against Thee. I have been
+drunken, adulterous, heartless, but from this night I will be good
+again. I will try with all my soul, and with Thy help I will succeed.
+Teach me to be strong. Forgive me my trespasses and help Edith to
+forgive them. Make my wife beautiful in my sight and make all those
+other beautiful faces ugly in my eyes so that I shall see only Edith as
+I used to.
+
+Grant me freedom from the wicked woman who will not let me go; don't let
+Rose carry out her threats; don't let her wreck my home; make her
+understand that I am doing my duty; make her love some one else; make
+her forget me. How can I be true to my sin and true to Thee! Help me
+out of these depths, O Lord, that I may walk in the narrow path and
+escape destruction.
+
+To-morrow I am going back to my wife and my child with words of love and
+humility on my lips.
+
+Give me back my home again, O God. Amen.
+
+
+II. A WOMAN'S VOICE
+
+Let me come to Thee again, dear Father, and do not reject my prayer.
+Forgive me for what I shall do to-night. Take care of my little Marjorie
+and save her from the temptations that have overwhelmed me. Thou alone
+knowest how hard I have tried to live without love, how long I have
+waited for John to come back to me. Thou only hast seen me struggling
+against the long loneliness. Thou alone canst forgive, for Thou hast
+seen me refuse to be tempted with love. Thou hast heard my cries in the
+long, long nights. Thou knowest that I have been true to my husband who
+was not true to me. Thou hast seen me put away the happiness that Frank
+has offered me and asked of me. And now if I can endure no longer, if I
+give myself to him, more for his sake than mine, let me bear the
+punishment, not Frank; let me bear even the punishment John has earned.
+I am what Thou hast made me, Lord. If it be Thy pleasure that I shall
+burn in the fires forever, then let Thy will be done; for I can live no
+longer without Frank. Thou mayest refuse to hear my prayers, but I
+cannot refuse to hear his. Forgive me if I leave my beloved child alone.
+She is safer with Thee than with me. Perhaps her father will be good to
+her now. Perhaps he will turn back to her if I am away. And help me
+through the coming years to be true to Frank. He needs me, he loves me,
+he is braving the wrath of the world and of heaven for my sake.
+
+Help us, Lord, to find in our new life the peace and the virtue that was
+not in the old and bless and guard my motherless little Marjorie, O God,
+and save her from the fate that overwhelmed her mother for her father's
+fault. I am leaving her asleep here in Thy charge, O God. When she wakes
+in the morning let Thy angels comfort her and dry her tears. Let me not
+hear her crying for me, or I shall kill myself. I cannot bear
+everything. I have endured more than my strength can endure. Help me, O
+Lord, and forgive me for my sin--if sin it is. Amen.
+
+
+III. A MAN'S VOICE
+
+God, if You are in heaven, hear me and help me. I have not prayed for
+many years. My voice is strange to You. My prayer may offend You, but it
+rushes from my heart.
+
+I am about to do what the world calls hideous crime--to steal another
+man's wife and carry her to another country where we may have peace. I
+loved Edith before her husband loved her. I love her better than John
+ever loved her. I can't stand it. I can't stand it any longer to see her
+deserted in her beauty, and despised and weeping in loneliness, wasting
+her love on a dog who squandered his heart on a vile woman. I can't go
+on watching her die in a living hell. I have sold all my goods and
+gotten all I could save into my safe so that we may sever all ties with
+this heartless love. If what we are about to do offends Thee, then let
+me suffer for her. She has suffered enough, enough, enough!
+
+And keep her husband from following us, lest I kill him. Keep her from
+mourning too much for her child--his child. Give her a little happiness,
+O God. Take bitter toll from my heart afterward, but give us a little
+happiness now. Grant us escape to-night and safety and a little
+happiness for her. And then I shall believe in Thee again and live
+honorably in Thy sight. Amen.
+
+
+IV. A WOMAN'S VOICE
+
+Dear God in heaven, what shall I do? He has abandoned me, John has
+turned against me at last. Has denounced me as wicked, and hateful, has
+accused me of wrecking his life and breaking his wife's heart--as if she
+had a heart, as if I had not saved him from despair, as if I had not
+sacrificed my name, my hopes, on earth and in heaven to make him happy.
+
+O God, why hast Thou persecuted me so fiercely always? What made You
+hate me so? Why didn't You give me a decent home as a child? Why did You
+throw me into the snares of those vile men? Why did You make me
+beautiful and weak and trusting? Why didn't You make me ugly and
+suspicious and hateful so that I could be good?
+
+And now, now that I am no longer a girl, now that the wrinkles are
+coming, and the fat and the dullness, why didst Thou throw me into the
+way of this man who promised to love me forever, who promised me and
+praised me and called me his real wife, only to tire of me and tear my
+hands away and go back to her?
+
+But don't let him have her, don't let him be happy with her, while I
+grovel here in shame! I can't bear the thought of that, I can't imagine
+him in her arms telling her how good she is and how bad I was. I'd
+rather kill them both. Isn't that best, O Lord--to kill them both--to
+kill her, anyway? Then I can kill myself and he will be sorry. Don't let
+him have both of us, O God. Am I going mad, or do I hear Thy voice
+telling me to act? Yes, it is Thy voice. Thou hast answered. I will do
+as Thou dost command. Perhaps he is going there to-night. I will go to
+the house and wait in the shadow and when he comes to the door and she
+comes to meet him I will shoot her and myself, and then he shall be
+punished as he should be.
+
+I thank Thee, God, for showing me the way. Guide my arm and my heart and
+don't let me be afraid to die or to make her die. Forgive my sins and
+take me into Thy peace, O God, for I am tired of life and the wickedness
+of the world. Amen. Amen.
+
+
+V. A CHILD'S VOICE
+
+Our Father which art in he'v'm, hallowed be Dy name. Dy king'm come. Dy
+will be done in earf as it is in he'v'm. Give us dis day our daily bread
+and forgive an'--an' forgive Marjorie for bein' a bad chile an' getting
+so s'eepy, and b'ess papa an' b'ing him home to mamma an'--an'
+trespasses as--tres-passes 'gainst us. King'm, power, and glory forever.
+Amen.
+
+
+VI. AN OLD WOMAN'S VOICE
+
+--and give my poor Edith strength and let her find happiness again in
+the return of her husband. Let her forget his wrongs and forgive them
+and live happily in her old age as I have done with my husband. I thank
+Thee for helping me through those cruel years. Thou alone couldst have
+helped me and now all would be happiness if only Edith had happiness,
+but for the mercies Thou hast vouchsafed make me grateful.
+
+
+VII. AN OLD WOMAN'S VOICE
+
+--and help my poor Rose to be a good girl to her old mother and keep her
+out of trouble and make her send me some more money, for I'm so sick
+and tired and the rent's comin' due and I need a warm coat for the
+winter, and I've had a hard life and many's the curse You've put upon
+me, but I'm doing my best and I'm all wore out.
+
+
+VIII. A MAN'S VOICE
+
+Fergimme, O Gawd, if it makes Thou mad fer to be prayed to by a sneakin'
+boiglar, but help me t'roo dis one job and I'll go straight from now on,
+so help me. Don't let dis guy find me crackin' his safe, so's I won't
+have to kill 'im. Help me make a clean getaway and I'll toin over a noo
+leaf, I will. I'll send money to me mudder, and I'll go to choich
+reg'lar and I'll never do nuttin' crooked again. On'y dis one time, O
+Gawd.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+God closed His eyes and smiled the sorrowful smile of the All-knowing,
+the All-pitying, the Unknown, the Unpitied, and He said to Him who sat
+at His side:
+
+"They call these Prayers! They will wonder why I have not finished the
+tasks they set Me nor accepted the bribes they offered. And to-morrow
+they will rebuke Me as a faithless, indolent servant who has
+disobeyed!"
+
+
+
+
+PAIN
+
+I
+
+
+"How much more bitter, dearly beloved, are the anguishes of the soul
+than any mere bodily distress! When the heart under conviction of sin
+for the violation of one of God's laws writhes and cries aloud in
+repentance and remorse, then, ah, then, is true suffering. What are the
+fleeting torments of this tenement of clay, mere bone and flesh, to the
+soul's despair? Nothing! Noth--"
+
+The clergyman's emphatic fist did not thump the Scriptures the second
+time. He checked it in air; for a woman stood up straight and stared at
+him straight. Her thin mouth seemed to twist with a sneer. He thought he
+read on her lips words not quite uttered. He read:
+
+"You fool! You fool!"
+
+Then Miss Straley sidled from the family pew to the aisle and marched up
+it and out of the church.
+
+Doctor Crosson was shocked doubly. The woman's action was an outrage
+upon the holy composure of the Sabbath, and it would remind everybody
+that he was an old lover of Irene Straley's.
+
+The neatly arranged congregational skulls were disordered now, some
+still tilted forward in sleep, some tilted back to see what the pastor
+would do, some craned round to observe the departer, some turned inward
+in whispering couples.
+
+Such a thing had never happened before in all the parsoning of Doctor
+Crosson--the D.D. had been conferred on him by the small theological
+institute where he had imbibed enough dogmas in two years to last him a
+lifetime.
+
+Some of his dogmas were so out of fashion that he felt them a trifle
+shabby even for village wear. He had laid aside the old red hell-fire
+dogma for a new one of hell-as-a-state-of-mind. He was expounding that
+doctrine this morning again. He had never heard any complaint of it. But
+his mind was so far from his memory that he hardly knew what he had just
+uttered. He wondered what he could have said to offend Miss Straley.
+
+But he must not stand there gaping and wondering before his gaping and
+wondering congregation. He must push on to his _lastly's_. His mind
+retraced his words, and he repeated:
+
+"What are the fleeting torments of this tenement of clay, mere bone and
+flesh, to the soul's despair? Nothing! As I said before--nothing!"
+
+And then he understood why Irene Straley had walked out. The realization
+deranged him so that only the police-force every one has among his
+faculties coerced him into going on with his sermon.
+
+It was a good sermon. It was his own, too; for at last he had paid the
+final instalment on the clergyman's library which contained a thousand
+sermons as aids to overworked, underinspired evangelists. He had built
+this discourse from well-seasoned timbers. He had used it in two pulpits
+where he had visited, and now he was giving it to his own flock. He knew
+it well enough to trust his oratorical machinery with its delivery,
+while the rest of his mind meditated other things.
+
+Often, while preaching, a portion of his brain would be watching the
+effect on his congregation, another watching the clock, another thinking
+of dinner, another musing over the scandals he knew in the lives of the
+parishioners.
+
+But now all his by-thoughts were scattered at the abrupt deed of Irene
+Straley. She was the traffic of his other brains now, while his lips
+went on enouncing the phrases of his discourse and his fists thudded the
+Bible for emphasis. He was remembering his boyhood and his infatuation
+for Irene Straley. That was before he was sure of his call to the
+ministry. If he had married her, he might not have heard the call.
+
+Doctor Crosson hoped that he was not regretting that sacrament! Sweat
+came out on his brow as he understood the blasphemy of noting (even here
+on the rostrum with his mouth pouring forth sacred eloquence) that Irene
+Straley as she marched out of the church was still slender and flexile,
+virginal. Doctor Crosson mopped his brow at the atrocity of his thoughts
+this morning. The springtime air was to blame. The windows were open
+for the first time. The breeze that lolled through the church had no
+right there. It was irreverent and frivolous. It was amused at the
+people. It rippled with laughter at the preacher's heavy effort to start
+a jealousy between the pangs of the flesh and the pangs of the soul.
+
+It brought into church a savor of green rushes growing in the warm, wet
+thickets where Doctor Crosson--once Eddie Crosson--had loved to go
+hunting squirrels and rabbits, and wild duck in season. Those were years
+of depravity, but they were entrancing in memory. He felt a Satanic
+whisper: "Order these old fogies out into the fields and let them
+worship there. It is May, you fool!"
+
+"You fool!" That was what Irene Straley had seemed to whisper. Only, the
+breeze made a soft, sweet coo of the word that had been so bitter on her
+lips.
+
+Across the square of a window near the pulpit a venerable locust-tree
+brandished a bough dripping with blossoms. Countless little censers of
+white spice swung frankincense and myrrh for pagan nostrils.
+
+There was a beckoning in the locust bough, and in the air an incantation
+that made a folly of sermons and souls and old maids' resentments and
+gossips' queries. The preacher fought on, another Saint Anthony in a
+cloud of witches.
+
+He could hear himself intoning the long sermon with the familiar
+pulpiteering rhythms and the final upsnap of the last syllable of each
+sentence. He could see that the congregation was already drowsily
+forgetful of Irene Straley's absence. But, to save his soul, he could
+not keep his mind from following her out into the leafy streets and on
+into the past where she had been the prize he and young Drury Boldin had
+contended for--a past in which he had never dreamed that his future was
+a pulpit in his home town.
+
+He was the manlier of the two, for Drury was a delicate boy, too
+sensitive for the approval of his Spartan fellows. They made fun of his
+gentleness. He hated to wreathe a fishing-worm on a hook! He loathed to
+wrench a hook from a fish's gullet! The nearest he had ever come to
+fighting was in defense of a thousand-legged worm that one of the boys
+had stuck a pin through, to watch it writhe and bite itself behind the
+pin.
+
+Irene Straley was a sentimental girl. That was right in a girl, but
+silly in a boy.
+
+Once when Eddie Crosson stubbed his toe and it swelled up to great
+importance, Irene Straley wept when she saw it, while Drury Boldin
+turned pale and sat down hard. Once when Drury cut his thumb with a
+penknife he fainted at the sight of his own blood!
+
+Eddie Crosson was a real boy. He smoked cubeb cigarettes with an almost
+unprecedented precocity. He nearly learned to chew tobacco. He could
+snap a sparrow off a telegraph-wire with a nigger-shooter almost
+infallibly. He had the first air-gun in town and a shot-gun at fifteen.
+He thought that he was manlier than Drury because he was wiser and
+stronger. It never occurred to him that Drury might suffer more because
+he was more finely built, that his nerves were harp-strings while
+Crosson's were fence-wire.
+
+So Crosson called Drury a milksop because he would not go hunting. He
+called himself one of the sons of Nimrod.
+
+For a time he gained prestige with Irene Straley, especially as he gave
+her bright feathers now and then, an oriole's gilded mourning, or a
+tanager's scarlet vesture.
+
+One day Drury Boldin was at her porch when Ed came in from across the
+river with a brace of duck.
+
+"You can have these for your dinner to-morrow, Reny," he said, as he
+laid the limp, silky bodies on the porch floor.
+
+Their bills and feet were grotesque, but there was something about their
+throats, stretched out in waning iridescence, that asked for regret.
+
+"Oh, much obliged!" Irene cried. "That's awful nice of you, Eddie. Duck
+cook awful good."
+
+And then her enthusiasm ebbed, for she caught the look of Drury Boldin
+as he bent down and stroked the glossy mantle of the birds, not with
+zest for their flavor, nor envy of the skill that had fetched them from
+the sky, but with sorrow for their ended careers, for the miracle gone
+out of their wings, and the strange fact that they had once quawked and
+chirruped in the high air and on hidden waters--and would never fly or
+swim again. "I wonder if they had souls," he mumbled.
+
+Eddie Crosson winked at Irene. There was no use getting mad at Drury.
+Eddie only laughed:
+
+"'Course not, you darn galoot!"
+
+"How do you know?" Drury asked.
+
+"Anybody knows that much," was Crosson's sufficient answer, and Drury
+changed to another topic. He asked:
+
+"Did it hurt 'em much to die?"
+
+"'Course not," Eddie answered, promptly. "Not the way I got 'em. They
+just stopped sailin' and dropped. I lost one, though. He was goin' like
+sixty when I drew bead on him. Light wasn't any too good and I just
+nipped one wing. You ought to seen him turning somersets, Reny. He lit
+in a swampy spot, though, and I couldn't find him. I hunted for an hour
+or more, but I couldn't find him and it was growin' dark, so I come
+home."
+
+Drury spoke up quickly: "You didn't kill him?"
+
+"I don't guess so. He was workin' mighty hard when he flopped."
+
+"Oh, that's terrible!" Drury groaned. "He must be layin' out there now
+somewheres--sufferin'. Oh, that's terrible!"
+
+"Aw, what's it your business?" was Crosson's gruff comment. But there
+was uneasiness in his tone, for Drury had set Irene to wringing her
+hands nervously, and Crosson felt a trifle uncomfortable himself.
+Twilight always made him susceptible to emotions that daylight blinded
+him to, as to the stars. He remembered that boyhood emotion now in his
+pulpit, and his shoulder-blades twitched; an icy finger seemed to have
+written something on them. He was casting up his eyes and his hands in a
+familiar gesture and quoting a familiar text:
+
+"'Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the
+noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his
+wings shalt thou trust.'"
+
+From the roof of the church he seemed to see that wounded wild duck
+falling, turning in air, striking at the air frantically with his good
+wing and feebly with the one that bled. Down he fell, struggling
+somewhere among the pews.
+
+A fantastic notion drifted into the preacher's mind--that Satan had shot
+up a bullet from hell and it had lodged among the feathers of Jehovah
+the protector, and He was falling and lost among that congregation in
+which so often the preacher had failed to find God.
+
+Doctor Crosson shook his head violently to fling away such madnesses,
+and he propounded his next "furthermore" with added energy. But he could
+not shake off the torment in the recollection of Drury Boldin's nagging
+interest in that wild duck.
+
+
+II
+
+Drury insisted on knowing where the wild duck fell, and Crosson told him
+that it was "near where the crick emptied into the sluice, where the
+cat-tails grew extra high."
+
+He went on home to his supper, but the thought of the suffering bird had
+seized his mind; it flopped and twisted at the roots of his thoughts.
+
+A few days later Drury met him and asked him again where the duck had
+fallen.
+
+"I can't find it where you said," he said.
+
+"You ain't been lookin' for it, have you?"
+
+"Yes, for days."
+
+"What'd you do if you found it?" Crosson asked.
+
+"Kill it," Drury answered. It was a most unexpectable phrase from him.
+
+"That sounds funny, comin' from you," Crosson snickered. Then he spoke
+gruffly to conceal his own misgivings. "Aw, it's dead long ago."
+
+"I'd feel better if I was sure," said Drury.
+
+Crosson called him a natural-born idiot, but the next day Crosson
+himself was across the river, dragged by a queer mood. He took his
+bearings from the spot where he had fired his shot-gun and then made
+toward the place where the duck fell.
+
+He stumbled about in slime and snarl for an hour in vain. Suddenly he
+was startled by the sound of something floundering through the reeds. He
+was afraid that it might be a wild animal, a traditional bear or a big
+dog. But it was Drury Boldin. And Irene Straley was with him.
+
+They were covered with mud. Crosson was jealous and suspicious and
+indignant. They told him that they were looking for the hurt bird. He
+was furious. He advised them to go along about their own business. It
+was his bird.
+
+"Who gave it to you?" Drury answered, with a battling look in his soft
+eyes.
+
+"The Lord and my shot-gun."
+
+"What right you got to go shootin' wild birds, anyway?" Drury demanded.
+
+Crosson was even then devoted to the Bible for its majestic music, if
+for nothing else. He quoted the phrase about the dominion over the fowls
+of the air given to man for his use.
+
+Drury would not venture to contradict the Scriptures, and so he turned
+away silenced. But he continued his search. And Irene followed him.
+
+In sullen humor Crosson also searched, till he heard Drury cry out; then
+he ran to see what he had found.
+
+Irene and Drury were shrinking back from something that even the son of
+Nimrod regarded with disquiet. The duck, one wing caked and festered,
+and busy with ants and adrone with flies, was still alive after all
+those many days.
+
+Its flat bill was opening and shutting in hideous awkwardness, its
+hunger-emaciated frame rising and falling with a kind of lurching
+breath, and the film over its eyes drawing together and rolling back
+miserably.
+
+At the sight of the three visitors to its death-chamber it made a
+hopeless effort to lift itself again to the air of its security. It
+could not even lift its head.
+
+Drury fell to one knee before it, and a swarm of flies zooned angrily
+away. He put out his hand, but he was afraid to touch, and he only added
+panic to the bird's wretchedness.
+
+He rose and backed away. The three stood off and stared. Crosson felt
+the guilt of Cain, but when Irene moaned, "What you goin' to do?" he
+shook his head. He could not finish his task.
+
+It was Drury Boldin, weak-kneed and putty-faced, who went hunting now.
+He had to look far before he found a heavy rock. He lugged it back and
+said, "Go on away, Reny."
+
+She hurried to a distance, and even Crosson turned his head aside.
+
+On the way home they were all three tired and sick, and Drury had to
+stop every now and then to sit down and get strength into his knees.
+
+But there was a sense of grim relief that helped them all, and the bird,
+once safely dead, was rapidly forgotten. After that Crosson seemed to
+lose his place in Irene's heart, and Drury won all that Crosson lost,
+and more. Before long it was understood that Drury and Irene had agreed
+to get married as soon as he could earn enough to keep them. All four
+parents opposed the match; Irene's because Drury was "no 'count," and
+Drury's for much the same reason.
+
+Old Boldin allowed that Irene would be added to his family, for meals
+and lodgin', if she married his son; and old Straley guessed that it
+would be the other way round, and the Boldin boy would come over to his
+house to live.
+
+Also, Drury could get no work in Carthage. Eventually he went to Chicago
+to try his luck there. Crosson seized the chance to try to get back to
+Irene. One Sunday he took his shot-gun out in the wilderness and brought
+down a duck whose throat had so rich a glimmer that he believed it would
+delight Irene. He took it to her.
+
+She was out in her garden, and she looked at his gift with eyes so hurt
+by the pity of the bird's drooping neck that they were blind to its
+beauty.
+
+While Crosson stood in sheepish dismay, recognizing that Drury was
+present still in his absence, the minister appeared at his elbow. It was
+not the wrecked career of the fowl that shocked the pastor, but the
+broken Sabbath.
+
+"It seems to me, Eddie," he said, "that it is high time you were
+beginning to take life seriously. Come to church to-night and make up
+for your ungodliness."
+
+Crosson consented. It was a good way of making his escape from Irene's
+haunted eyes.
+
+The service that night had little influence on his heart, but a month
+later a revivalist came into Carthage with a great fanfare of attack on
+the hosts of Lucifer. This man was an emotionalist of irresistible fire.
+He reasoned less than he sang. His voice was as thrilling as a trombone,
+and his words did not matter. It was his tone that made the heart
+resound like a smitten bell.
+
+The revivalist struck unsuspected chords of emotion in Eddie Crosson and
+made him weep! But he wept tears of a different sort from the waters of
+grief. His unusual tears were a tribute to eloquence. Sonorous words and
+noble thoughts thrilled Eddie Crosson then as ever after.
+
+He had loved to speak pieces at school. Whether it were Spartacus
+exhorting his brawny slaves to revolt, or Daniel Webster upholding the
+Union now and forever, one and inseparable, he had felt an exaltation,
+an exultation that enlarged him to the clouds. He loved the phrase more
+than the meaning. What was well worded was well reasoned.
+
+His passion for elocution had inclined him at first to be a lawyer, but
+when he visited the county courthouse the attorneys he listened to had
+such dull themes to expound that he felt no call to the law. What glory
+was there in pleading for the honor of an old darky chicken-thief when
+everybody knew at once that he was guilty of stealing the chickens in
+question, or would have been if he had known of their accessibility?
+What rapture was there in insisting that a case in an Alabama court
+eight years before furnished an exact precedent in the matter of a
+mechanic's lien in Carthage?
+
+So Crosson chilled toward the legal profession. His father urged him to
+come into the Crosson hardware emporium, but Eddie hated the silent
+trades. The revivalist decided him, and he began to make his heart
+ready for the clerical life. His father opposed him heathenishly and
+would not pay for his seminary course.
+
+For several months Crosson waited about, becalmed in the doldrums. There
+was little to interest him in town except a helpless espionage on
+Irene's loyalty to Drury Boldin. Her troth defied both time and space.
+She went every day to the post-office to mail a heavy letter and to
+receive the heavy letter she was sure to find there.
+
+She became a sort of tender joke at the post-office, and on the street
+as well, for she always read her daily letter on the way home. She would
+be so absorbed in the petty chronicles of Drury's life that she would
+stroll into people and bump into trees, or fetch up short against a
+fence. She sprained her ankle once walking off the walk. And once she
+marched plump into the parson's horrified bosom.
+
+Crosson often stood in ambush so that she would run into him. She was
+very soft and delicate, and she usually had flowers pinned at her
+breast.
+
+Crosson would grin as she stumbled against him; then the lovelorn girl
+would stare up at him through the haze of the distance her letter had
+carried her to, and stammer excuses and fall back and blush, and glide
+round him on her way. Crosson would laugh aloud, bravely, but afterward
+he would turn and stare at her solemnly enough when she resumed her
+letter and strolled on in the rosy cloud of her communion with her
+far-off "fellow."
+
+One day Crosson had to run after her, because when she thought she was
+turning into her own yard her absent mind led her to unlatch the gate to
+a pasture where a muley cow with a scandalous temper was waiting for her
+with swaying head.
+
+Irene laughed at her escape, with an unusual mirth for her. She
+explained it by seizing Crosson's sleeve and exclaiming:
+
+"Oh, Eddie, such good news from Drury you never heard! He's got a
+position with a jewelry-store, the biggest in Chicago. And they put him
+in the designing department at ten dollars a week, and they say he's got
+a future. Isn't it simply glorious?"
+
+She held Crosson while she read the young man's hallelujahs. They
+sounded to Crosson like a funeral address.
+
+Irene's mother was even prouder of Drury's success than the daughter
+was. She bragged now of the wedding she had dreaded before. Finally
+Irene proclaimed the glorious truth that Drury's salary had been boosted
+again and they would wait no longer for wealth. He was awful busy, and
+so he'd just run down for a couple of days and marry her and run back
+with her to Chicago and jewelry. This arrangement ended Irene's mother's
+dreams of a fine wedding and relieved the townspeople of the expense of
+wedding-presents.
+
+The sudden announcement of the wedding shocked Crosson. He endured a
+jealousy whose intensity surprised him in retrospect. He endured a good
+deal of humor, too, from village cut-ups, who teased him because his
+best girl was marrying the other fellow.
+
+Crosson felt a need of solitude and a fierce desire to kill something.
+He got his abandoned gun and went hunting to wear out his wrath. He wore
+himself out, at least. He shot savagely at all sorts of life. He
+followed one flitting, sarcastic blue-jay with a voice like a village
+cut-up, all the way home without getting near enough to shoot.
+
+He came down the long hill with the sunset, bragging to himself that he
+was reconciled to Irene's marriage with anybody she'd a mind to.
+
+He could see her from a distance, sitting on the porch alone. She was
+all dressed up and rocking impatiently. Evidently the train was late
+again, as always. From where he was, Crosson could see the track winding
+around the hills like a little metal brook. The smoke of the engine was
+not yet pluming along the horizon. The train could not arrive for some
+minutes yet.
+
+To prove his freedom from rancor and his emancipation from love, but
+really because he could not resist the chance to have a last word with
+Irene, he went across lots to her father's back yard and came round to
+the porch. He forgot to draw the shells from his gun.
+
+In the sunset, with his weapon a-shoulder, he must have looked a bit
+wild, for Irene jumped when he spoke to her. He sought an excuse for his
+visit and put at her feet the game he had bagged--a squirrel, a rabbit,
+and a few birds--the last he ever shot.
+
+The moment the dead things were there he regretted the impulse. He was
+reminded of his previous quarry and its ill success. Irene was reminded,
+too, for she thanked him timidly and asked if he had left any wounded
+birds in the field. He laughed "No" with a poor grace.
+
+She said: "I'd better get these out of sight before Drury comes. He
+doesn't like to see such things."
+
+She lifted them distastefully and went into the house. She came out
+almost at once, for she heard a train. But it was not the passenger
+swooping south; it was the freight trudging north. There was only a
+single track then, and no block system of signals.
+
+Irene no sooner recognized the lumbering, jostling drove of cattle-cars
+and flats going by than she gasped:
+
+"That freight ought not to be on that track--now!"
+
+She was frozen with dread. Crosson understood, too. Then from the
+distance came the whistle of the express, the long hurrah of its
+approach to the station. The freight engineer answered it with short,
+sharp blasts of his whistle. He kept jabbing the air with its noise.
+
+There was the grind of the brakes on the wheels. The cars tried to stop,
+like a mob, but the rear cars bunted the front cars forward
+irresistibly. The cattle aboard lowed and bellowed. The brakemen, quaint
+silhouettes against the red sky, ran along the tops of the box-cars,
+twisting the brake-wheels.
+
+Irene stumbled down the steps and dashed across the pastures toward the
+jutting hill that she had so often seen the express sweep round. Crosson
+followed.
+
+They came to a fence. She could not climb, she was trembling so. Crosson
+had to help her over. She ran on, and as he sprawled after, he nearly
+discharged the gun.
+
+He brought it along by habit as he followed Irene, who ran and ran,
+waving her arms as if she would stop the express with her naked hands.
+
+But long before they reached the tracks the express roared round the
+headland and plunged into the freight. The two locomotives met and rose
+up and wrestled like two black bears, and fell over. The cars were
+scattered and jumbled like a baby's train. They were all of wood--heated
+by soft-coal stoves and lighted by coal-oil lamps.
+
+The wreck was the usual horror, the usual chaos of wanton destruction
+and mysterious escape. The engineers stuck to their engines and were
+involved in their ruin somewhere. The passenger-train was crowded, and
+destruction showed no favoritism: old men, women, children, sheep,
+horses, cows, were maimed, or killed, or left scot-free.
+
+Some of those who were uninjured ran away. Some stood weeping. Some of
+the wounded began at once to rescue others. Crosson stood gaping at the
+spectacle, but Irene went into the wreckage, pawing and peering like a
+terrier.
+
+She could not find what she was looking for. She would bend and stare
+into a face glaring under the timbers and maundering for help, then pass
+on. She would turn over a twisted frame and let it roll back. She was
+not a sister of charity; she was Drury Boldin's helpmeet.
+
+She kept calling his name, "Drury--Drury--Drury!" Crosson watched her as
+she poised to listen for the answer that did not come. He gaped at her
+in stupid fascination till a brakeman shook him and ordered him to lend
+a hand. He rested his gun against a pile of ties and bowed his shoulder
+to the hoisting of a beam overhanging a woman and a suckling babe.
+
+The helpers dislodged other beams and finished the lives they had meant
+to save.
+
+There were no physicians on the train. But a doctor or two from the town
+came out and the others were sent for. A telegram was sent to summon a
+relief-train, but it could not arrive for hours.
+
+The doctors began at the beginning, but they could do little. Their own
+lives were in constant danger from tumbling wreckage, for the rescuers
+were playing a game of tragic jackstraws. The least mistake brought down
+disaster.
+
+As he worked, Crosson could hear Irene calling, calling, "Drury, Drury,
+Drury!"
+
+He left his task to follow her, his jealousy turned into a wild sorrow
+for her.
+
+At last he heard in her cry of "Drury!" a note that meant she had found
+him. But such a welcome as it was for a bride to give! And such a
+trysting-place!
+
+The car Drury was in had turned a somersault and cracked open across
+another. Its inverted wheels on their trucks had made a bower of steel
+about the bridegroom. The flames from the stove and from the oil-lamps
+were blooming like hell-flowers everywhere. And the wind that fanned the
+blazes was blowing clouds of scalding steam from the crumpled boilers of
+the two engines.
+
+Crosson ran to Irene's side. She was trying to clamber through a trellis
+of iron and splintered wood. She was stretching her hand out to Drury,
+where he lay unconscious, deep in the clutter. Crosson dragged her away
+from a flame that swung toward her. She struck his hand aside and thrust
+her body into the danger again.
+
+Crosson, finding no water, began to shovel loose earth on the blaze with
+a sharp plank from the side of a car. Finding that she could not reach
+her lover, Irene turned and begged Crosson to run for help and for the
+doctors.
+
+He ran, but the doctors refused to leave the work they had in hand, and
+the other men growled:
+
+"Everybody's got to take their turn."
+
+Crosson ran back to Irene with the news. Drury had just emerged from the
+merciful swoon of shock to the frenzies of his splintered bones,
+lacerated flesh and blistered skin, and the threat of his infernal
+environment.
+
+The last exquisite fiendishness was the sight of his sweetheart as
+witness to his agony, her face lighted up by the flames that were
+ravening toward him, her hands hungering toward him, just beyond the
+stretch of his one free arm.
+
+Crosson heard the lovers murmur to each other across that little abyss.
+He flung himself against the barriers like a madman. But his hands were
+futile against the tangle of joists and hot steel.
+
+Irene saw him working alone and asked him where the others were, and the
+doctors.
+
+"They wouldn't come!" Crosson groaned, ashamed of their ugly sense of
+justice.
+
+The girl's face took on a look of grim ferocity. She said to Crosson:
+
+"Your gun--where is it?"
+
+He pointed to where he had left it. It had fallen to the ground.
+
+She ran and seized it up, and holding it awkwardly but with menace,
+advanced on a doctor who toiled with sleeves rolled high, and face and
+beard and arms blotched with red grime.
+
+She thrust the muzzle into his chest and spoke hoarsely:
+
+"Doctor Lane, you come with me."
+
+"I'm busy here," he growled, pushing the gun aside, hardly knowing what
+it was.
+
+She jammed it against his heart again and cried, "Come with me or I'll
+kill you!"
+
+He followed her, wondering rather than fearing, and she swept a group of
+men with the weapon, and commanded, "You men come, too." She marched
+them to the spot where Drury was concealed, and pointed to him and
+snarled, "Get him out!"
+
+The men tested their strength here and there without promise of success.
+One group started a heap of wheels to slewing downward and Crosson
+shouted to them to stop. An inch more, and they would have buried Drury
+from sight or hope.
+
+One man wormed through somehow and caught Drury by the hand, but the
+first tug brought from him such a wail of anguish that the man fell
+back. He could not budge the body clamped with steel. He could only
+wrench it. So he came away.
+
+"There's nothing for me to do, Reny," the doctor faltered, and, choked
+with pity for her and her lover and the helplessness of mankind, he
+turned away, and she let him go. The gun fell to the ground.
+
+The other men left the place. One of them said that the wrecking-crew
+would be along with a derrick in a few hours.
+
+"A few hours!" Irene whimpered.
+
+She leaned against the lattice that kept her from the bridegroom and
+tried to tell him to be brave. But he had heard his sentence, and with
+his last hope went what little courage he had ever had.
+
+He began to plead and protest and weep. He gave voice to all the voices
+of pain, the myriad voices from every tormented particle of him.
+
+Irene knelt down and twisted through the crevice to where she could hold
+his hand. But he snatched it away, babbling: "Don't touch me! Don't
+touch me!"
+
+Crosson stayed near, dreading lest Irene's skirts should catch fire.
+Twice he beat them out with his hands. She had not noticed that they
+were aflame. She was murmuring love-words of odious vanity to one who
+almost forgot her existence, centered in the glowing sphere of his own
+hell.
+
+Drury rolled and panted and gibbered, cursed even, with lips more used
+to gentle words and prayers. He prayed, too, but with sacrilege:
+
+"O Lord, spare me this. O God, have a little mercy. Send rain, send
+help, lift this mountain from me just till I can breathe. O God, if You
+have any mercy in Your heart--but no, no--no, no, You let Your own Son
+hang on the cross, didn't You? He asked You why You had deserted Him,
+and You didn't answer, did You?"
+
+Crosson looked up to see a thunderbolt split the dark sky, but the stars
+were agleam now, twinkling about the moon's serenity.
+
+Irene put her fingers across Drury's lips to hush his blasphemy. She
+tore her face with her nails, and tried for his sake to stifle the sobs
+that smote through her.
+
+By and by Drury's voice grew hoarse, and he whispered. She bent close
+and heard. She called to Crosson:
+
+"Run get the doctor to give him something--some morphine or
+something--quick. Every second is agony for my poor boy."
+
+Crosson ran to the doctor. He stood among writhing bodies and shook his
+head dismally. He was saying as Crosson came up:
+
+"I'm sorry, I'm awful sorry, folks, but the last grain of morphine is
+gone. The drug-stores haven't got any more. We've telegraphed to the
+next town. You'll just have to stand it."
+
+Crosson went back slowly with that heavy burden of news. He whispered it
+to Irene, but Drury heard him, and a shriek of despair went from him
+like a flash of fire. New blazes sprang up with an impish merriment.
+Crosson, fearing for Irene's safety, fought at them with earth and with
+water that boys fetched from distances, and at last extinguished the
+immediate fire.
+
+The bystanders worked elsewhere, but Crosson lingered to protect Irene.
+In the dark he could hear Drury whispering something to her.
+
+He pleaded, wheedled, kissed her hand, mumbled it like a dog, reasoned
+with her insanely, while she trembled all over, a shivering leaf on a
+blown twig.
+
+Crosson could hear occasional phrases: "If you love me, you will--if
+you love me, Reny. What do you want me to suffer for, honey? You don't
+want me just to suffer--just to suffer, do you--you don't, do you? Reny
+honey, Reny? You say you love me, and you won't do the thing that will
+help me. You don't love me. That's it, you don't really love me!"
+
+She turned to Crosson at last and moaned: "He wants me to kill him! What
+can I do? Oh, what is there to do?"
+
+Crosson could not bear to look in her eyes. He could not bear the sound
+of Drury's voice. He could not even debate that problem. He was cravenly
+glad when somebody's hand seized him and a rough voice called him away
+to other toil. He slunk off.
+
+There were miseries enough wherever he went, but they were the miseries
+of strangers. He could not forget Irene and the riddle of duty that was
+hers. He avoided the spot where she was closeted with grief, and worked
+remote in the glimmer from bonfires lighted in the fields alongside.
+
+The fire in the wreck was out now, save that here and there little
+blazes appeared, only to be quenched at once. But smoldering timbers
+crackled like rifle-shots, and there were thunderous slidings of
+wreckage.
+
+Irene's mother and father had stood off at a distance for a long time,
+but at length they missed Irene and came over to question Crosson. He
+knew that Irene would not wish them present at such obsequies, and he
+told them she had gone home.
+
+After a time, curiosity nagged him into approaching her hiding-place. He
+listened, and there was no sound. He peered in and dimly descried Drury.
+He was not moving; he might have been asleep. Irene might have been
+asleep, too, for she lay huddled up in what space there was.
+
+Crosson knelt down and crawled in. She was unconscious. He touched Drury
+with a dreading hand, which drew quickly back as from a contact with
+ice.
+
+A kind of panic seized Crosson. He backed out quickly and dragged Irene
+away with him in awkward desperation.
+
+As her body came forth, his gun came too. He thought it had lain
+outside. He caught it and broke it at the breech, ejecting the two
+shells; one of them was empty. He threw it into the wreck and pocketed
+the other shell and tossed the gun under a stack of wreckage.
+
+He was trying to revive Irene when her father and mother came back
+anxiously to say that she was not at home. Her mother dropped down at
+her side.
+
+Crosson left Irene with her own people. He did not want to see her or
+hear her when she came back to this miserable world. He did not want her
+even to know what he knew.
+
+
+III
+
+Crosson had tried afterward to forget. It had been hard at first, but in
+time he had forgotten. He had gone to a theological school and learned
+to chide people for their complaints and to administer well-phrased
+anodynes. During his vacations he had avoided Irene. When he had been
+graduated he had been first pulpited in a far-off city.
+
+Years afterward he had been invited to supply an empty pulpit in his
+home town. He had not succeeded with life. He lacked the flame or the
+luck or the tact--something. He had come back to the place he started
+from. He had renewed old acquaintances, laughed over the ancient jokes,
+and said he was sorry for those who had had misfortune. When he met
+Irene Straley he hardly recalled his love, except to smile at it as a
+boyish whim. He had forgotten the pangs of that as one forgets almost
+all his yester aches. He had forgotten the pains he had seen others
+suffer, even more easily than he forgot his own.
+
+To-day his sermon on the triviality of bodily discomfort had flung Irene
+Straley back into the caldron of that old torment. She had made that
+silent protest against the iniquitous cruelty of his preachment. She had
+dragged him backward into the living presence of his past.
+
+She had not forgotten. She had been faithful to Drury Boldin while he
+was working in a distant city. She was faithful to him still in that
+Farthest Country. She had the genius of remembrance.
+
+These were Doctor Crosson's ulterior thoughts while he harangued his
+flock visibly and audibly. His thoughts had not needed the time their
+telling requires. They gave him back his scenes in pictures, not in
+words; in heartaches and heartbreaks and terrors and longings, not in
+limping syllables that mock the vision with their ineptitude.
+
+He felt anew what he had felt and seen, and he could not give any verve
+to the peroration of his sermon. He could not even change it. It had
+been effective when he had preached it previously. But now he parroted
+with unconscious irony the phrases he had once so admired. He came to
+the last word.
+
+"And so, to repeat: How much more bitter, dearly beloved, are the
+anguishes of the soul than any mere bodily distress! What are the
+fleeting torments of this tenement of clay, mere bone and flesh, to the
+soul's despair? Nothing, nothing."
+
+His congregation felt a lack of warmth in his tone. His hand fell limply
+on the Bible and the sermon was done. The only stir was one of relief at
+its conclusion.
+
+He gave out the final hymn, and he sat through it while the people
+dragged it to the end. He gave forth the benediction "in the name of the
+Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," and he made short work of
+the dawdlers who waited to exchange stupidities with him. He took refuge
+from his congregation in his study, locked the door, and gave himself up
+to meditation.
+
+Somehow pain had suddenly come to mean more to him than it had yet
+meant. He had known it, groaned under it, lived it down, and let it go.
+He had felt sorry for other people and got rid of their woes as best as
+he could with the trite expressions in use, and had forgotten whether
+they were hushed by health or by death.
+
+And so he had let the old-fashioned hell go by with other dogmas out of
+style. He had fashioned a new Hades to frighten people with, that they
+might not find sin too attractive and imperilous.
+
+Now he was suddenly convinced that if there must be hell, it must be
+such as Dante set to rhyme and the old hard-shell preachers preached: a
+region where flames sear and demons pluck at the frantic nerves, playing
+upon them fiendish tunes.
+
+Yet he could not reconcile that hell with the God that made the
+lilac-bush whose purple clusters shook perfume and little flowers
+against his window-sill, while the old locust in rivalry bent down and
+flaunted against the lilacs its pendants of ivory grace and heavenly
+fragrance.
+
+Against that torment of beauty came glimpses of Drury and Irene in the
+lurid cavern under the wreck. Beyond those delicate blossoms he imagined
+the battle-fields of Europe and the ruined vessels where hurt souls
+writhed in multitudes.
+
+He could not be satisfied with any theory of the world. He could not
+find that pain was punishment here, or see how it could follow the soul
+after the soul had left behind it the fleshly instrument of torture. The
+why of it escaped his reason utterly; for Drury had been good, and he
+had come upon an honorable errand when he fell into the pit.
+
+Doctor Crosson stood at his window and begged the placid sky for
+information. He looked through the lilacs and the locusts and all the
+green wilderness where beauty beat and throbbed like a heart in bliss.
+It was the Sabbath, and he was not sure. But he was sure of a melting
+tenderness in his heart for Irene Straley, and he felt that her power to
+feel sorry for her lover--sorry enough to defy all the laws in his
+behalf--was a wonderful power. He longed for her sympathy.
+
+By and by he began to feel a pain, the pain of Drury Boldin. He was
+glad. He groaned. "I hurt! I hope that I may hurt terribly."
+
+Suddenly it seemed that he actually was Drury Boldin in the throes of
+every fierce and spasmic thrill. Again he most vividly was Irene Straley
+watching her lover till she could not endure his torture or her own, and
+with one desperate challenge sent him back to the mystery whence he
+came.
+
+Doctor Crosson, when he came back to himself, could not solve that
+mystery or any mystery. He knew one reality, that it hurts to be alive;
+that everybody is always hurting, and that human heart must help human
+heart as best it can. Pain is the one inescapable fact; the rest is
+theory.... He prayed with a deeper fervor than he had ever known:
+
+"God give me pain, that I may understand, that I may understand!"
+
+
+
+
+THE BEAUTY AND THE FOOL
+
+
+There was once a beautiful woman, and she lived in a small town, though
+people said that she belonged rather in a great city, where her gifts
+would bring her glory, riches, and a brilliant marriage. In repose, she
+was superb; in motion, quite perfectly beautiful of form and carriage,
+with all the suave rhythms of a beautiful being.
+
+Her beauty was her sole opulence; the boast of her friends; the
+confession of her enemies; the magnet of many lovers; the village's one
+statue. She had an ordinary heart, quite commonplace brains, but beauty
+that lined the pathway where she walked with eyes of admiration and
+delight.
+
+In her town, among her suitors, was one that was a Fool--not a
+remarkable fool; a simple, commonplace fool of the sort that abounds
+even in villages. He was foolish enough to love the Beauty so completely
+that when he made sure that she would not love him he could not endure
+to remain in the village, but went far away in the West to get the
+torment of her beauty out of his sight. The other suitors, who were
+wiser than he, when they found that she was not for them, gave her up
+with mild regret as one gives up a fabulous dream, saying: "There was
+no hope for us, anyway. If the Fool had stayed at home he would have
+been saved from the sight of her, for she is going East, where there are
+great fortunes for the very beautiful."
+
+And this she made ready to do, since the praise she had received had
+bred ambition in her--a reasonable and right ambition, for why should a
+light be hidden under a bushel when it might be set up on high to
+illumine a wide garden? Besides, she had not learned to love any of the
+unimportant men who loved her important beauty, yet promised it nothing
+more than a bushel to hide itself in.
+
+So she made ready to take her beauty to the larger market-place. But the
+night before she was to leave the village her father's house took fire
+mysteriously. The servant, rushing to her door to waken her, died,
+suffocated there before she could cry out. The Beauty woke to find her
+bed in flames. She rose with hair and gown ablaze, and, agonizing to a
+window, leaped blindly out upon the pavement. There the neighbors
+quenched the fire and saved her life--but nothing more.
+
+Thereafter she was a cripple, and her vaunted beauty was dead; it had
+gone into the flames, and she had only the ashes of it on her seared
+face. Now she had only pity where she had had envy and adulation. Now
+there was a turning away of eyes when she hurried abroad on necessary
+errands. Now her enemies were tenderly disposed toward her, and
+everybody forbore to mention what she had been. Everybody spared her
+feelings and talked of other things and looked at the floor or at the
+sky when she must be spoken to.
+
+One day the Fool, having heard only that the Beauty was to leave the
+village, and having heard nothing of the fire, and not having prospered
+where he was, returned to his old home. The first person he saw he asked
+of the Beauty, and that one told him of the holocaust of her graces, and
+warned him, remembering that the Fool had always spoken his thoughts
+without tact or discretion--warned the Fool to disguise when he saw her
+the shock he must feel and make no sign that he found her other than he
+left her. And the Fool promised.
+
+When he saw her he made a pretense indeed of greeting her as before, but
+he was like a man trying to look upon a fog as upon a sunrise; for the
+old beauty of her face did not strike his eyes full of its own radiance.
+She saw the struggle of his smile and the wincing of his soul. But she
+did not wince, for she was by now bitterly accustomed to this reticence
+and self-control.
+
+He walked along the street with her, and looked always aside or ahead
+and talked of other things. He walked with her to her own gate, and to
+her porch, trying to find some light thing to say to leave her. But the
+cruelty of the world was like a rusty nail in his heart, and when he put
+out his hand and she set in his hand what her once so exquisite fingers
+were now, his heart broke in his breast; and when he lifted his eyes to
+what her once so triumphant face was now, they refused to withhold their
+tears, and his lips could not hold back his thoughts, and he groaned
+aloud:
+
+"Oh, you were so beautiful! No one was ever so beautiful as you were
+then. But now--I can't stand it! I can't stand it! I wish that I might
+have died for you. You were so beautiful! I can see you now as you were
+when I told you good-by."
+
+Then he was afraid for what he had said, and ashamed, and he dreaded to
+look at her again. He would have dashed away, but she seized him by the
+sleeve, and whispered:
+
+"How good it is to hear your words! You are the only one that has told
+me that I ever was beautiful since I became what I am. Tell me, tell me
+how I looked when you bade me good-by!"
+
+And he told her. Looking aside or at the sky, he told her of her face
+like a rose in the moonlight, of her hair like some mist spun and woven
+in shadows and glamours of its own, of her long creamy arms and her
+hands that a god had fashioned lovingly. He told her of her eyes and
+their deeps, and their lashes and the brows above them. He told her of
+the strange rhythm of her musical form when she walked or danced or
+leaned upon the arm of her chair.
+
+He dared not look at her lest he lose his remembrance of them; but he
+heard her laughing, softly at first, then with pride and wild triumph.
+And she crushed his hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring: "God bless
+you! God bless you!"
+
+For even in poverty it is sweet to know that once we were rich.
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOSTLY COUNSELORS
+
+I
+
+
+In a little hall bedroom in a big city lay a little woman in a big
+trouble. She had taken the room under an assumed name, and a visitor had
+come to her there--to little her in the big city, from the bigger
+unknown.
+
+She had taken the room as "Mrs. Emerton." The landlady, Mrs. Rotch, had
+had her doubts. But then she was liberal-minded--folks had to be in that
+street. Still, she made it an invariable rule that "no visitors was
+never allowed in rooms," a parlor being kept for the purpose up to ten
+o'clock, when the landlady went to bed in it, "her having to have her
+sleep as well as anybody."
+
+But, in spite of the rules, a visitor had come to "Mrs. Emerton's"
+room--a very, very young man. His only name as yet was "the Baby." She
+dared not give the young man his father's name, for then people would
+know, and she had come to the city to keep people from knowing. She had
+come to the wicked city from the sweet, wholesome country, where,
+according to fiction, there is no evil, but where, according to fact,
+people are still people and moonlight is still madness. In the country,
+love could be concealed but not its consequence.
+
+Her coadjutor in the ceremony of summoning this little spirit from the
+vasty deep had not followed her to the city where the miracle was
+achieved. He was poor, and his parents would have been brokenhearted; his
+employer in the village would have taken away his seven-dollar-a-week job.
+
+So the boy sent the girl to town alone, with what money he had saved up
+and what little he could borrow; and he stayed in the village to earn
+more.
+
+The girl's name was Lightfoot--Hilda Lightfoot--a curiously prophetic
+name for her progress in the primrose path, though she had gone
+heavy-footed enough afterward. And now she could hardly walk at all.
+
+Hilda Lightfoot had come to the city in no mood to enjoy its
+frivolities, and with no means. She had climbed the four flights to her
+room a few days ago for the last time. In all the weeks and weeks she
+had never had a caller, except, the other day, a doctor and a nurse, who
+had taken away most of her money and left her this little clamorous
+youth, whose victim she was as he was hers.
+
+To-night she was desperately lonely. Even the baby's eternal demands and
+uproars were hushed in sleep. She felt strong enough now to go out into
+the wonderful air of the city; the breeze was as soft and moonseeped as
+the blithe night wind that blew across the meadows at home.
+
+The crowds went by the window and teased her like a circus parade
+marching past a school.
+
+But she could not go to circuses--she had no money. All she had was a
+nameless, restless baby.
+
+She grew frantically lonely. She went almost out of her head from her
+solitude, the jail-like loneliness, with no one to talk to except her
+little fellow-prisoner who could not talk.
+
+Her homesick heart ran back to the home life she was exiled from. She
+was thinking of the village. It was prayer-meeting night, and the moon
+would wait outside the church like Mary's white-fleeced lamb till the
+service was over, and then it would follow the couples home, gamboling
+after them when they walked, and, when they paused, waiting patiently
+about.
+
+The moon was a lone white lamb on a shadowy hill all spotted with
+daisies. Everything in the world was beautiful except her fate, her
+prison, her poverty, and her loneliness.
+
+If only she could go down from this dungeon into the streets! If only
+she had some clothes to wear and knew somebody who would take her
+somewhere where there was light and music! It was not much to ask.
+Hundreds of thousands of girls were having fun in the theaters and the
+restaurants and the streets. Hundreds of thousands of fellows were
+taking their best girls places.
+
+If only Webster Edie would come and take her out for a walk! She had
+been his best girl, and he had been her fellow. Why must he send her
+here, alone? It was his duty to be with her, now of all times. A woman
+had a right to a little petting, now of all times. She had written him
+so yesterday, begging him to come to her at any cost. But her letter
+must have crossed his letter, and in that he said that he could not get
+away and could not send her any money for at least another week, and
+then not much.
+
+She was doomed to loneliness--indefinitely. If only some one would come
+in and talk to her! The landlady never came except about the bill. The
+little slattern who brought her meals had gone to bed. She knew
+nobody--only voices, the voices of other boarders who went up and down
+the stairs and sometimes paused outside her door to talk and laugh or
+exchange gossip. She had caught a few names from occasional greeting or
+exclamation: "Good morning, Miss Marland!" "Why, Mrs. Elsbree!" "How was
+the show last night, Miss Bessett?" "Oh, Mrs. Teed, would you mind
+mailing these letters as you go out?" "Not at all, Mrs. Braywood."
+
+They were as formless to her as ghosts, but she could not help imagining
+bodies and faces and clothes to fit the voices. She could not help
+forming likes and dislikes. She would have been glad to have any of them
+come to see her, to ask how she was or admire the baby, or to borrow a
+pin or lend a book.
+
+If somebody did not come to see her she would go mad. If only she dared,
+she would leave the baby and steal down the stairs and out of the front
+door and slip along the streets. They called her; they beckoned to her
+and promised her happiness. She was like a little yacht held fast in a
+cove by a little anchor. The breeze was full of summons and nudgings;
+the water in the bay was dancing, every ripple a giggle. Only her anchor
+held her, such a little anchor, such a gripping anchor!
+
+If only some one would come in! If only the baby could talk, or even
+listen with understanding! She was afraid to be alone any longer, lest
+she do something insane and fearful. She sat at the window, with one arm
+stretched out across the sill and her chin across it, and stared off
+into the city's well of white lights. Then she bent her head, hid her
+hot face in the hollow of her elbow, and clenched her eyelids to shut
+away the torment. She was loneliest staring at the city, but she was
+unendurably lonely with her eyes shut. She would go crazy if somebody
+did not come.
+
+There was a knock at the door. It startled her.
+
+She sat up and listened. The knock was repeated softly. She turned her
+head and stared at the door. Then she murmured, "Come in."
+
+The door whispered open, and a woman in soft black skirts whispered in.
+The room was lighted only by the radiance from the sky, and the
+mysterious woman was mysteriously vague against the dimly illuminated
+hall.
+
+She closed the door after her and stood, a shadow in a shadow. Even her
+face was a mere glimmer, like a patch of moonlight on the door, and her
+voice was stealthy as a breeze. It was something like the voice she
+heard called "Mrs. Elsbree."
+
+Hilda started to rise, but a faint, white hand pressed her back and the
+voice said:
+
+"Don't rise, my dear. I know how weak you are, what you have gone
+through, alone, here in this dreary place. I know what pain you have
+endured, and the shame you have felt, the shame that faces you outside
+in the world. It is a cruel world. To women--oh, but it is cruel! It has
+no mercy for a woman who loves too well.
+
+"If you had a lot of money you might fight it with its own weapon. Money
+is the one weapon it respects. But you haven't any money, have you, my
+dear? If you had, you wouldn't be here in the dark alone, would you?
+
+"I'm afraid there is nothing ahead of you, either, but darkness, my
+dear. The man you loved has deserted you, hasn't he? He is a poor, weak
+thing, anyway. Even if he married you, you would probably part. He'd
+always hate you. Nobody else will want you for a wife, you poor child;
+you know that, don't you? And nobody will help you, because of the baby.
+You couldn't find work and keep the baby with you, could you? And you
+couldn't leave it. It is a weight about your neck; it will drown you in
+deep waters.
+
+"Even if it lived, it would have only misery ahead of it, for your story
+would follow it through life. The older it grew, the more it would
+suffer. It would despise you and itself. How much happier you would be
+not to be alive at all, both of you, you poor, unwelcome things!
+
+"There are many problems ahead of you, my dear; and you'll never solve
+them, except in one way. If you were dead and asleep in your grave with
+your poor little one at your breast, all your troubles would be over
+then, wouldn't they? People would feel sorry for you; they wouldn't
+sneer at you then. And you wouldn't mind loneliness or hunger or
+pointing fingers or anything.
+
+"Take my advice, dearie, and end it now. There are so many ways; so many
+things to buy at drug-stores. And that's the river you can just see over
+there. It is very peaceful in its depths. Its cool, dark waters will
+wash away your sorrows. Or if that is too far for you to go, there's the
+window. You could climb out on the ledge with your baby in your arms and
+just step off into--peace. Take my advice, poor, lonely, little thing.
+It's the one way; I know. The world will forgive you, and Heaven will be
+merciful. Didn't Christ take the Magdalen into His own company and His
+mother's? He will take you up into heaven, if you go now. Good-by. Don't
+be afraid. Good-by. Don't be afraid."
+
+She was gone so softly that Hilda did not see her go. She had been
+staring off into that ocean of space, and when she turned her head the
+woman was gone. But her influence was left in the very air. Her words
+went on whispering about the room. Under their influence the girl rose,
+tottered to the bed, gathered the sleeping baby to her young bosom,
+kissed his brow without waking him, and stumbled to the window.
+
+She pushed it as high as it would go and knelt on the ledge, peering
+down into the street. It was a fearful distance to the walk.
+
+She hoped she would not strike the stone steps or the area rail. And yet
+what difference would it make? It would only assure her peace the
+quicker. She must wait for those people below to walk past. But they
+were not gone before others were there. She could not hurl herself upon
+them.
+
+As she waited, it grew terrible to take the plunge. She had always been
+afraid of high places. She grew dizzy now, and must cling hard to keep
+from falling before she said her prayers and was ready. And, now the
+pavement was clear. She kissed her baby again. She drew in a deep
+breath, her last sip of the breath of life. How good it was, this clear,
+cool air flowing across this great, beautiful, heartless city that she
+should never see again! And now--
+
+There was a knock at the door. It checked her. She lost impulse and
+impetus and crept back and sank into a chair. She was pretending to be
+rocking the baby to sleep when she murmured, "Come in."
+
+Perhaps it would be Mrs. Elsbree, returned to reproach her for her
+cowardice and her delay. But when she dared to look up it was another
+woman. At least it was another voice--perhaps Miss Marland's.
+
+"I've been meaning to call on you, Mrs. Emerton, but I haven't had a
+free moment. Of course I've known all along why you were here. We all
+have. There's been a good deal of backbiting. But that's the
+boarding-house of it. This evening, at dinner, there was some mention of
+you at the table, and some of the women were ridiculing you and some
+were condemning you. Oh, don't wince, my dear; everybody is always being
+ridiculed or condemned or both for something. If you were one of the
+saints they would burn you at the stake or put you to the torture.
+
+"Anyway, I spoke up and told them that the only one who had a right to
+cast a stone at you was one without sin, and I despaired of finding such
+a person in this boarding-house--or outside, either, for that matter. I
+spoke up and told them that you were no worse than the others. They all
+had their scandals, and I know most of them. There's some scandal about
+everybody. We're all sinners--if you want to call it sin to follow your
+most sacred instincts.
+
+"Why should you be afraid of a little gossip or a few jokes or a little
+abuse from a few hypocrites? They're all sinners--worse than you, too,
+most of them, if the truth were known.
+
+"Why blame yourself and call yourself a criminal? You loved the
+boy--loved him too much, that's all. If you had been really wicked you
+would have refused to love him or to give yourself up to his plea. If
+you had been really bad you'd have known too much to have this child.
+You'd have got rid of it at all costs.
+
+"You are really a very good little woman with a passion for being a
+mother. It's the world outside that's bad. Don't be ashamed before it.
+Hold your head up. The world owes you a living, and it will pay it if
+you demand it. It will pay for you and your child, too. Just demand your
+rights. You'll soon find a place. You're too young and beautiful to be
+neglected. You're young and beautiful and passionate. You can make some
+man awfully happy. He'll be glad to have your baby and you--disgrace and
+all. He may be very rich, too. Go find him. The baby may grow up to be a
+wonderful man. You could make enough to give the boy every advantage and
+a fine start in the world.
+
+"The world is yours, if you'll only take it. Remember the Bible, 'Ask
+and it shall be given unto you.' Think it over, my dear. Don't do
+anything foolish or rash. You're too young and too beautiful. And now I
+must ran along. Good-by and good luck."
+
+While Hilda was breathing deep of this wine of hope and courage the
+woman was gone.
+
+Hilda glanced out of the window again. She shuddered. A moment more and
+she would have been lying below there, broken, mangled,
+unsightly--perhaps not dead, only crippled for life and arrested as a
+suicide that failed; perhaps as a murderess, since the fall would surely
+have killed her child--her precious child. She held him close, her great
+man-baby, her son; he laughed, beat the air with his hands, chuckled,
+and smote her cheek with palms like white roses. She would take him from
+this gloomy place. She would go out and demand money, fine clothes,
+attention.
+
+She put on her hat, a very shabby little hat. She began to wrap the baby
+in a heavy shawl. They would have finer things soon.
+
+She grew dizzy with excitement and the exertion, and sank back in the
+chair a moment, to regain her strength. The chair creaked. No, it was a
+knock at the door. It proved what the last woman had said. "Ask, and it
+shall be given unto you."
+
+She had wished for some one to call on her. The whole boarding-house was
+coming. She was giving a party.
+
+This time it was another voice out of the darkness. It must have been
+Miss Bessett's. She spoke in a cold, hard, hasty tone. "Going out, my
+dear? Alone, I hope? No, the baby's wrapped up! You're not going to be
+so foolish as to lug that baby along? He brands you at once. Nobody will
+want you round with a squalling baby. Oh, of course he's a pretty child;
+but he's too noisy. He'll ruin every chance you have.
+
+"You're really very pretty, my dear. The landlady said so. If she
+noticed it, you must be a beauty, indeed. This is a great town for
+pretty girls. There's a steady market for them.
+
+"The light is poor here, but beauty like yours glows even in darkness,
+and that's what they want, the men. The world will pay anything for
+beauty, if beauty has the brains to ask a high price and not give too
+much for it.
+
+"Think of the slaves who have become queens, the mistresses who have
+become empresses. There are rich women all over town who came by their
+money dishonestly. You should see some of them in the Park with their
+automobiles. You'd be ashamed even to let them run over you. Yet, if you
+were dressed up, you'd look better than any of the automobile brigade.
+
+"You might be a great singer. I've heard you crooning to the baby. You
+find a rich man and make him pay for your lessons, and then you make
+eyes at the manager and, before you know it, you'll be engaged for the
+opera and earning a thousand dollars a night--more than that, maybe.
+
+"Think how much that means. It would make you mighty glad you didn't
+marry that young gawp at home. He's a cheap skate to get you into this
+trouble and not help you out.
+
+"But I'll set you in the way of making a mint of money. There's only one
+thing: you must give up the baby and never let anybody know you ever had
+it. Don't freeze up and turn away. There are so many ways of disposing
+of a baby. Send it to a foundling asylum. No questions will be asked.
+The baby will have the best of care and grow so strong that some rich
+couple will insist on adopting it, or you could come back when you are
+married to a rich man and pretend you took a fancy to it and adopt it
+yourself.
+
+"And there's a lot of other ways to get rid of a baby. You could give it
+the wrong medicine by mistake, or just walk out and forget it. And
+there's the river; you could drop it into those black waters. And then
+you're free--baby would never know. He would be ever so much better off.
+And you would be free.
+
+"You must be free. You must get a little taste of life. You've a right
+to it. You lived in a little stupid village all your years--and now
+you're in the city. Listen to it! It would be yours for the asking. And
+it gives riches and glory to the pretty girls it likes. But you must go
+to it as a girl, not as a poor, broken, ragged thing, lugging a sickly
+baby with no name. Get rid of the baby, my dear. It will die, anyway. It
+will starve and sicken. Put it out of its misery. That medicine on your
+wash-stand--an overdose of that and you can say it was a mistake. Who
+can prove it wasn't? Then you are free. You'll have hundreds of friends,
+and a career, and a motor of your own, and servants, and a beautiful
+home. Don't waste your youth, my dear. Invest your beauty where it will
+bring big proceeds.
+
+"See those lights off there--the big lights with the name of that woman
+in electric letters? She came to town poorer than you and with a worse
+name. Now she is rich and famous. And the Countess of--What's-her-name?
+She was poor and bad, but she didn't let any old-fashioned ideas of
+remorse hold her back. Go on; get rid of the brat. Go on!"
+
+Hilda clutched the baby closer and moved away to shield her from this
+grim counselor. When she turned again she was alone. The woman had gone,
+but the air trembled with her fierce wisdom. She was ruthless, but how
+wise!
+
+The lights flaring up into the sky carried that other woman's name. Her
+picture was everywhere. She had been poor and wicked. Now she was a
+household word, respected because she was rich. She had succeeded.
+
+There came a lilting of music on a breeze. They were dancing, somewhere.
+The tango "coaxed her feet." Her body swayed with it.
+
+If she were there, men would quarrel over her, rush to claim her--as
+they had done even in the village before she threw herself away on the
+most worthless, shiftless of the lot, who got her into trouble and
+deserted her. It was not her business to starve for his baby.
+
+The baby began to fret again, to squawk with vicious explosions of ugly
+rage; it puled and yowled. It was a nuisance. It caught a fistful of her
+hair and wrenched till the tears of pain rushed to her eyes. She
+unclasped the little talons, ran to the wash-stand, took up an ugly
+bottle and poured out enough to put an end to that nauseating wail.
+
+She bent over to lift the baby to the glass. Its lips touched her bosom.
+Its crying turned to a little chortle like a brook's music. It pommeled
+her with hands like white roses. The moon rested on its little head and
+made its fuzz of hair a halo. She paused, adoring it sacredly like
+another Madonna.
+
+A soft tap at the door. She put the fatal glass away and turned
+guiltily. A dark little woman was there, and a soft, motherly voice
+spoke. It must be Mrs. Braywood's. She could not have suspected, for her
+tone was all of affection.
+
+"I heard your child laughing, my dear--and crying. I don't know which
+went to my heart deeper. I just had to come to see it. It is so
+marvelous to be a mother. I've been married for ten years, and my
+husband and I have prayed and waited. But God would not send us a baby.
+He saved that honor for you. And such an honor and glory and power! To
+be a mother! To be a rose-bush and have a white bud grow upon your stem,
+and bloom! Oh, you lucky child, to be selected for such a privilege! You
+must have suffered; you must be suffering now; but there's nothing worth
+while that doesn't cost pain.
+
+"It occurred to me that--don't misunderstand me, my child, but--well,
+the landlady said you were poor; she was in doubt of the room rent; so
+I thought--perhaps you might not want the baby as much as I do.
+
+"I hoped you might let me take him. I'd be such a good mother to him.
+I'd love him as if he were my own, and my husband would pay you well for
+him. We'd give him our own name, and people should never know that
+he--that you--that we weren't really his parents. Give him to me, won't
+you? Please! I beg you!"
+
+Hilda whirled away from her pleading hands and clenched the baby so hard
+that it cried a little. The sound was like that first wail of his she
+had ever heard. Again it went into her heart like a little hand seizing
+and wringing it.
+
+Mrs. Braywood--if it were Mrs. Braywood--was not angry at the rebuff,
+though she was plainly disheartened. She tried to be brave, and sighed.
+
+"Oh, I don't wonder you turn away. I understand. I wouldn't give him up
+if I were in your place. The father must come soon. He won't stay away
+long. Just let him see the baby and hear its voice and know it is his
+baby, and he will stand by you.
+
+"He will come to you. He will hear the voice wherever he is, and he will
+make you his wife. And the baby will make a man of him and give him
+ambition and inspiration. Babies always provide for themselves, they
+say. You will have trouble, and you will suffer from the gibes of
+self-righteous people, and you will be cruelly blamed; but there is
+only one way to expiate sin, my child, and that is to face its
+consequences and pay its penalties in full. The only way to atone for a
+wrong deed is to do the next right thing. Take good care of your
+precious treasure. Good-by. His father will come soon. He will come.
+Good-by. Oh, you enviable thing, you mother!"
+
+And now she was gone. But she had left the baby's value enhanced, and
+the mother's, too.
+
+She had offered a price for the baby, and glorified the mother. The
+lonely young country girl felt no longer utterly disgraced. She did not
+feel that the baby was a mark of Heaven's disfavor, but rather of its
+favor. She felt lonely no longer. The streets interested her no more.
+Let those idle revelers go their way; let them dance and laugh. They had
+no child of their own to adore and to enjoy.
+
+If the baby's father came they would be married. If he delayed--well,
+she would stumble on alone. The baby was her cross. She must carry it up
+the hill.
+
+Hilda felt entirely content, but very tired, full of hope that Webster
+Edie would come to her, but full of contentment, too. She talked to the
+baby, and he seemed to understand her now. She could not translate his
+language, but he translated hers.
+
+She slipped out of her day clothes and into her nightgown--and so to
+bed. She fell asleep with her baby in her arms. Her head drooped back
+and her parted lips seemed to pant and glow. The moon reached her
+window and sent in a long shaft of light. It found a great tear on her
+cheek. It gleamed on her throat bent back; it gleamed on one bare
+shoulder where the gown was torn; it gleamed on her breast where the
+baby drowsily clung.
+
+There was a benediction in the moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+DAUGHTERS OF SHILOH
+
+I
+
+
+Mrs. Serina Pepperall had called her husband twice without success. It
+was at that hatefulest hour of the whole week when everybody that has to
+get up is getting up and realizing that it is Monday morning, and
+raining besides.
+
+It is bad enough for it to be Monday, but for it to be raining is
+inexcusable.
+
+Young Horace Pepperall used to say that that was the reason the world
+didn't improve much. People got good on Sunday, and then it had to go
+and be Monday. He had an idea that if Sunday could be followed by some
+other day, preferably Saturday, there would be more happiness and virtue
+in the world. Mrs. Pepperall used to say that her boy was quite a
+ph'losopher in his way. Mr. Pepperall said he was a hopeless loafer and
+spent more time deciding whether he'd ought to do this or that than it
+would have taken to do 'em both twice. Whereupon Mrs. Pepperall, whose
+maiden name was Boody--daughter of Mrs. Ex-County-Clerk Boody--would
+remind her husband that he was only a Pepperall, after all, while her
+son was at least half Boody. Whereupon her husband would remind her of
+certain things about the Boodys. And so it would go. But that was other
+mornings. This was this morning.
+
+Among all the homes that the sun looked upon--or would have looked upon
+if it could have looked upon anything and if it hadn't been raining and
+the Pepperall roof had not been impervious to light, though not to
+moisture--among them all, surely the Pepperall reveille would have been
+the least attractive. Homer never got his picture of rosy-fingered
+Aurora smilingly leaping out of the couch of night from any such home as
+the Pepperalls' in Carthage.
+
+Serina was as unlike Aurora as possible. Aurora is usually poised on
+tiptoe, with her well-manicured nails gracefully extended, and nothing
+much about her except a chariot and more or less chiffon, according to
+whether the picture is for families or bachelors.
+
+Serina was entirely surrounded by flannelette, of simple and pitilessly
+chaste design--a hole at the top for her head to go through and a larger
+one at the other extreme for her feet to stick out at. But it was so
+long that you couldn't have seen her feet if you had been there. And
+Papa Pepperall, who was there, was no longer interested in those once
+exciting ankles. They had been more interesting when there had been less
+of them. But we'd better talk about the sleeves.
+
+The sleeves were so long that they kept falling into the water where
+Serina was making a hasty toilet at the little marble-topped altar to
+cleanliness which the Pepperalls called the "worsh-stand"--that is, the
+"hand-wash-basin," as Mrs. Hippisley called it after she came back from
+her never-to-be-forgotten trip to England.
+
+But then Serina's sleeves had always been falling into the suds, and
+ever since she could remember she had rolled them up again with that
+peculiar motion with which people roll up sleeves. This morning, having
+failed to elicit papa from the bed by persuasion, she made such a racket
+about her ablutions that he lifted his dreary lids at last. He realized
+that it was morning, Monday, and raining. It irritated him so that he
+glared at his faithful wife with no fervor for her unsullied and
+unwearied--if not altogether unwearisome--devotion. He watched her roll
+up those sleeves thrice more. Somehow he wanted to scream at the
+futility of it. But he checked the impulse partly, and it was with
+softness that he made a comment he had choked back for years. "Serina--"
+he began.
+
+"Well," she returned, pausing with the soap clenched in one hand.
+
+He spoke with the luxurious leisureliness and the pauses for commas of a
+nearly educated man lolling too long abed:
+
+"Serina, it has just occurred to me that, since we have been married,
+you have expended, on rolling back those everlastingly relapsing sleeves
+of yours, enough energy to have rolled the Sphinx of Egypt up on top of
+the Pyramid of Cheops."
+
+Serina was so surprised that she shot the slippery soap under the
+wash-stand. She went right after it. There may be nymphs who can stalk a
+cake of soap under a wash-stand with grace, but Serina was not one of
+them. Her indolent spouse made another cynical comment:
+
+"Don't do that! You look like the Goddess of Liberty trying to peek into
+the Subway."
+
+But she did not hear him. She was rummaging for the soap and for an
+answer to his first remark. At length she emerged with both. She stood
+up and panted.
+
+"Well, I can't see as it would 'a' done me any good if I had have!"
+
+"Had have what?" her husband yawned, having forgotten his original
+remark.
+
+"Got the Sphinnix on top of the Cheops. And besides, I've been meaning
+to hem them up; but now that you've gone bankrupt again, and I have to
+do my own cooking and all--"
+
+"But, my dear Serina, you've said the same thing ever since we were
+married. What frets me is to think of the terrible waste of labor with
+nothing to show for it."
+
+She sniffed, and retorted with all the superiority of the unsuccessful
+wife of an unsuccessful husband:
+
+"Well, I can't see as you're so smart. Ever since we been married you
+been goin' to that stationery-store of yours, and you never learned
+enough to keep from going bankrupt three times. And now they've shut
+the shop, and you've nothing better to do than lay in bed and make fun
+of me that have slaved for you and your children."
+
+They were always his children when she talked of the trouble they were.
+Her all too familiar oration was interrupted by the eel-like leap of the
+soap. This time it described a graceful arc that landed it under the
+middle of the bed--a double bed at that.
+
+Pepperall had the gallantry to pursue it. He went head first over the
+starboard quarter of the deck, leaving his feet aboard. Just as he
+tagged the soap with his fingers his feet came on over after him, and he
+found himself flat on his back, with his head under the bed and his feet
+under the bureau.
+
+When the thunder of his downfall had subsided he heard Serina say, "Now
+that you're up you better stay up."
+
+So he wriggled out from under and got himself aloft, rubbing his
+indignant back. If Serina was no Aurora rising from the sea, her husband
+was no Phoebus Apollo. His gown looked like hers, only younger. It had
+a frivolous little pocket, and the slit-skirt effect on both sides; and
+it was cut what is called "misses' length," disclosing two of the least
+attractive shins in Carthage.
+
+He was aching all over and he was angry, and he snarled as he stood at
+the wash-stand:
+
+"Have you finished with this water?"
+
+"Yes," she said, muffledly, from the depths of a face-towel.
+
+"Why don't you ever empty the bowl then?" he growled, and viciously
+tilted the contents into the--must I say the awful word?--the
+slop-jar--what other word is there?
+
+The water splashed over and struck the bare feet of both icily. They
+yowled and danced like Piute Indians, and glared at each other as they
+danced. They glared in a nagged rage that would have turned into an ugly
+quarrel if a great sorrow had not suddenly overswept them. They saw
+themselves as they were and by a whim of memory they remembered what
+they had been. He laughed bitterly:
+
+"It's the first time we've danced together in a long time, eh?"
+
+Her lower lip began to quiver and swell quite independently and she
+sighed:
+
+"Not much like the dances we used to dance. Oh dear!"
+
+She dropped into a chair and stared, not at her husband, but at the
+bridegroom of long ago he had shriveled from. She remembered those
+honeymoon mornings when they had awakened like eager children and
+laughed and romped and been glad of the new day. The mornings had been
+precious then, for it was a tragedy to let him go to his shop, as it was
+a festival to watch from the porch in the evening till he came round the
+corner and waved to her.
+
+She looked from him to herself, to what she could see of herself--it was
+not all, but more than enough. She saw her heavy red hands and the
+coarse gown over her awkward knees, and the dismal slovenliness of her
+attitude. She felt that he was remembering the slim, wild, sweet girl he
+had married. And she was ashamed before his eyes, because she had let
+the years prey upon her and had lazily permitted beauty to escape from
+her--from her body, her face, her motions, her thoughts.
+
+She felt that for all her prating of duty she had committed a great
+wickedness lifelong. She wondered if this were not "the unpardonable
+sin," whose exact identity nobody had seemed to decide--to grow
+strangers with beauty and to forget grace.
+
+
+II
+
+Whatever her husband may have been thinking, he had the presence of mind
+to hide his eyes in the water he had poured from the pitcher. He scooped
+it up now in double handfuls. He made a great splutter and soused his
+face in the bowl, and scrubbed the back of his neck and behind his ears
+and his bald spot, and slapped his eminent collar-bones with his wet
+hand. And then he was bathed.
+
+Serina pulled on her stockings, and hated them and the coarser feet they
+covered. She opened the wardrobe door as a screen, less from modesty for
+herself than from sudden disgust of her old corset and her all too sober
+lingerie. She resolved that she would hereafter deck herself with more
+of that coquetry which had abruptly returned to her mind as a wife's
+most solemn duty.
+
+Then she remembered that they were poorer than they ever had been. Now
+they could not even run into debt again; for who would give them further
+credit, since their previous bills had been canceled by nothing more
+satisfactory than the grim "Received payment" of the bankruptcy court?
+
+It was too late for her to reform. Her song was sung. And as for buying
+frills and fallals, there were two daughters to provide for and a son
+who was growing into the stratum of foppery. With a sigh of dismissal
+she flung on her old wrapper, whose comfortableness she suddenly
+despised, and made her escape, murmuring, "I'll call the childern."
+
+She pounded on the boy's door, and Horace eventually answered with his
+regular program of uncouth noises, like some one protesting against
+being strangled to death. These were followed by moans of woe, and then
+by far-off-sounding promises of "Oh, aw ri', I'm git'nup."
+
+Serina moved on to her youngest daughter's door. She had tapped but once
+when it was opened by "the best girl that ever lived," according to her
+father; and according to her mother, "a treasure; never gave me a bit of
+trouble--plain, of course, but so willing!"
+
+Ollie was fully dressed and so was her room, except for the bed, the
+covers of which were thrown back like a wave breaking over the
+footboard. In fact, after Ollie had kissed her mother she informed her
+that the kitchen fire was made, the wash-boiler on, and the breakfast
+going.
+
+"You are a treasure!" Serina sighed.
+
+She passed on to the door of Prue. Prue was the second daughter. Rosie,
+the eldest, had married Tom Milford and moved away. She was having
+troubles of her own, and children with a regularity that led Serina to
+dislike Tom Milford more than ever.
+
+Serina knocked several times at Prue's door without response. Then she
+went in as she always had to. Prue was still asleep, and her yesterday's
+clothes seemed to be asleep, too, in all sorts of attitudes and all
+sorts of places. The only regularity about the room was the fact that
+every single thing was out of place. The dressing-table held a little
+chaos, including one stocking. The other stocking was on the floor. One
+silken garter glowed in the southeast corner and one in the northwest.
+One shoe reclined in the southwest corner and the other gaped in the
+northeast. But they were pretty shoes.
+
+Her frock was in a heap, but it suggested a heap of flowers.
+Hair-ribbons and ribboned things and a crumpled sash bedecked the
+carpet. But the prettiest thing of all was the head half fallen from the
+pillow and half smothered in the tangled skeins of hair. One arm was
+bent back over her brow to shut out the sunlight and the other arm
+dangled to the floor. There was something adorable about the round chin
+nestling in the soft throat. Her chin seemed to frown with a lovable
+sullenness. There was a mysterious grace in the very sprawl vaguely
+outlined by the long wrinkles and ridges of the blankets.
+
+Serina shook her head over Prue in a loving despair. She was the bad boy
+of the family, impatient, exacting, hot-tempered, stormy, luxurious, yet
+never monotonous.
+
+"You can always put your hand on Ollie," Serina would say; "but you
+never know where Prue is from one minute to the next."
+
+Consequently Ollie was not interesting and Prue was.
+
+They were all afraid of Prue and afraid for her. They all toadied to her
+and she kept them excited--alarmed, perhaps; angry, oh yes; but never
+bored.
+
+And there were rewards in her service, too, for she could be as stormy
+with affection as with mutiny. Sometimes she would attack Serina with
+such gusts of gratitude or admiration that her mother would cry for
+help. She would squeeze her father's ribs till he gasped for breath.
+When she was pleased she would dance about the house like a whirling
+maenad with ululations of ecstasy. These crises were sharp, but they left
+a sweet taste in the memory.
+
+So Prue had the best clothes and did the least work. Prue was sent off
+to boarding-school in Chicago, though she had never been able to keep up
+with her classes in Carthage; while Ollie--who took first prizes till
+even the goody-goody boys hated her--stayed at home. She had dreamed of
+being a teacher in the High, but she never mentioned it, and she studied
+bookkeeping and stenography in the business college so that she could
+help her father.
+
+Prue had not been home long and had come home with bad grace. When her
+father had found it impossible to borrow more money even to pay his
+clerks, to say nothing of boarding-school bills, he had to write the
+truth to Prue. He told her to come again to Carthage.
+
+She did not come back at once and she refused to explain why. As a
+matter of fact, she had desperately endeavored to find a permanent job
+in Chicago. It was easy for so attractive a girl to get jobs, but it was
+hard for so domineering a soul to keep one. She was regretfully bounced
+out of three department stores in six days for "sassing" the customers
+and the aisle-manager.
+
+She even tried the theater. She was readily accepted by a stage-manager,
+but when he found that he could not teach her the usual figures or
+persuade her to keep in step or line with the rest he regretfully let
+her go.
+
+It was the regularity of it that stumped Prue. She could dance like a
+ballerina by herself, but she could not count "one-two-three-four" twice
+in succession. The second time it was "o-o-one-t'threeee-f'r" and next
+it would be "onety-thry-fo-o-our."
+
+Prue hung about Chicago, getting herself into scrapes by her charm and
+fighting her way out of them by her ferocious pride. Finally she went
+hungry and came home. When she learned the extent of her father's
+financial collapse she delivered tirades against the people of Carthage
+and she sang him up as a genius. And then she sought escape from the
+depression at home by seeking what gaiety Carthage afforded. She made no
+effort to master the typewriter and she declined to sell dry-goods.
+
+Serina stood and studied the sleeping girl, that strange wild thing she
+had borne and had tried in vain to control. She thought how odd it was
+that in the mystic transmission of her life she had given all the useful
+virtues to Ollie and none of them to Prue. She wondered what she had
+been thinking of to make such a mess of motherhood. And what could she
+do to correct the oversight? Ollie did not need restraint, and Prue
+would not endure it. She stood aloof, afraid to waken the girl to the
+miseries of existence in a household where every day was blue Monday
+now.
+
+Ollie had not waited to be called. Ollie had risen betimes and done all
+the work that could be done, and stood ready to do whatever she could.
+Prue was still aloll on a bed of ease. Even to waken her was to waken a
+March wind. The moment she was up she would have everybody running
+errands for her. She would be lavish in complaint and parsimonious of
+help. And yet she was a dear! She did enjoy her morning sleep so well.
+It would be a pity to disturb her. The rescuing thought came to Serina
+that Prue loved to take a long hot bath on Monday mornings, because on
+wash-day there was always a plenty of hot water in the bathroom. On
+other mornings the hot-water faucet suffered from a distressing cough
+and nothing more.
+
+So she tiptoed out and closed the door softly.
+
+
+III
+
+At breakfast Ollie waited on the table after compelling Serina to sit
+down and eat. There was little to tempt the appetite and no appetite to
+be tempted.
+
+Papa was in the doldrums. He had always complained before of having to
+gulp his breakfast and hurry to the shop. And now he complained because
+there was no hurry; indeed, there was no shop. He must set out at his
+time of years, after his life of independent warfare, to ask for
+enlistment as a private in some other man's company--in a town where
+vacancies rarely occurred and where William Pepperall would not be
+welcome.
+
+The whole town was mad at him. He had owed everybody, and then suddenly
+he owed nobody. By the presto-change-o of bankruptcy his debts had been
+passed from the hat of unpaid bills to the hat of worthless accounts.
+
+Serina was as dismal as any wife is when she is faced with the prospect
+of having her man hanging about the house all day. A wife in a man's
+office hours is a nuisance, but a man at home in household office hours
+is a pest. This was the newest but not the least of Serina's woes.
+
+Horace was even glummer than ever, as soggy as his own oatmeal. At best
+he was one of those breakfast bruins. Now he was a bear that has been
+hit on the nose. He, too, must seek a job. School had seemed confining
+before, but now that he must go to work, school seemed like one long
+recess.
+
+Even Ollie was depressed. Hers was the misery of an active person denied
+activity. She had prepared herself as an aid in her father's business,
+and now he had no business. In this alkali desert of inanition Prue's
+vivacious temper would have been welcome.
+
+"Where's Prue?" said papa for the fifth time.
+
+Serina was about to say that she was still asleep when Prue made her
+presence known. Everybody was apprised that the water had been turned on
+in the bathroom; it resounded throughout the house. It seemed to fall
+about one's head.
+
+Prue was filling the tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming
+a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the
+behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard
+she was evidently dancing.
+
+"What's that toon she's dancing to?" papa asked, after a while.
+
+"I don't know," said Serina.
+
+"I never heard it," said Ollie.
+
+"Ah," growled Horace, "it's the Argentine tango."
+
+"The tango!" gasped papa. "Isn't that the new dance I've been reading
+about, that's making a sensation in New York?"
+
+"Ah, wake up, pop!" said Horace. "It's a sensation here, too."
+
+"In Carthage? They're dancing the tango in our home town?"
+
+"Surest thing you know, pop. The whole burg's goin' bug over it."
+
+"How is it done? What is it like?"
+
+"Something like this," said Horace, and, rising, he indulged in the
+prehistoric turkey-trot of a year ago, with burlesque hip-snaps and
+poultry-yard scrapings of the foot.
+
+"Stop it!" papa thundered. "It's loathsome! Do you mean to tell me that
+my daughter does that sort of thing?"
+
+"Sure! She's a wonder at it."
+
+"What scoundrel taught my poor child such--such--Who taught her, I say?"
+
+"Gosh!" sniffed Horace, "sis don't need teachin'. She's teachin' the
+rest of 'em. They're crazy about her."
+
+"Teaching others! My g-g-goodness! Where did she learn?"
+
+"Chicago, I guess."
+
+"Oh, the wickedness of these cities and the foreigners that are dragging
+our American homes down to their own level!"
+
+"I guess the foreigners got nothin' on us," said Horace. "It's a
+Namerican dance."
+
+"What are we coming to? Go tell Prue to come here at once. I'll put a
+stop to that right here and now."
+
+Serina gave him one searing glance, and he understood that he could not
+deliver his edict to Prue yet awhile. He heard her singing even more
+barbaric strains. The chandelier danced with a peculiar savagery, then
+the dance was evidently quenched and subdued. Awestruck yowls from above
+indicated that Prue was in hot water.
+
+"This is the last straw!" groaned papa, with all the wretchedness of a
+father learning that his daughter was gone to the bad.
+
+
+IV
+
+Prue did not appear below-stairs for so long that her father had lost
+his magnificent running start by the time she sauntered in all sleek and
+shiny and asked for her food. She brought a radiant grace into the dull
+gray room; and Serina whispered to Will to let her have her breakfast
+first.
+
+She and Ollie waited on Prue, while the father paced the floor, stealing
+sidelong glances at her, and wondering if it were possible that so sweet
+a thing should be as vicious as she would have to be to tango.
+
+When she had scoured her plate and licked her spoon with a child-like
+charm her father began to crank up his throat for a tirade. He began
+with the reluctant horror of a young attorney cross-examining his first
+murderer:
+
+"Prue--I want to--to--er--Prue, do you--did you--ever--This--er--this
+tango business--Prue--have you--do you--er--What do you know about it?"
+
+"Well, of course, papa, they change it so fast on you it's hard to keep
+up with it, but I was about three days ahead of Chicago when I left
+there. I met with a man who had just stepped off the twenty-hour train
+and I learned all he knew before I turned him loose."
+
+In a strangled tone the father croaked, "You dance it, then?"
+
+"You bet! Papa, stand up and I'll show you the very newest roll. It's a
+peach. Put your weight on your right leg. Say, it's a shame we haven't a
+phonograph! Don't you suppose you could afford a little one? I could
+have you all in fine form in no time. And it would be so good for
+mamma."
+
+Papa fell back into a chair with just strength enough to murmur, "I want
+you to promise me never to dance it again."
+
+"Don't be foolish, you dear old bump-on-a-log!"
+
+"I forbid you to dance it ever again."
+
+She laughed uproariously: "Listen at the old Skeezicks! Get up here and
+I'll show you the cutest dip."
+
+When at last he grew angry, and made her realize it, she flared into a
+tumult of mutiny that drove him out into the rain. He spent the day
+looking for a job without finding one. Horace came home wet and
+discouraged with the same news. Ollie, the treasure, however, announced
+that she had obtained a splendid position as typist in Judge Hippisley's
+office, at a salary of thirty dollars a month.
+
+William was overjoyed, but Serina protested bitterly. She and Mrs. Judge
+Hippisley had been bitter social rivals for twenty years. They had
+fought each other with teas and euchre parties and receptions from young
+wifehood to middle-aged portliness. And now her daughter was to work in
+that hateful Anastasia Hippisley's old fool of a husband's office? Well,
+hardly!
+
+"It's better than starving," said Ollie, and for once would not be
+coerced, though even her disobedience was on the ground of service.
+After she had cleared the table and washed the dishes she set out for
+her room, lugging a typewriter she had borrowed to brush up her speed
+on.
+
+Prue had begged off from even wiping the dishes, because she had to
+dress. As Ollie started up-stairs to her task she was brought back by
+the door-bell. She ushered young Orton Hippisley into the parlor. He had
+come to take Prue to a dance.
+
+When papa heard this mamma had to hold her hand over his mouth to keep
+him from making a scene. He was for kicking young Hippisley out of the
+house.
+
+"And lose me my job?" gasped Ollie.
+
+The overpowered parent whispered his determination to go up-stairs and
+forbid Prue to leave. He went up-stairs and forbade her, but she went
+right on binding her hair with Ollie's best ribbon. In the midst of her
+father's peroration she kissed him good-by and danced down-stairs in
+Ollie's new slippers. Her own had been trotted into shreds.
+
+Papa sat fuming all evening. He would not go to bed till Prue came home
+to the ultimatum he was preparing for her. From above came the
+tick-tock-tock of Ollie's typewriter. It got on his nerves, like rain on
+a tin roof.
+
+"To think of it--Ollie up-stairs working her fingers to the bone to help
+us out, and Prue dancing her feet off disgracing us! To think that one
+of our daughters should be so good and one so bad!"
+
+"I can't believe that our little Prue is really bad," Serina sighed.
+
+"Yet girls do go wrong, don't they?" her husband groaned. "This
+morning's paper prints a sermon about the tango. Reverend Doctor
+What's-his-name, the famous New York newspaper preacher, tears the whole
+tango crowd to pieces. He points out that the tango is the cause of the
+present-day wickedness, the ruin of the home!"
+
+Serina was dismal and terrified, but from force of habit she took the
+opposite side.
+
+"Oh, they were complaining of divorces long before the tango was ever
+heard of. That same preacher used to blame them on the bicycle, then on
+the automobile and the movies. And now it's the tango. It'll be
+flying-machines next."
+
+Papa was used to fighting with mamma, and he roared with fine leoninity:
+"Are you defending your daughter's shamelessness? Do you approve of the
+tango?"
+
+"I've never seen it."
+
+"Then it must be just because you always encourage your children to
+flout my authority. I never could keep any discipline because you always
+fought for them, encouraged them to disobey their father, to--to--to--"
+
+She chanted her responses according to the familiar family antipathy
+antiphony. They talked themselves out eventually; but Prue was not home.
+Ollie gradually typewrote herself to sleep and Prue was not home. Horace
+came in from the Y. M. C. A. bowling-alley and went to bed, and Prue was
+not home.
+
+The old heads nodded. The sentinels slept. At some dimly distant time
+papa woke with a start and inquired, "Huh?"
+
+Mamma jumped and gasped, "Who?"
+
+They were shivering with the after-midnight chill of the cold room, and
+Prue was not home. Papa snapped his watch open and snapped it shut; and
+the same to his jaw:
+
+"Two o'clock! And Prue not home. I'm going after her!"
+
+He thrust into his overcoat, slapped his hat on his aching head, flung
+open the door. And Prue came home.
+
+She was alone! And in tears!
+
+
+V
+
+As papa's overcoat slid off his arms and his hat off his head she tore
+down her gloves, tossed her cloak in the direction of the hat-tree and
+stumbled up the stairs, sobbing. Her mother caught her hand.
+
+"What's the matter, honey?"
+
+Prue wrenched loose and went on up.
+
+Father and mother stared at her, then at each other, then at the floor.
+Each read the same unspeakable fear in the other's soul. Serina ran up
+the stairs as fast as she could. William automatically locked the doors
+and windows, turned out the lights, and followed.
+
+He paused in the upper hall to listen. Prue was explaining at last.
+
+"It's that Orton Hippisley," Prue sobbed.
+
+"What--what has he done?" Serina pleaded, and Prue sobbed on:
+
+"Oh, he got fresh! Some of these fellas in this town think that because
+a girl likes to have a good time and knows how to dance they can get
+fresh with her. I didn't like the way Ort Hippisley held me and I told
+him. Finally I wouldn't dance any more with him. I gave his dances to
+Grant Beadle till the last; then Ort begged so hard I said all right.
+And he danced like a gentleman. But on the way home he--he put his arm
+round me. And when I told him to take it away he wouldn't. He said I had
+been in his arms half the evening before folks, and if I hadn't minded
+then I oughtn't to mind now. And I said: 'Is that so? Well, it's mighty
+different when you're dancing.' And he said, 'Oh no, it isn't,' and I
+said, 'Oh yes, it is.' And he tried to kiss me and I hauled off and
+smashed him right in the nose. It bloodied all over his dress soot, and
+I'm glad of it."
+
+Somehow Papa Pepperall felt such an impulse to give three cheers that he
+had to put his own hand over his mouth. He tiptoed to his room, and when
+mamma appeared to announce with triumph, "I guess Prue hasn't gone to
+the bad yet," papa said: "Who said she had? Prue is the finest girl in
+America!"
+
+"I thought you were saying--"
+
+"Why can't you ever once get me right? I was saying that Prue is too
+fine a girl to be allowed to mingle with that tango set. I'm going to
+cowhide that Hippisley cub. And Prue's not going to another one of those
+dances."
+
+But he didn't. And she did.
+
+
+VI
+
+Ollie was up betimes the next morning to get breakfast and make haste to
+her office. She was so excited that she dropped a stove-lid on the
+coalscuttle just as her mother appeared.
+
+"For mercy's sake, less noise!" Serina whispered. "You'll wake poor
+Prue!"
+
+Ollie next dropped the tray she had just unloaded on the table. Serina
+was furious. Ollie whispered:
+
+"I'm so nervous for fear I've lost my job at Judge Hippisley's, now that
+Prue had to go and slap Orton."
+
+"Always thinking of yourself," was Serina's rebuke. "Don't be so
+selfish!"
+
+But Ollie's fears were wasted. Orton Hippisley might have boasted of
+kisses he did not get, but not of the slaps that he did. He had gained a
+new respect for Prue, and at the first opportunity pleaded for
+forgiveness, eying her little fist the while. He begged her to go with
+him to a dance at his home that evening.
+
+She forgave him for the sake of the invitation--and she glided and
+dipped at the judge's house while Ollie spent the evening in his office
+trying to finish the day's work. Her speed was not yet up to
+requirements. Prue's speed was.
+
+Other girls watched Prue manipulating her members in the intricate
+mechanisms of the latest dances. They begged her to teach them, but she
+laughed and said: "It's easy. Just watch what I do and do the same."
+
+So Raphael told his pupils and Napoleon his subordinates.
+
+That night Ollie and Prue reached home at nearly the same time. Ollie
+told how well she was getting along in the judge's office. Prue told how
+she had made wall-flowers of everybody else in Mrs. Hippisley's parlor.
+Let those who know a mother's heart decide which daughter Serina was the
+prouder of, the good or the bad.
+
+She told William about it--how Ollie had learned to type letters with
+both hands and how Prue got there with both feet. And papa said, "She's
+a great girl!"
+
+And that was singular.
+
+
+VII
+
+A few mornings later Judge Hippisley stopped William on the street and
+spoke in his best bench manner:
+
+"Will, I hate to speak about your daughter, but I've got to."
+
+"Why, Judge, what's Ollie done? Isn't she fast enough?"
+
+"Ollie's all right. I'm speaking of Prue. She's entirely too fast. I
+want you to tell her to let my son alone."
+
+"Why, I--you--he--"
+
+"My boy was clerking in Beadle's hardware-store, learning the business
+and earning twelve dollars a week. And now he spends half his time
+dancing with that dam--daughter of yours. And Beadle is going to fire
+him if he doesn't 'tend to business better."
+
+"I--I'll speak to Prue," was all Pepperall dared to say. The judge had
+too many powers over him to be talked back to.
+
+Papa spoke to Prue and it amused her very much. She said that old Mr.
+Beadle had better speak to his own boy, who was Orton's fiercest rival
+at the dances. And as for the fat old judge, he'd better take up dancing
+himself.
+
+The following Sunday three of the Carthage preachers attacked the tango.
+One of them used for his text Matthew xiv:6, and the other used Mark
+vi:22. Both told how John the Baptist had lost his head over Salome's
+dancing. Doctor Brearley chose Isaiah lix:7 "Their feet run to evil ...
+their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in
+their paths."
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Pepperall and Ollie sat under Doctor Brearley. Prue had
+slept too late to be present. Doctor Brearley blamed so many of the
+evils of the world on the tango craze that if a visitor from Mars had
+dropped into a pew he might have judged that the world had been an Eden
+till the tango came. But then Doctor Brearley had always blamed old
+things on new things.
+
+It was a ferocious sermon, however, and the wincing Pepperalls felt that
+it was aimed directly at them. When Doctor Brearley denounced modern
+parents for their own godlessness and the irreligion of their homes,
+William took the blame to himself. On his way home he announced his
+determination to resume the long-neglected family custom of reading from
+the Bible.
+
+After the heavy Sabbath dinner had been eaten--Prue was up in time for
+this rite--he gathered his little flock in the parlor for a solemn
+while. It had been his habit to choose the reading of the day at
+random--he called it "letting the Lord decide." The big rusty-hinged
+Bible fell open with a loud puff of dust several years old. Papa
+adjusted his spectacles and read what he found before him:
+
+"Nehemiah x: 'Now those that sealed were, Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the
+son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur,
+Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush ...'" He began to breathe hard. He was lost
+in an impenetrable forest of names, and he could not pronounce one of
+them. He sneaked a peek ahead, dimly made out "Bunni, Hizkijah, Magpiash
+and Hashub," and choked.
+
+It looked like sacrilege, but he ventured to close the Book and open it
+once more.
+
+This time he happened on the last chapter of the Book of Judges, wherein
+is the chronicle of the plight of the tribe of Benjamin, which could not
+get women to marry into it. The wife famine of the Benjamites was not in
+the least interesting to Mr. Pepperall, but he would not tempt the Lord
+again. So he read on, while the children yawned and shuffled, Prue
+especially.
+
+Suddenly Prue sat still and listened, and papa's cough grew worse. He
+was reading about the "feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly," and how the
+elders of the congregation ordered the children of Benjamin to go and
+lie in wait in the vineyards.
+
+"'And see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in
+dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man his
+wife of the daughters of Shiloh....
+
+"'And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to
+their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and
+returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in
+them....
+
+"'In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which
+was right in his own eyes."
+
+He closed the Book and stole a glance at Prue. Her eyes were so bright
+with triumph that he had to say:
+
+"Of course that proves nothing about dancing. It doesn't say that the
+Shiloh girls made good wives."
+
+Prue had the impudence to add, "And it doesn't say that the sons of
+Benjamin were good dancers."
+
+Her father silenced her with a scowl of horror. Then he made a long
+prayer, directed more at his family than at the Lord. It apparently had
+an equal effect on each. After a hymn had been mumbled through the
+family dispersed.
+
+Prue lingered just long enough to capture the Bible and carry it off to
+her room in a double embrace. Serina and William tried to be glad to
+see her sudden interest, but they were a little afraid of her exact
+motive.
+
+She made no noise at all and did not come down in time to help get
+supper--the sad, cold supper of a Sunday evening. She slipped into the
+dining-room just before the family was called. Papa found at his plate a
+neat little stack of cards, bearing each a carefully lettered legend in
+Prue's writing. He picked them up, glanced at them, and flushed.
+
+"I dare you to read them," said Prue.
+
+So he read: "'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every
+purpose under the heaven ... a time to mourn and a time to dance.... He
+hath made every thing beautiful in his time.' Ecclesiastes iii.
+
+"'Let them praise his name in the dance ... for the Lord taketh pleasure
+in his people.... Praise him with the timbrel and dance.... Praise him
+upon the loud cymbals.' Psalms cxlix, cl.
+
+"'O virgin of Israel ... thou shalt go forth in the dances of them that
+make merry.... Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young
+men and old together.' Jeremiah xxxi.
+
+"'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced.' Matthew xi: 17.
+
+"'Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window, and saw King David
+leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her
+heart.... Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the
+day of her death.' II Samuel vi: 16, 23."
+
+Papa did not fall back upon the Shakesperean defense that the devil can
+quote Scripture to his purpose. He choked a little and filled his hand
+with the apple-butter he was spreading on his cold biscuit. Then he
+said:
+
+"It's not that I don't believe in dancing. I don't say all dances are
+immor'l."
+
+"You better not," said Serina, darkly. "You met me at a dance. We used
+to dance all the time till you got so's you wouldn't take me to parties
+any more. And you got so clumsy and I began to take on flesh, and ran
+short of breath like."
+
+"Oh, there's mor'l dances as well as immor'l dances," William confessed,
+not knowing the history of the opposition every dance has encountered in
+its younger days. "The waltz now, or the lancers or the Virginia reel.
+Even the two-step was all right. But this turkey-trot-tango
+business--it's goin' to be the ruination of the home. It isn't fit for
+decent folks to look at, let alone let their daughters do. I want you
+should quit it, Prue. If you need exercise help your mother with the
+housework. You go and tango round with a broom awhile. I don't see why
+you don't try to help your sister, too, and make something useful of
+yourself. I tell you, in these days a woman ought to be able to earn her
+own living same's a man. You could get a good position in Shillaber's
+dry-goods store if you only would."
+
+Prue wriggled her shoulders impatiently and said: "I guess I'm one of
+those Shiloh girls. I'll just dance round awhile, and maybe some rich
+Benjamin gent'man will grab me and take me off your hands."
+
+
+VIII
+
+One evening Prue came home late to supper after a session at Bertha
+Appleby's. An informal gathering had convened under the disguise of a
+church-society meeting, only to degenerate into a dancing-bee after a
+few perfunctory formalities.
+
+Prue had just time to seize a bite before she went to dress for a
+frankly confessed dancing-bout at Eliza Erf's. As she ate with angry
+voracity she complained:
+
+"I guess I'll just quit going to dances. I don't have a bit of fun any
+more."
+
+Her father started from his chair to embrace the returned prodigal, but
+he dropped into Ollie's place as Prue exclaimed:
+
+"Everybody is always at me for help. 'Prue, is this right?' 'Prue, teach
+me that.' 'Oh, what did you do then?' 'Is it the inside foot or the
+outside you start on?' 'Do you drop on the front knee or the hind?' 'Do
+you do the Innovation?' Why, it's worse than teaching school!"
+
+"Why don't you teach school?" said William, feebly. "There's going to be
+a vacancy in the kindergarten."
+
+Prue sniffed. "I see myself!" And went to her room to dress.
+
+Her father sank back discouraged. What ailed the girl? She simply would
+not take life seriously. She would not lift her hand to help. When they
+were so poor and the future so dour, how could she keep from earning a
+little money? Was she condemned to be altogether useless, shiftless,
+unprofitable? A weight about her father's neck till he could shift her
+to the neck of some unhappy husband?
+
+He remembered the fable of the ant and the locust. Prue was the locust,
+frivoling away the summer. At the first cold blast she would be pleading
+with the industrious ant, Ollie, to take her in. In the fable the locust
+was turned away to freeze, but you couldn't do that with a human locust.
+The ants just have to feed them. Poor Ollie!
+
+Munching this quinine cud of thought, he went up to bed. He was footsore
+from tramping the town for work. He had covered almost as much distance
+as Prue had danced. He was all in. She was just going out.
+
+She kissed him good night, but he would not answer. She went to kiss her
+mother and Ollie and Horace. Ollie was practising shorthand, and kissed
+Prue with sorrowing patience. Horace dodged the kiss, but called her
+attention to an article in the evening paper:
+
+"Say, Prue, if you want to get rich quick whyn't you charge for your
+tango advice? Says here that teachers are springing up all over Noo York
+and Chicawgo, and they get big, immense prices."
+
+"How much?" said Prue, indifferently.
+
+"Says here twenty-five dollars an hour. Some of 'em's earning a couple
+of thousand dollars a week."
+
+This information went through the room like a projectile from a
+coast-defense gun. Serina listened with bated breath as Horace read the
+confirmation. She shook her head:
+
+"It beats all the way vice pays in this world."
+
+Horace read on. The article described how some of the most prominent
+women in metropolitan society were sponsoring the dances. A group of
+ladies, whose names were more familiar to Serina than the Christian
+martyrs, had rented a whole dwelling-house for a dancing couple to
+disport in, so that the universal amusement could be practised
+exclusively.
+
+That settled Serina. Whatever Mrs. ---- and Miss ---- and the mother of
+the Duchess of ---- did was better than right. It was swell.
+
+Prue's frown now was the frown of meditation. "If they charge
+twenty-five dollars an hour in New York, what ought to be the price in
+Carthage?"
+
+"About five cents a week," said Serina, who did not approve of Carthage.
+"Nobody in this town would pay anything for anything."
+
+"We used to pay old Professor Durand to teach us to waltz and polka,"
+said Horace, "in the good old days before pop got the bankruptcy habit."
+
+That night Prue made an experiment. She danced exclusively with Ort
+Hippisley and Grant Beadle, the surest-footed bipeds in the town. When
+members of the awkward squad pleaded to cut in she danced away
+impishly, will-o'-the-wispishly. When the girls lifted their skirts and
+asked her to correct their footwork she referred them to the articles in
+the magazines.
+
+She was chiefly pestered by Idalene Brearley, daughter of the clergyman,
+and his chief cross.
+
+Finally Idalene Brearley tore Prue from the arms of Ort Hippisley,
+backed her into a corner, and said:
+
+"Say, Prue, you've got to listen! I'm invited to visit the swellest home
+in Council Bluffs for a house-party. They call it a week-end; that shows
+how swell they are. They're going to dance all the time. When it comes
+to these new dances I'm weak at both ends, head and feet." She laughed
+shamelessly at her own joke, as women do. "I don't want to go there like
+I'd never been any place, or like Carthage wasn't up to date. I'm just
+beginning to get the hang of the Maxixe and the Hesitation, and I
+thought if you could give me a couple of days' real hard work I wouldn't
+be such an awful gump. Could you? Do you suppose you could? Or could
+you?"
+
+Prue looked such astonishment at this that Idalene hastened to say:
+
+"O' course I'm not asking you to kill yourself for nothing. How much
+would you charge? Of course I haven't much saved up; but I thought if I
+took two lessons a day you could make me a special rate. How much would
+it be, d'you s'pose? Or what do you think?"
+
+Prue wondered. This was a new and thrilling moment for her. A boy is
+excited enough over the first penny he earns, but he is brought up to
+earn money. To a girl, and a girl like Prue, the luxury was almost
+intolerably intense. She finally found voice to murmur:
+
+"How much you gettin' for the lessons you give?"
+
+Idalene had, for the sake of pin money, been giving a few alleged
+lessons in piano, voice, water-colors, bridge whist, fancy stitching,
+brass-hammering, and things like that. She answered Prue with
+reluctance:
+
+"I get fifty cents an hour. But o' course I make a specialty of those
+things."
+
+"I'm making a specialty of dancing," said Prue, coldly.
+
+Idalene was torn between the bitterly opposite emotions of getting and
+giving. Prue tried to speak with indifference, but she looked as greedy
+as the old miser in the "Chimes of Normandy."
+
+"Fifty cents suits me, seeing it's you."
+
+Idalene gasped: "Well, o' course, two lessons a day would be a dollar.
+Could you make it six bits by wholesale?"
+
+Prue didn't see how she could. Teaching would interfere so with her
+amusements. Finally Idalene sighed:
+
+"Oh, well, all right! Call it fifty cents straight. When can I come over
+to your house?"
+
+"To my house?" gasped Prue. "Papa doesn't approve of my dancing. I'll
+come to yours."
+
+"Oh no, you won't," gasped Idalene. "My father doesn't dream that I
+dance. I'm going to let him sleep as long as I can."
+
+Here was a plight! Mrs. Judge Hippisley strolled up and demanded,
+"What's all this whispering about?"
+
+They explained their predicament. Mrs. Hippisley thought it was a
+perfectly wonderful idea to take lessons. She would let Prue teach
+Idalene in her parlor if Prue would teach her at the same time for
+nothing.
+
+"Unless you think I'm too old and stupid to learn," she added,
+fishingly.
+
+Prue put a catfish on her hook: "Oh, Mrs. Hippisley, I've seen women
+much older and fatter and stupider than you dancing in Chicago."
+
+While the hours of tuition were being discussed Bertha Appleby tiptoed
+up to eavesdrop, and pleaded to be accepted as a pupil. And she forced
+on the timorous Prue a quarter as her matriculation fee.
+
+Orton Hippisley beau'd Prue home that night, and they paused in an
+arcade of maples to practise a new step she had been composing in the
+back of her head.
+
+He was an apt pupil, and when they had resumed their homeward stroll she
+neglected to make him take his arm away. Encouraged, he tried to kiss
+her when they reached the gate. She cuffed him again, but this time her
+buffet was almost a caress. She sighed:
+
+"I can't get very mad at you, you're such a quick student. I hope your
+mother will learn as fast."
+
+"My mother!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes. She wants me to teach her the one-step."
+
+"Don't you dare!"
+
+"And why not?" she asked, with sultry calm.
+
+"Do you think I'll let my mother carry on like that? Well, hardly!"
+
+"Oh, so what I do isn't good enough for your mother!"
+
+"I don't mean just that; but can't you see--Wait a minute--"
+
+She slammed the gate on his outstretched fingers and he went home
+fondling his wound.
+
+The next day he strolled by the parlor door at his own home, but Prue
+would not speak to him and his mother was too busy to invite him in. It
+amazed him to see how humble his haughty mother was before the hitherto
+neglected Prue.
+
+Prue would have felt sorrier for him if she had not been so exalted over
+her earnings.
+
+She had not let on at home about her class till she could lay the proof
+of her success on the supper-table. When she stacked up the entire two
+dollars that she had earned by only a few miles of trotting, it looked
+like the loot the mercenaries captured in that old Carthage which the
+new Carthage had never heard of.
+
+The family was aghast. It was twice as much as Ollie had earned that
+day. Ollie's money "came reg'lar," of course, and would total up more in
+the long run.
+
+But for Prue to earn anything was a miracle. And in Carthage two dollars
+is two dollars, at the very least.
+
+
+IX
+
+The news that Carthage had a tango-teacher created a sensation rivaling
+the advent of its first street-car. It gave the place a metropolitan
+flavor. If it only had a slums district, now, it would be a great and
+gloriously wicked city.
+
+Prue was fairly besieged with applicants for lessons. Those who could
+dance a few steps wanted the new steps. Those who could not dance at all
+wanted to climb aboard the ark.
+
+Mrs. Hippisley's drawing-room did not long serve its purpose. On the
+third day the judge stalked in. He came home with a chill. At the sight
+of his wife with one knee up, trying to paw like a horse, his chill
+changed to fever. His roar was heard in the kitchen. He was so used to
+domineering that he was not even afraid of his wife when he was in the
+first flush of rage.
+
+Prue and Idalene and Bertha he would have sentenced to deportation if he
+had had the jurisdiction. He could at least send them home. He
+threatened his wife with dire punishments if she ever took another step
+of the abominable dance.
+
+Prue was afraid of the judge, but she was not afraid of her own father.
+She told him that she was going to use the parlor, and he told her that
+she wasn't. The next day he came home to find the class installed.
+
+He peeked into the parlor and saw Bertha Appleby dancing with Idalene
+Brearley. Prue was in the arms of old "Tawm" Kinch, the town scoundrel,
+a bald and wealthy old bachelor who had lingered uncaught like a wise
+old trout in a pool, though generations of girls had tried every device,
+from whipping the' stream to tickling his sides. He had refused every
+bait and lived more or less alone in the big old mansion he had
+inherited from his skinflint mother.
+
+At the sight of Tawm Kinch in his parlor embracing his daughter and
+bungling an odious dance with her, William Pepperall saw red. He would
+throw the old brute out of his house. As he made his temper ready Mrs.
+Judge Hippisley hurried up the hall. She had walked round the block,
+crossed two back yards and climbed the kitchen steps to throw the judge
+off the scent. William could hardly make a scene before these women. He
+could only protest by leaving the house.
+
+He found that, having let the outrage go unpunished, once, it was hard
+to work up steam to drive it out the second day. Also he remembered that
+he had asked Tawm Kinch for a position in his sash-and-blind factory
+and Tawm had said he would see about it. Attacking Tawm Kinch would be
+like assaulting his future bread and butter. He kept away from the house
+as much as he could, sulking like a punished boy. One evening as he went
+home to supper, purposely delaying as long as possible, he saw Tawm
+Kinch coming from the house. He ran down the steps like an urchin and
+seized William's hand as if he had not seen him for a long time.
+
+"Take a walk with me, Bill," he said, and led William along an
+unfrequented side street. After much hemming and hawing he began: "Bill,
+I got a proposition to make you. I find there's a possibility of a
+p'sition openin' up in the works and maybe I could fit you into it if
+you'd do something for me."
+
+William tried not to betray his overweening joy.
+
+"I'd always do anything for you, Tawm," he said. "I always liked you,
+always spoke well of you, which is more 'n I can say of some of the
+other folks round here."
+
+Tawm was flying too high to note the raw tactlessness of this; he went
+right on:
+
+"Bill--or Mr. Pepperall, I'd better say--I'm simply dead gone on that
+girl of yours. She's the sweetest, smartest, gracefulest thing that ever
+struck this town, and when I--Well, I'm afraid to ask her m'self, but I
+was thinkin' if you could arrange it."
+
+"Arrange what?"
+
+"I want to marry her. I know I'm no kid, but she could have the big
+house, and I can be as foolish as anybody about spending money when I've
+a mind to. Prue could have 'most anything she wanted and I could give
+you a good job. And then ever'body would be happy."
+
+
+X
+
+Papa did his best to be dignified and not turn a handspring or shout for
+joy. He was like a boy trying to look sad when he learns that the
+school-teacher is ill. He managed to hold back and tell Tawm Kinch that
+this was kind of sudden like and he'd have to talk to the wife about it,
+and o' course the girl would have to be considered.
+
+He was good salesman enough not to leap at the first offer, and he left
+Tawm Kinch guessing at the gate of the big house. To Tawm it looked as
+lonely and forlorn as it looked majestic and desirable to Papa
+Pepperall, glancing back over his shoulder as he sauntered home with
+difficult deliberation. His heart was singing, "What a place to eat
+Sunday dinners at!"
+
+Once out of Tawm Kinch's range, he broke into a walk that was almost a
+lope, and he rounded a corner into the portico that Judge Hippisley
+carried ahead of him. When the judge had regained his breath he seized
+papa by both lapels and growled:
+
+"Look here, Pepperall, I told you to keep your daughter away from my
+boy, and you didn't; and now Ort has lost his job. Beadle fired him
+to-day. And jobs ain't easy to get in this town, as you know. And now
+what's going to happen?"
+
+William Pepperall was so exultant that he tried to say two things at the
+same time; that Orton's job or loss of it was entirely immaterial and a
+matter of perfect indifference. What he said was, "It's material of
+perfect immaterence to me."
+
+He spurned to correct himself and stalked on, leaving the judge gaping.
+A few paces off William's knees weakened at the thought of how he had
+jeopardized Ollie's position; but he tossed that aside with equal
+"immaterence," for when Prue became Mrs. Kinch she could take Ollie to
+live with her, or send her to school, or something.
+
+When he reached home he drew his wife into the parlor to break the
+glorious news to her. She was more hilarious than he had been. All their
+financial problems were solved and their social position enhanced, as if
+the family had suddenly been elevated to the peerage.
+
+She was on pins and needles of impatience because Prue was late for
+supper. She came down at last when the others had heard all about it and
+nearly finished their food. She had her hat on, and she was in such a
+hurry that she paid no attention to the fluttering of the covey, or the
+prolonged throat-clearing of her father, who had difficulty in keeping
+Serina from blurting out the end of the story first. At length he said:
+
+"Well, Prue, I guess the tango ain't as bad as I made out."
+
+"You going to join the class, poppa?" said Prue, round the spoonful of
+preserved pears she checked before her mouth.
+
+Her father went on: "I guess you're one of those daughters of Shiloh
+like you said you was. And the son of Benjamin has come right out after
+you. And he's the biggest son of a gun in the whole tribe."
+
+Prue put down the following spoonful and turned to her mother: "What
+ails poppa, momma? He talks feverish."
+
+Serina fairly gurgled: "Prepare yourself for the grandest surprise.
+You'd never guess."
+
+And William had to jump to beat her to the news: "Tawm Kinch wants to
+marry you."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"He asked me."
+
+"Asked you!"
+
+Serina clasped her hands and her eyes filled with tears of the rescued.
+"Oh, Prue, ain't it wonderful? Ain't the Lord good to us?"
+
+Prue did not catch fire from the blaze. She sniffed, "He wasn't very
+good to Tawm Kinch."
+
+William, bitter with disappointment, snapped: "What do you mean? He's
+the richest man in town. Some folks say he's as good as worth a hundred
+thousand dollars."
+
+"Well, what of it? He'll never learn to dance. His feet interfere."
+
+"What's dancing got to do with it? You'll stop all that foolishness
+after you've married Tawm."
+
+"Oh, will I? Ort Hippisley can dance better with one foot than Tawm
+Kinch could dance if he was a centipede."
+
+"Ort Hippisley! Humph! He's lost his job and he'll never get another.
+You couldn't marry him."
+
+"I'm not in any hurry to marry anybody."
+
+The reaction from hope to confusion, the rejection of the glittering
+gift he proffered, infuriated the hen-pecked, chickpecked father. He
+shrieked:
+
+"Well, you're going to marry Tawm Kinch or you're going to get out of my
+house!"
+
+"Papa!" gasped Ollie.
+
+"Here, dad!" growled Horace.
+
+"William!" cried Serina.
+
+William thumped the table and rose to his full height. He had not often
+risen to it. And his voice had an unsuspected timbre:
+
+"I mean it. I've been a worm in this house long enough. Here's where I
+turn. This girl has made me a laughing-stock and a despising-stock long
+enough. She can take this grand opportunity I got for her or she can
+pack up her duds and clear out--for good!"
+
+He thumped the table again and sat down trembling with spent rage.
+Serina was so crushed under the crumbled wall of her air-castles that
+she could not protest. Olive and Horace felt that since Prue was so
+indifferent to their happiness they need not consider hers. There was a
+long, long silence.
+
+The sound of a low whistle outside stole into the silence. Prue rose and
+said, quietly:
+
+"Ollie, would you mind packing my things for me? I'll send over for them
+when I know where I'll be."
+
+Ollie tried to answer, but her lips made no sound. Prue kissed each of
+the solemn faces round the table, including her father's. They might
+have been dead in their chairs for all their response. She paused with
+prophetic loneliness. That low whistle shrilled again.
+
+She murmured a somber, "Good-by, everybody," and went out.
+
+The door closed like a dull "Good-by." They heard her swift feet slowly
+crossing the porch and descending the steps. They imagined them upon the
+walk. They heard the old gate squeal a rusty, "Good-by-y--Prue-ue!"
+
+
+XI
+
+It was Ort Hippisley, of course, that waited for Prue outside the gate.
+They swapped bad news. She had heard that he had lost his job, but not
+that his father had forbidden him to speak to Prue.
+
+Her evil tidings that she had been compelled to choose between marrying
+Tawm Kinch and banishment from home threw Ort into a panic of dismay.
+He was a natural-born dancer, but not a predestined hero. He had no
+inspirations for crises like these. He was as graceful as a manly man
+could be, but he was not at his best when the hour was darkest. He was
+at his best when the band was playing.
+
+In him Prue found somebody to support, not to lean on. But his distress
+at her distress was so complete that it endeared him to her war-like
+soul more than a braver quality might have done. They stood awhile thus
+in each other's arms like a Pierrot and his Columbine with winter coming
+on. Finally Orton sighed:
+
+"What in Heaven's name is goin' to become of us? What you goin' to do,
+Prue? Where can you go?"
+
+Prue's resolution asserted itself. "The first place to go is Mrs.
+Prosser's boardin'-house and get me a room. Then we can go on to the
+dance and maybe that'll give us an idea."
+
+"But maybe Mrs. Prosser won't want you since your father's turned you
+out."
+
+"In the first place it was me that turned me out. In the second place
+Mrs. Prosser wants 'most anybody that's got six dollars a week comin'
+in. And I've got that, provided I can find a room to teach in."
+
+Mrs. Prosser welcomed Prue, not without question, not without every
+question she could get answered, but she made no great bones of the
+family war. "The best o' families quar'ls," she said. "And half the time
+they take their meals with me till they quiet down. I'll be losin' you
+soon."
+
+Prue broached the question of a room to teach in. To Mrs. Prosser,
+renting a room had always the joy of renting a room. She said that her
+"poller" was not used much and she'd be right glad to get something for
+it. She would throw in the use of the pianna. Prue touched the keys. It
+was an old boarding-house piano and sounded like a wire fence plucked;
+but almost anything would serve.
+
+So Prue and Orton hastened away to the party, and danced with the final
+rapture of doing the forbidden thing under an overhanging cloud of
+menace. Several more pupils enlisted themselves in Prue's classes.
+Another problem was solved and a new danger commenced by Mr. Norman
+Maugans.
+
+The question of music had become serious. It was hard to make progress
+when the dancers had to hum their own tunes. Prue could not buy a
+phonograph, and the Prosser piano dated from a time when pianos did not
+play themselves. Prue could "tear off a few rags," as she put it, but
+she could not dance and teach and play her own music all at once. Mrs.
+Hippisley was afraid to lend her phonograph lest the judge should notice
+its absence.
+
+And now like a sent angel came Mr. Norman Maugans, who played the
+pipe-organ at the church, and offered to exchange his services as
+musician for occasional lessons and the privilege of watching Prue
+dance, for which privilege, he said, "folks in New York would pay a
+hundred dollars a night if they knew what they was missin'."
+
+Prue grabbed the bargain, and the next morning began to teach him to
+play such things as "Some Smoke" and "Leg of Mutton."
+
+At first he played "Girls, Run Along" so that it could hardly be told
+from "Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night?" and his waltzes were mostly
+hesitation; but by and by he got so that he fairly tangoed on the
+pedals, and he was so funny bouncing about on the piano-stool to
+"Something Seems Tingle-ingle-ingle-ingling So Queer" that the pupils
+stopped dancing to watch him.
+
+The tango was upon the world like a Mississippi at flood-time. The
+levees were going over one by one; or if they stood fast they stood
+alone, for the water crept round from above and backed up from below.
+
+In Carthage, as in both Portlands, Maine and Oregon, and the two Cairos,
+Illinois and Egypt, the Parises of Kentucky and France, the Yorks and
+Londons, old and new; in Germany, Italy, and Japan, fathers, monarchs,
+mayors, editors stormed against the new dance; societies passed
+resolutions; police interfered; ballet-girls declared the dances immoral
+and ungraceful. The army of the dance went right on growing.
+
+Doctor Brearley called a meeting of the chief men of his congregation to
+talk things over and discipline, if not expel, all guilty members.
+Deacon Luxton was in a state of mind. He dared not vote in favor of the
+dance and he dared not vote against it. He and his wife were taking
+lessons from Prue surreptitiously at their own home. Judge Hippisley's
+voice would have been louder for war if he had not discovered that his
+wife was secretly addicted to the one-step. Old Doctor Brearley was
+walking about rehearsing a sermon against it when he happened to enter a
+room where Idalene was practising. He wrung from her a confession of the
+depth of her iniquity. This knowledge paralyzed his enthusiasm.
+
+Sour old Deacon Flugal was loudly in favor of making an example of Prue.
+His wife was even more violent. She happened to mention her disgust to
+Mrs. Deacon Luxton:
+
+"I guess this'll put an end to the tango in Carthage!"
+
+"Oh, I hope not!" Mrs. Luxton cried.
+
+"You hope not!"
+
+"Yes, I do. It has done my husband no end of good. It's taken pounds and
+pounds of fat off him. It brings out the prespiration on him something
+wonderful. And it's taken years off his age. He's that spry and full of
+jokes and he's gettin' right spoony. He used to be a tumble cut-up, and
+then he settled down so there was no livin' with him. But now he keeps
+at me to buy some new clothes and he's thinkin' of gettin' a tuxeda. His
+old disp'sition seems to have come back and he's as cheerful and, oh, so
+affectionate! It's like a second honeymoon."
+
+Mrs. Luxton gazed off into space with rapture. Mrs. Flugal was so silent
+that Mrs. Luxton turned to see if she had walked away in disgust. But
+there was in her eyes that light that lies in woman's eyes, and she
+turned a delicious tomato-red as she murmured:
+
+"How much, do you s'pose, would a term of lessons cost for my husband?"
+
+
+XII
+
+Somehow the church failed to take official action. There was loud
+criticism still, but phonographs that had hitherto been silent or at
+least circumspect were heard to blare forth dance rhythms, and not
+always with the soft needle on.
+
+Mrs. Prosser's boarders were mainly past the age when they were liable
+to temptation. At first the presence and activities of Prue had added a
+tang of much-needed spice to this desert-island existence. They loved to
+stare through the door or even to sit in at the lessons. But at the
+first blast of the storm that the church had set up they scurried about
+in consternation. Mrs. Prosser was informed that her boarding-house was
+no longer a fit place for church-fearing ladies. She was warned to
+expurgate Prue or lose the others. Mrs. Prosser regretfully banished the
+girl.
+
+And now Prue felt like the locust turned away from ant-hill after
+ant-hill. She walked the streets disconsolately. Her feet from old habit
+led her past her father's door. She paused to gaze at the dear front
+walk and the beloved frayed steps, the darling need of paint, the
+time-gnawed porch furniture, the empty hammock hooks. She sighed and
+would have trudged on, but her mother saw her and called to her from the
+sewing-room window, and ran out bareheaded in her old wrapper.
+
+They embraced across the gate and Serina carried on so that Prue had to
+go in with her to keep the neighbors from having too good a time. Prue
+told her story, and Serina's jaw set in the kind of tetanus that mothers
+are liable to. She sent Horace to fetch Prue's baggage from "old
+Prosser's," and she re-established Prue in her former room.
+
+When William came slumping up the steps, still jobless, he found the
+doors locked, front and back, and the porch windows fastened. Serina
+from an upper sill informed him that Prue was back, and he could either
+accept her or go somewhere else to live.
+
+William yielded, salving his conscience by refusing to speak to the
+girl. Prue settled down with the meekness of returned prodigals for whom
+fatted calves are killed. According to the old college song, "The
+Prod.," when he got back, "sued father and brother for time while away."
+That was the sort of prodigal Prue was. Prue brought her classes with
+her.
+
+Papa Pepperall gave up the battle. He dared not lock his daughter in or
+out or up. He must not beat her or strangle her with a bowstring or drop
+her into the Bosporus. He could not sell her down the river. A modern
+father has about as much authority as a chained watch-dog. He can jump
+about and bark and snap, but he only abrades his own throat.
+
+There were Pepperall feuds all over town. One by one the most
+conservative were recruited or silenced.
+
+William Pepperall, however, still fumed at home and abroad, and Judge
+Hippisley would have authorized raids if there had been any places to
+raid. Thus far the orgies had been confined to private walls. There was,
+indeed, no place in Carthage for public dancing except the big room in
+the Westcott Block over Jake Meyer's restaurant, and that room was
+rented to various secret societies on various nights.
+
+Prue's class outgrew the parlor, spread to the dining-room, and trickled
+into the kitchen. Here the growth had to stop, till it was learned that
+if Mr. Maugans played very loud he could be heard in the bedrooms
+up-stairs. And there a sort of University Extension was practised for
+ladies only.
+
+And still the demand for education increased. The benighted held out
+hands pleading for help. Young men and old offered fabulous sums, a
+dollar a lesson, two dollars! Prue decided that if her mother would stay
+up-stairs as a chaperon it would be proper to let the men dance there,
+too.
+
+"But how am I going to cook the meals?" said mamma.
+
+"We'll hire a cook," said Prue. And it was done. She even bought mamma
+a new dress, and established her above-stairs as a sort of grand duenna.
+
+Mamma watched Prue with such keenness that now and then, when Prue had
+to rush down-stairs, mamma would sometimes solve a problem for one of
+Prue's "scholars," as she called them.
+
+One day papa came home to his pandemonium, jostled through the
+couple-cluttered hall, stamped up-stairs, and found mamma showing Deacon
+Flugal how to do the drop-step.
+
+"You trot four short steps backward," mamma was saying, "then you make a
+little dip; but don't swing your shoulders. Prue says if you want to
+dance refined you mustn't swing your shoulders or your--your--the rest
+of you."
+
+Papa was ready to swing his shoulders and drop the deacon through the
+window, but as he was about to protest the deacon caught mamma in his
+arms and swept backward, dropping his fourth step incisively on papa's
+instep, rendering papa _hors de combat_.
+
+By the time William had rubbed witch-hazel into the deacon's heel-mark,
+the deacon in a glorious "prespiration" had gone home with his own
+breathless wife ditto. William dragged Serina into the bathroom, the
+only room where dancing was not in progress. He warned her not to forget
+that she had sworn to be a faithful wife. She pooh-poohed him and said:
+
+"You'd better learn to dance yourself. Come on, I'll show you the Jedia
+Luna. It's very easy and awful refined. Do just like I do."
+
+She put her hands on her hips and began to sidle. She had him nearly
+sidled into the bathtub before he could escape with the cry of a hunted
+animal. At supper he thumped the table with another of his resolutions,
+and cried:
+
+"My house was not built for a dance-hall!"
+
+"That's right, poppa," said Prue; "and it shakes so I'm afraid it'll
+come down on us. I've been thinking that you'll have to hire me the
+lodge-room in the Westcott Block. I can give classes there all day."
+
+He refused flatly. So she persuaded Deacon Flugal and several gentlemen
+who were on the waiting-list of her pupils to arrange it for her.
+
+And now all day long she taught in the Westcott Block. The noise of her
+music interfered with business--with lawyers and dentists and insurance
+agents. At first they were hostile, then they were hypnotized. Lawyer
+and client would drop a title discussion to quarrel over a step. The
+dentist's forceps would dance along the teeth, and many an uncomplaining
+bicuspid was wrenched from its happy home, many an uneasy molar assumed
+a crown. The money Prue made would have been scandalous if money did not
+tend to become self-sterilizing after it passes certain dimensions.
+
+By and by the various lodge members found their meetings and their
+secret rites to be so stupid, compared with the new dances, that almost
+nobody came. Quorums were rare. Important members began to resign.
+Everybody wanted to be Past Grand Master of the Tango.
+
+The next step was the gradual postponement of meetings to permit of a
+little informal dancing in the evening. The lodges invited their ladies
+to enter the precincts and revel. Gradually the room was given over
+night and day to the worship of Saint Vitus.
+
+
+XIII
+
+The solution of every human problem always opens another. People danced
+themselves into enormities of appetite and thirst. It was not that food
+was attractive in itself. Far from it. It was an interruption, a
+distraction from the tango; a base streak of materialism in the bacon of
+ecstasy. But it was necessary in order that strength might be kept up
+for further dancing.
+
+Deacon Flugal put it happily: "Eating is just like stoking. When I'm
+giving a party at our house I hate to have to leave the company and go
+down cellar and throw coal in the furnace. But it's got to be did or the
+party's gotter stop."
+
+Carthage had one good hotel and two bad ones, but all three were "down
+near the deepo." Almost the only other place to eat away from home was
+"Jake Meyer's Place," an odious restaurant where the food was ill chosen
+and ill cooked, and served in china of primeval shapes as if stone had
+been slightly hollowed out.
+
+Prue was complaining that there was no place in Carthage where people
+could dance with their meals and give "teas donsons." Horace was smitten
+with a tremendous idea.
+
+"Why not persuade Jake Meyer to clear a space in his rest'runt like they
+do in Chicawgo?"
+
+Prue was enraptured, and Horace was despatched to Jake with the proffer
+of a magnificent opportunity. Horace cannily tried to extract from Jake
+the promise of a commission before he told him. Jake promised. Then
+Horace sprang his invention.
+
+Now Jake was even more bitter against the tango than Doctor Brearley,
+Judge Hippisley, or Mr. Pepperall. The bar annex to his restaurant, or
+rather the bar to which his restaurant was annexed, had been almost
+deserted of evenings since the vicious dance mania raged. The
+bowling-alley where the thirst-producing dust was wont to arise in
+clouds was mute. Over his head he heard the eternal Maugans and the
+myriad-hoofed shuffle of the unceasing dance. When he understood what
+Horace proposed he emitted the roar of an old uhlan, and the only
+commission he offered Horace was the commission of murder upon his
+person.
+
+Horace retreated in disorder and reported to Prue. Prue called upon Jake
+herself, smilingly told him that all he needed to do was to crowd his
+tables together round a clear space, revolutionize his menu, get a cook
+who would cook, and spend about five hundred dollars on decorations.
+
+"Five hundret thalers!" Jake howled. "I sell you de whole shop for five
+hundret thalers."
+
+"I'll think it over," said Prue as she walked out.
+
+She could think over all of it except the five hundred dollars. She had
+never thought that high. She told Horace, and he said that the way to
+finance anything was to borrow the money from the bank.
+
+Prue called on Clarence Dolge, the bank president she knew best. He
+asked her a number of personal questions about her earnings. He was
+surprised at their amount and horrified that she had saved none of them.
+He advised her to start an account with him; but she reminded him that
+she had not come to put in, but to take out.
+
+He said that he would cheerfully lend her the money if she could get a
+proper indorsement on her note. She knew that her father did not indorse
+her dancing, but perhaps he might feel differently about her note.
+
+"I might get poppa to sign his name," she smiled.
+
+Mr. Dolge exclaimed, "No, thank you!" without a moment's hesitation. He
+already had a sheaf of papa's autographs, all duly protested.
+
+She went to another bank, whose president announced that he would have
+to put the very unusual proposal before the directors. Judge Hippisley
+was most of the directors. The president did not report exactly what the
+directors said, for Prue, after all, was a woman. But she did not get
+the five hundred.
+
+Prue had set her heart on providing Carthage with a _cafe dansant_. She
+determined to save her money. Prue saving!
+
+It was hard, too, for shoes gave out quickly and she could not wear the
+same frock all the time. And sometimes at night she was so tired she
+just could not walk home and she rode home in a hack. A number of young
+men offered to buggy-ride her home or to take her in their little
+automobiles. But they, too, seemed to confuse art and business with
+foolishness.
+
+Sometimes she would ask Ort to ride home with her, but she wouldn't let
+him pay for the hack. Indeed he could not if he would. His devotion to
+Prue's school had cost him his job, and the judge would not give him a
+penny.
+
+Sometimes in the hack Prue would permit Ort to keep his arm round her.
+Sometimes when he was very doleful she would have to ask him to put it
+round her. But it was all right, because they were going to get married
+when Orton learned how to earn some money. He was afraid he would have
+to leave Carthage. But how could he tear himself from Prue? She would
+not let him talk about it.
+
+
+XIV
+
+Now the fame of Prue and her prancing was not long pent up in Carthage.
+Visitors from other towns saw her work and carried her praises home.
+Sometimes farmers, driving into town, would hear Mr. Maugans's music
+through the open windows. Their daughters would climb the stairs and
+peer in and lose their taste for the old dances, and wistfully entreat
+Prue to learn them them newfangled steps.
+
+In the towns smaller than Carthage the anxiety for the tango fermented.
+A class was formed in Oscawanna, and Prue was bribed to come over twice
+a week and help.
+
+Clint Sprague, the manager of the Carthage Opera House, which was now
+chiefly devoted to moving pictures, with occasional interpolations of
+vaudeville, came home from Chicago with stories of the enormous moneys
+obtained by certain tango teams. He proposed to book Prue in a chain of
+small theaters round about, if she could get a dancing partner. She said
+she had one.
+
+Sprague wrote glowing letters to neighboring theater-managers, but,
+being theater-managers, they were unable to know what their publics
+wanted. They declined to take any risks, but offered Sprague their
+houses at the regular rental, leaving him any profits that might result.
+
+Clint glumly admitted that it wouldn't cost much to try it out in
+Oscawanna. He would guarantee the rental and pay for the show-cards and
+the dodgers; Prue would pay the fare and hotel bills of herself, her
+partner, and Mr. Maugans.
+
+Prue hesitated. It was an expense and a risk. Prue cautious! She would
+take nobody for partner but Orton Hippisley. Perhaps he could borrow the
+money from his father. She told him about it, and he was wild with
+enthusiasm. He loved to dance with Prue. To invest money in enlarging
+her fame would be divine.
+
+He saw the judge. Then he heard him.
+
+He came back to Prue and told her in as delicate a translation as he
+could manage that it was all off. The judge had bellowed at him that not
+only would he not finance his outrageous escapade with that shameless
+Pepperall baggage, but if the boy dared to undertake it he would disown
+him.
+
+"Now you'll have to go," said Prue, grimly.
+
+"But I have no money, honey," he protested, miserably.
+
+"I'll pay your expenses and give you half what I get," she said.
+
+He refused flatly to share in the profits. His poverty consented to
+accept the railroad fare and food enough to dance on. And he would pay
+that back the first job he got.
+
+Then Prue went to Clint Sprague and offered to pay the bills if he would
+give her three-fourths of the profits. He fumed; but she drove a good
+bargain. Prue driving bargains! At last he consented, growling.
+
+When Prue announced the make-up of her troupe there was a cyclone in her
+own home. Papa was as loud as the judge.
+
+"You goin' gallivantin' round the country with that Maugans idiot and
+that young Hippisley scoundrel? Well, I guess not! You've disgraced us
+enough in our own town, without spreading the poor but honorable name of
+Pepperall all over Oscawanna and Perkinsville and Athens and Thebes."
+
+The worn-out, typewritten-out Ollie pleaded against Prue's lawlessness.
+It would be sure to cost her her place in the judge's office. It was bad
+enough now.
+
+Even Serina, who had become a mere echo of Prue, herself went so far as
+to say, "Really, Prue, you know!"
+
+Prue thought awhile and said: "I'll fix that all right. Don't you worry.
+There'll be no scandal. I'll marry the boy."
+
+
+XV
+
+And she did! Took ten dollars from the hiding-place where she banked her
+wealth, and took the boy to an Oscawanna preacher, and telegraphed home
+that he was hers and she his and both each other's.
+
+The news spread like oil ablaze on water. Mrs. Hippisley had consented
+to take lessons of Prue, but she had never dreamed of losing her eldest
+son to her. She and Serina had quite a "run-in" on the telephone.
+William and the judge almost had a fight-out--and right on Main Street,
+too.
+
+Each accused the other of fathering a child that had decoyed away and
+ruined the life of the other child. Both were so scorched with helpless
+wrath that each went home to his bed and threatened to bite any hand
+that was held out in comfort. Judge Hippisley had just strength enough
+to send word to poor Olive that she was fired.
+
+
+XVI
+
+The next news came the next day. Oscawanna had been famished for a sight
+of the world-sweeping dances. It turned out in multitudes to see the
+famous Carthage queen in the new steps. The opera-house there had not
+held such a crowd since William J. Bryan spoke there--the time he did
+not charge admission. According to the Oscawanna _Eagle_: "This
+enterprising city paid one thousand dollars to see Peerless Prue
+Pepperall dance with her partner Otto Hipkinson. What you got to say
+about that, ye scribes of Carthage?"
+
+Like the corpse in Ben King's poem, Judge Hippisley sat up at the news
+and said: "What's that?" And when the figures were repeated he "dropped
+dead again."
+
+The next day word was received that Perkinsville, jealous of Oscawanna,
+had shoveled twelve hundred dollars into the drug-store where tickets
+were sold. Two sick people had nearly died because they couldn't get
+their prescriptions filled for twelve hours, and the mayor of the town
+had had to go behind the counter and pick out his own stomach bitters.
+
+The Athens theater had been sold out so quickly that the town hall was
+engaged for a special matinee. Athens paid about fifteen hundred
+dollars. The Athenians had never suspected that there was so much money
+in town. People who had not paid a bill for months managed to dig up
+cash for tickets.
+
+Indignant Oscawanna wired for a return engagement, so that those who had
+been crowded out could see the epoch-making dances. Those who had seen
+them wanted to see them again. In the mornings Prue gave lessons to
+select classes at auction prices.
+
+Wonderful as this was, unbelievable, indeed, to Carthage, it was not
+surprising. This blue and lonely dispeptic world has always been ready
+to enrich the lucky being that can tempt its palate with something it
+wants and didn't know it wanted. Other people were leaping from poverty
+to wealth all over the world for teaching the world to dance again. Prue
+caught the crest of the wave that overswept a neglected region.
+
+The influence of her success on her people and her neighbors was bound
+to be overwhelming. The judge modulated from a contemptuous allusion to
+"that Pepperall cat" to "my daughter-in-law." Prue's father, who had
+never watched her dance, had refused to collaborate even that far in her
+ruination, could not continue to believe that she was entirely lost
+when she was so conspicuously found.
+
+Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the world is so wholesome and so well
+balanced that nobody ever attained enormous prosperity without some
+excuse for it. People who contribute the beauty, laughter, thrills, and
+rhythm to the world may do as much to make life livable as people who
+invent electric lights and telephones and automobiles. Why should they
+not be paid handsomely?
+
+Prue, the impossible, unimaginable Prue, triumphed home safely with
+several thousands of dollars in her satchel. Orton bought a revolver to
+guard it with, and nearly shot one of his priceless feet off with it.
+They dumped the money upon the shelf of the banker who had refused to
+lend Prue five hundred dollars. He had to raise the steel grating to get
+the bundle in. The receiving teller almost fainted and had to count it
+twice.
+
+Clint Sprague alone was disconsolate. He had refused to risk Prue's
+expenses, had forced her to take the lioness's share of the actual costs
+and the imaginary profits. He almost wept over what he might have had,
+despising what he had.
+
+Prue ought to have been a wreck; but there is no stimulant like success.
+In a boat-race the winning crew never collapses. Prue's mother begged
+her to rest; her doctor warned her that she would drop dead. But she
+smiled, "If I can die dancing it won't be so bad."
+
+Even more maddeningly joyful than the dancing now was the rhapsody of
+income. To be both Salome and Hetty Green! Mr. Dolge figured out her
+income. At any reasonable rate of interest it represented a capital far
+bigger than Tawm Kinch's mythical hundred thousand. Mr. Dolge said to
+William Pepperall:
+
+"Bill, your daughter is the richest man in town. Any time you want to
+borrow a little money, get her name on your note and I'll be glad to let
+you have it."
+
+Somehow his little pleasantry brought no smile to William's face. He
+snapped:
+
+"You mind your own business and I'll mind mine."
+
+"Oh, I suppose you don't have to borrow it," Dolge purred; "she just
+gives it to you."
+
+William almost wept at this humiliation.
+
+Prue bought out Jake Meyer's restaurant. She spent a thousand dollars on
+its decoration. She consoled Ollie with a position as her secretary at
+twenty-five dollars a week and bought her some new dresses.
+
+Her mother scolded poor Ollie for being such a stick as not to be able
+to dance like her sister and having to be dependent on her. There was
+something hideously immoral and disconcerting about this success. But
+then there always is. Prue was whisked from the ranks of the resentful
+poor to those of the predatory rich.
+
+Prue established Horace as cashier of the restaurant. She wanted to make
+her father manager, but he could not bend his pride to the yoke of
+taking wages from his child. If she had come home in disgrace and
+repentance he could have been a father to her.
+
+The blossoming of what had been Jake Meyer's place into what Carthage
+called the "Palais de Pepperall" was a festival indeed. The newspapers,
+in which at Horace's suggestion Prue advertised lavishly, gave the event
+head-lines on the front page. The article included a complete catalogue
+of those present. This roster of forty "Mesdames" was thereafter
+accepted as the authorized beadroll of the Carthage Four Hundred. Mrs.
+Hippisley was present and as proud as Judy. But the judge and William
+Pepperall were absent, and Prue felt an ache in a heart that should have
+been so full of pride. She and Orton rode home in a hack and she cried
+all the way. In fact, he had to stick his head out and tell the driver
+to drive round awhile until she was calm enough to go home.
+
+A few days later, as Prue was hurrying along the street looking over a
+list of things she had to purchase for her restaurant, she encountered
+old Doctor Brearley, who was looking over a list of subscribers to the
+fund for paying the overdue interest on the mortgage on the new steeple.
+He was afraid the builders might take it down.
+
+In trying to pass each other Prue and the preacher fell into an
+involuntary tango step that delighted the witnesses. When Doctor
+Brearley had recovered his composure, and before he had adjusted his
+spectacles, he thought that Prue was Bertha Appleby, and he said:
+
+"Ah, my dear child, I was just going to call on you and see if you
+couldn't contribute a little to help us out in this very worthy cause."
+
+Prue let him explain, and then she said:
+
+"Tell you what I'll do, Doctor: I'll give you the entire proceeds of my
+restaurant for one evening. And I'll dance for you with my husband."
+
+Doctor Brearley was aghast when he realized the situation. He was afraid
+to accept; afraid to refuse. He was in an excruciating dilemma. Prue had
+mercy on him. She said:
+
+"I'll just announce it as an idea of my own. You needn't have anything
+to do with it."
+
+The townspeople were set in a turmoil over Prue's latest audacity. Half
+the church members declared it an outrage; the other half decided that
+it gave them an opportunity to see her dance under safe auspices. Foxy
+Prue!
+
+
+XVII
+
+The restaurant was crowded with unfamiliar faces, terrified at what they
+were to witness. Doctor Brearley had not known what to do. It seemed so
+mean to stay away and so perilous to go. His daughter solved the
+problem by telling him that she would say she had made him come. He went
+so far as to let her drag him in. "But just for a moment," he
+explained. "He really must leave immediately after Mr. and Mrs.
+Hippisley's--er--exercises." He apparently apologized to the other
+guests, but really to an outraged heaven.
+
+He trembled with anxiety on the edge of his chair. The savagery of the
+music alarmed him. When Prue walked out with her husband the old Doctor
+was distressed by her beauty. Then they danced and his heart thumped;
+but subtly it was persuaded to thump in the measure of that unholy
+Maxixe. He did not know that outside in the street before the two
+windows stood two exiled fathers watching in bitter loneliness.
+
+He saw a little love drama displayed, and reminded himself that, after
+all, some critics said that the Song of Solomon was a kind of wedding
+drama or dance. After all, Mrs. Hippisley was squired by her perfectly
+proper and very earnest young husband--though Orton in his black clothes
+was hardly more than her shifting shadow.
+
+The old preacher had been studying his Cruden, and bolstering himself
+up, too, with the very Scriptural texts that Prue had written out for
+her stiff-necked father. He had met other texts that she had not known
+how to find. The idea came to the preacher that, in a sense, since God
+made everything He must have made the dance, breathed its impulse into
+the clay.
+
+This daughter of Shiloh was an extraordinarily successful piece of
+workmanship. There was nothing very wicked surely about that coquettish
+bending of her head, those playful escapes from her husband's embrace,
+that heel-and-toe tripping, that lithe elusiveness, that joyous psalmody
+of youth.
+
+Prue was so pretty and her ways so pretty that the old man felt the
+pathos of beauty, so fleet, so fleeting, so lyrical, so full of--Alas!
+The tears were in his eyes, and he almost applauded with the others when
+the dance was finished. He bowed vaguely in the direction of the anxious
+Prue and made his way out. She felt rebuked and condemned and would not
+be comforted by the praise of others. She did not know that the old
+preacher had encountered on the sidewalk Judge Hippisley. Doctor
+Brearley had forgotten that the judge had not yet ordered his own
+decision reversed, and he thought he was saying the unavoidable thing
+when he murmured:
+
+"Ah, Judge, how proud you must be of your dear son's dear wife. I fancy
+that Miriam, the prophetess, must have danced something like that on the
+banks of the Red Sea when the Egyptians were overthrown."
+
+Then he put up the umbrella he always carried and stumbled back to his
+parsonage under the star-light. His heart was dancing a trifle, and he
+escaped the scene of wrath that broke out as soon as he was away.
+
+For William Pepperall had a lump in his throat made up of equal parts of
+desire to cry and desire to fight, and he said to Judge Hippisley with
+all truculence:
+
+"Look here, Judge! I understand you been jawin' round this town about my
+daughter not being all she'd ought to be. Now I'm goin' to put a stop to
+that jaw of yours if I have to slam it right through the top of your
+head. If you want to send me to jail for contemp' of court, sentence me
+for life, because that's the way I feel about you, you fat old--"
+
+Judge Hippisley put up wide-open hands and protested:
+
+"Why, Bill, I--I just been wonderin' how I could get your daughter to
+make up with me. I been afraid to ask her for fear she'd just think I
+was toadyin' to her. I think she's the finest girl ever came out of
+Carthage. Do you suppose she'd make up and--and come over to our house
+to dinner Sunday?"
+
+"Let's ask her," said William, and they walked in at the door.
+
+
+XVIII
+
+Early one morning about six months from the first dismal Monday morning
+after William Pepperall's last bankruptcy, Serina wakened to find that
+William was already up. She had been oversleeping with that luxury which
+a woman can experience only in an expensive and frilly nightie combined
+with hemstitched linen sheets. She opened her heavy and
+slumber-contented eyes to behold her husband in a suit of partly-silk
+pajamas. He was making strange motions with his feet. "What on earth you
+doing there?" she yawned, and William grinned.
+
+"Yestiddy afternoon the judge was showin' me a new step in this Max
+Hicks dance. It's right cute. Goes like this."
+
+Mamma Pepperall watched him cavort a moment, then sniffed
+contemptuously, and rolled out like a fireman summoned.
+
+"Not a bit like it! It goes like this."
+
+A few minutes later the door opened and Ollie put her head in.
+
+"For Heaven's sake be quiet! You'll wake Prue, and she's all wore out;
+and she's only got an hour more before they have to get up and take the
+train for Des Moines."
+
+The old rascals promised to be good, but as soon as she had gone they
+wrangled in whispers and danced on tiptoes. Suddenly Prue put her head
+in at the door and gasped:
+
+"What in Heaven's name are you and poppa up to? Do you want to wake
+Orton?"
+
+Papa had to explain:
+
+"I got a new step, Prue. Goes like this. Come on, momma."
+
+Serina shyly took her place in his arms; but they had taken only a few
+strides when Prue hissed:
+
+"Sh-h! Don't do it! Stop it!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"In the first place it's out of date. And in the second place it's not
+respectable."
+
+Then the hard-working locust, having rebuked the frivolous ants, went
+back to bed.
+
+
+
+
+"A" AS IN "FATHER"
+
+I
+
+
+For two years life at Harvard was one long siesta to Orson Carver, 2d.
+And then he fell off the window-seat. Orson Carver, 1st, ordered him to
+wake up and get to work at once. Orson announced to his friends that he
+was leaving college to pay an extensive visit to "Carthage" and it
+sounded magnificent until he added, "in the Middle West."
+
+A struggling young railroad had succumbed to hard times out there, and
+Orson senior had been appointed receiver. It was the Carthage, Thebes &
+Rome Railroad, connecting three towns whose names were larger than their
+populations.
+
+Since Orson had seemed unable to decide what career to choose, if any,
+his father decided for him--decided that he should take up railroading
+and begin at the beginning, which was the office at Carthage. And Orson
+went West to "grow up young man with the country."
+
+Carthage bore not the faintest resemblance to the moving-picture life of
+the West; he didn't see a single person on horseback. Yet his mother
+thought of him as one who had vanished into the Mojave desert. She wrote
+to warn him not to drink the alkali water.
+
+Young Orson, regarding the villagers with patient disdain, was amazed to
+find that they were patronizing him with amusement. They spoke of his
+adored Boston as an old-fogy place with "no git-up-and-git."
+
+Orson's mother was somewhat comforted when he wrote her that the young
+women of Carthage were noisy rowdies dressed like frumps. She was a
+trifle alarmed when she read in his next letter that some of them were
+not half bad-looking, surprisingly well groomed for so far West, and
+fairly attractive till they opened their mouths. Then, he said, they
+twanged the banjo at every vowel and went over the letter "r" as if it
+were a bump in the road. He had no desire for blinders, but he said that
+he would derive comfort from a pair of ear-muffs. By and by he was
+writing her not to be worried about losing him, for there was safety in
+numbers, and Carthage was so crowded with such graces that he could
+never single out one siren among so many. The word "siren" forced his
+mother to conclude that even their voices had ceased to annoy him. She
+expected him to bring home an Indian squaw or a cowgirl bride on any
+train.
+
+And so Orson Carver was by delicate degrees engulfed in the life of
+Carthage. He was never assimilated. He kept his own "dialect," as they
+called it.
+
+The girl that Orson especially attended in Carthage was Tudie Litton,
+as pretty a creature as he could imagine or desire. For manifest reasons
+he affected an interest in her brother Arthur. And Arthur, with a
+characteristic brotherly feeling, tried to keep his sister in her place.
+He not only told her that she was "not such a much," but he also said to
+Orson:
+
+"You think my sister is some girl, but wait till you see Em Terriberry.
+She makes Tudie look like something the pup found outside. Just you wait
+till you see Em. She's been to boarding-school and made some swell
+friends there, and they've taken her to Europe with 'em. Just you wait."
+
+"I'll wait," said Orson, and proceeded to do so.
+
+But Em remained out of town so long that he had begun to believe her a
+myth, when one day the word passed down the line that she was coming
+home at last.
+
+That night Tudie murmured a hope that Orson would not be so infatuated
+with the new-comer as to cast old "friends" aside. She underlined the
+word "friends" with a long, slow sigh like a heavy pen-stroke, and not
+without reason, for the word by itself was mild in view of the fact that
+the "friends" were seated in a motionless hammock in a moon-sheltered
+porch corner and holding on to each other as if a comet had struck the
+earth and they were in grave danger of being flung off the planet.
+
+Orson assured Tudie: "No woman exists who could come between us!" And a
+woman must have been supernaturally thin to achieve the feat at that
+moment.
+
+But even Tudie, in her jealous dread, had no word to say against the
+imminent Em. Everybody spoke so well of her that Orson had a mingled
+expectation of seeing an Aphrodite and a Sister of Charity rolled into
+one.
+
+Now Carthage was by no means one of those petty towns where nearly
+everybody goes to the station to meet nearly every train. But nearly
+everybody went down to see Em arrive. Foremost among the throng was
+Arthur Litton. Before Em left town he and she had been engaged "on
+approval." While she was away he kept in practice by taking Liddy Sovey
+to parties and prayer-meetings and picnics. Now that Em was on the way
+home Arthur let Liddy drop with a thud and groomed himself once more to
+wear the livery of Em's fiance.
+
+When the crowd met the train it was recognized that Arthur was next in
+importance to Em's father and mother. Nobody dreamed of pushing up ahead
+of him. On the outskirts of the melee stood Orson Carver. He gave
+railroad business as the pretext for his visit to the station, and he
+hovered in the offing.
+
+As the train from the East slid in, voices cried, "Hello, Em!" "Woo-oo!"
+"Oh, Em!" "Oh, you Emma!" and other Carthage equivalents for "_Ave!_"
+and "all hail!"
+
+Orson saw that a girl standing on the Pullman platform waved a
+handkerchief and smiled joyously in response. This must be Em. When the
+train stopped with a pneumatic wail she descended the steps like a young
+queen coming down from a dais.
+
+She was gowned to the minute; she carried herself with metropolitan
+poise; her very hilarity had the city touch. Orson longed to dash
+forward and throw his coat under her feet, to snatch away the porter's
+hand-step and put his heart there in its place. But he could not do
+these things unintroduced. He hung back and watched her hug her mother
+and father in a brief wrestling-match while Arthur stood by in simpering
+homage.
+
+When she reached out her hand to Arthur he wrung it and clung to it with
+the dignity of proprietorship and a smirk that seemed to say: "I own
+this beautiful object, and I could kiss her if I wanted to. And she
+would like it. But I am too well bred to do such a thing in the presence
+of so many people."
+
+Orson was not close enough to hear what he actually said. The glow in
+his eyes, however, was enough. Then Em visibly spoke. When her lips
+moved Arthur stared at her aghast; seemed to ask her to repeat what she
+said. She evidently did. Now Arthur looked askance as if her words
+shocked him.
+
+Her father and mother, too, exchanged glances of dismay and chagrin. The
+throng of friends pressing forward in noisy salutation was silenced as
+if a great hand were clapped over every murmurous mouth.
+
+Orson wondered what terrible thing the girl could have spoken. There was
+nothing coarse in her manner. Delicacy and grace seemed to mark her. And
+whatever it was she said she smiled luminously when she said it.
+
+The look in her eyes was incompatible with profanity, mild soever. Yet
+her language must have been appalling, for her father and mother blushed
+and seemed to be ashamed of bringing her into the world, sorry that she
+had come home. The ovation froze away into a confused babble.
+
+What could the girl have said?
+
+
+II
+
+Orson was called in by the station agent before he could question any of
+the greeters. When he was released the throng had dispersed. The
+Terriberrys had clambered into the family surrey and driven home with
+their disgrace.
+
+But that night there was a party at the Littons', planned in Emma's
+honor. Tudie had invited Orson to be present.
+
+He found that the one theme of conversation was Emma. Everybody said to
+him, "Have you seen Emma?" and when he said "Yes," everybody demanded,
+"Have you heard her?" and when he said "No" everybody said, "Just you
+wait!"
+
+Orson was growing desperate over the mystery. He seized Newt Elkey by
+the arm and said, "What does she do?"
+
+"What does who do?"
+
+"This Miss Em Terriberry. Everybody says, 'Have you heard her?'"
+
+"Well, haven't you?"
+
+"No! What under the sun does she say?"
+
+"Just you wait. 'Shh!"
+
+Then Emma came down the stairs like a slowly swooping angel.
+
+She had seemed a princess in her traveling-togs; in her evening gown--!
+Orson had not seen such a gown since he had been in Paris. He imagined
+this girl poised on the noble stairway of the Opera there. Em came
+floating down upon these small-town girls with this fabric from heavenly
+looms, and reduced them once for all to a chorus.
+
+But there was no scorn in her manner and no humility in her welcome. The
+Carthage girls frankly gave her her triumph, yet when she reached the
+foot of the stairs and the waiting Arthur she murmured something that
+broke the spell. The crowd rippled with suppressed amusement. Arthur
+flushed.
+
+Orson was again too remote to hear. But he could feel the wave of
+derision, and he could see the hot shame on Arthur's cheeks. Emma bent
+low for her train, took Arthur's arm, and disappeared into the parlor
+where the dancing had begun.
+
+Orson felt his arm pinched, and turned to find Tudie looking at him.
+"This is our dance," she said, "unless you'd rather dance with her."
+
+"With her? With Miss Terriberry, you mean?"
+
+"Naturally. You were staring at her so hard I thought your eyes would
+roll out on the floor."
+
+There was only one way to quell this mutiny, and that was to soothe it
+away. He caught Tudie in his arms. It was strenuous work bumping about
+in that little parlor, and collisions were incessant, but he wooed Tudie
+as if they were afloat in interstellar spaces.
+
+They collided oftenest with Arthur and his Emma, for the lucky youth who
+held that drifting nymph seemed most unhappy in his pride. The girl was
+talking amiably, but the man was grim and furtive and as careless of his
+steering as a tipsy chauffeur.
+
+Orson forgot himself enough to comment to Tudie, "Your brother doesn't
+seem to be enjoying himself."
+
+"Poor boy, he's heartbroken."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He's so disappointed with Em."
+
+"I can't see anything wrong with her."
+
+"Evidently not; but have you heard her?"
+
+In a sudden access of rage Orson stopped short in the middle of the
+swirl, and, ignoring the battery of other dancers, demanded, "In
+Heaven's name, what's the matter with the girl?"
+
+"Nothing, I should judge from the look on your face after your close
+inspection."
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake, don't begin on me; but tell me--"
+
+"Talk to her and find out," said Tudie, with a twang that resounded as
+the music came to a stop. "Oh, Em--Miss Terriberry, this is Mr. Carver;
+he's dying to meet you."
+
+She whirled around so quickly that he almost fell into the girl's arms.
+She received him with a smile of self-possession: "Chahmed, Mr. Cahveh."
+
+Orson's Eastern ears, expecting some horror of speech, felt delight
+instead. She did not say "charrmed" like an alarm-clock breaking out.
+She did not trundle his name up like a wheelbarrow. She softened the "a"
+and ignored the "r."
+
+Tudie rolled the "r" on his ear-drums as with drum-sticks, and by
+contrast the sound came to him as: "Misterr Carrverr comes from
+Harrvarrd. He calls it Havvad."
+
+"Oh," said Em, with further illumination, "I woah the Hahvahd colohs the
+lahst time I went to a game."
+
+Orson wanted to say something about her lips being the perfect Havvad
+crimson, but he did not quite dare--yet. And being of New England, he
+would always be parsimonious with flatteries.
+
+Tudie hooked her brother's arm and said with an angelic spitefulness,
+"We'll leave you two together," and swished away.
+
+Orson immediately asked for the next dance and Em granted it. While they
+were waiting for the rheumatic piano to resume they promenaded. Orson
+noted that everybody they passed regarded them with a sly and cynical
+amusement. It froze all the language on his lips, and the girl was still
+breathing so fast from the dance that she apologized. Orson wanted to
+tell her how glorious she looked with her cheeks kindled, her lips
+parted, and her young bosom panting. But he suppressed the feverish
+impulse. And he wondered more and more what ridiculous quality the
+Carthaginians could have found in her who had returned in such splendor.
+
+The piano exploded now with a brazen impudence of clamor. Orson opened
+his arms to her, but she shook her head: "Oh, I cahn't dahnce again just
+yet. You'd bettah find anothah pahtnah."
+
+She said it meekly, and seemed to be shyly pleased when he said he much
+preferred to sit it out. And they sat it out--on the porch. Moonlight
+could not have been more luscious on Cleopatra's barge than it was
+there. The piazza, which needed paint in the daylight, was blue enameled
+by the moon. The girl's voice was in key with the harmony of the hour
+and she brought him tidings from the East and from Europe. They were as
+grateful as home news in exile.
+
+He expected to have her torn from him at any moment. But, to his
+amazement, no one came to demand her. They were permitted to sit
+undisturbed for dance after dance. She was suffering ostracism. The more
+he talked to her the more he was puzzled. Even Arthur did not appear.
+Even the normal jealousy of a fiance was not evident. Orson's brain grew
+frantic for explanation. The girl was not wicked, nor insolent. She
+plainly had no contagious disease, no leprosy, no plague, not even a
+cold. Then why was she persecuted?
+
+He was still fretting when the word was passed that supper was ready,
+and they were called in. Plates and napkins were handed about by
+obliging young gallants; chicken salad and sandwiches were dealt out
+with a lavish hand, and ice-cream and cake completed the banquet.
+
+Arthur had the decency to sit with Em and to bring her things to eat,
+but he munched grimly at his own fodder. Orson tagged along and sat on
+the same sofa. It was surprising how much noise the guests made while
+they consumed their food. The laughter and clatter contrasted with the
+soft speech of Em, all to her advantage.
+
+When the provender was gone, and the plates were removed, Tudie whisked
+Orson away to dance with her. As he danced he noted that Em was a
+wall-flower, trying to look unconcerned, but finally seeking shelter by
+the side of Tudie's mother, who gave her scant hospitality.
+
+Tudie began at once, "Well, have you found out?"
+
+"No, I haven't."
+
+"Didn't you notice how affected she is?"
+
+"No more than any other girl."
+
+"Oh, thank you! So you think I'm affected."
+
+"Not especially. But everybody is, one way or another--even the animals
+and the birds."
+
+"Really! And what is my affectation?"
+
+"I don't know, and I wouldn't tell you if I did. What's Miss
+Terriberry's?"
+
+"Didn't you dahnce with her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, that's it."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"She says 'dahnce,' doesn't she?"
+
+"I believe she does."
+
+"Well, she used to say 'dannce' like the rest of us."
+
+"What of it? Is it a sin to change?"
+
+"It's an affectation."
+
+"Why? Is education an affectation?"
+
+"Oh! so you call the rest of us uneducated?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, no! You know too much, if anything. But what has
+that to do with Miss Terriberry?"
+
+Because their minds were at such loggerheads their feet could not keep
+measure. They dropped out of the dance and sought the porch, while Tudie
+raged on:
+
+"She has no right to put on airs. Her father is no better than mine. Who
+is she, anyway, that she should say 'dahnce' and 'cahn't' and
+'chahmed'?"
+
+Orson was amazed at the depths of bitterness stirred up by a mere
+question of pronunciation. He answered, softly: "Some of the meekest
+people in the world use the soft 'a.' I say 'dahnce.'"
+
+"Oh, but you can't help saying it."
+
+"Yes, I could if I tried."
+
+"But you were born where everybody talks like that. Em was born out
+here."
+
+"She has traveled, though."
+
+"So have I. And I didn't come back playing copy-cat."
+
+"It's natural for some people to mimic others. She may not be as
+strong-minded as you are." He thought that rather diplomatic. "Besides
+'dannce' and 'cann't' aren't correct."
+
+"Oh yes, they are!"
+
+"Oh no, they're not! Not by any dictionary ever printed."
+
+"Then they'd better print some more. Dictionaries don't know everything.
+They're very inconsistent."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"Now you say 'tomahto' where I say 'tomayto.'"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why don't you say 'potahto'?"
+
+"Because nobody does."
+
+"Well, nobody that was born out here says 'dahnce' and 'cahn't.'"
+
+"But she's been East and in Europe, and--where's the harm of it, anyway?
+What's your objection to the soft 'a'?"
+
+"It's all right for those that are used to it."
+
+"But you say 'father.' Why don't you say 'rather' to rhyme with it?"
+
+"Don't be foolish."
+
+"I'm trying not to be."
+
+"Well, then, don't try to convince me that Em Terriberry is a wonderful
+creature because she's picked up a lot of foreign mannerisms and comes
+home thinking she's better than the rest of us. We'll show her--the
+conceited thing! Her own father and mother are ashamed of her, and
+Arthur is so disgusted the poor boy doesn't know what to do. I think he
+ought to give her a good talking to or break off the engagement."
+
+Orson sank back stunned at the ferocity of her manner. He beheld how
+great a matter a little fire kindleth. It was so natural to him to speak
+as Miss Terriberry spoke that he could not understand the hatred the
+alien "a" and the suppressed "r" could evoke among those native to the
+flat vowel and the protuberant consonant. He was yet to learn to what
+lengths disputes could go over quirks of speech.
+
+
+III
+
+The very "talking to" that Tudie believed her brother ought to give his
+betrothed he was giving her at that moment at the other end of the
+porch. Arthur had hesitated to attempt the reproof. It was not pleasant
+to broach the subject, and he knew that it was dangerous, since Em was
+high-spirited. Even when she expressed a wonder at the coolness of
+everybody's behavior he could not find the courage for the lecture
+seething in his indignant heart.
+
+He was worrying through a perfunctory consolation: "Oh, you just imagine
+that people are cold to you, Em. Everybody's tickled to death to have
+you home. You see, Em--"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't call me Em," she said.
+
+"It's your name, isn't it?"
+
+"It's a part of my old name; but I've changed Emma to Amelie. After this
+I want to be called Amelie."
+
+If she had announced her desire to wear trousers on the street, or to
+smoke a pipe in church, or even to go in for circus-riding, he could not
+have been more appalled than he was at what she said.
+
+"Amelie?" he gasped. "What in the name of--of all that's sensible is
+that for?"
+
+"I hate Em. It's ugly. It sounds like a letter of the alphabet. I like
+Amelie better. It's pretty and I choose it."
+
+"But look here, Em--"
+
+"Amelie."
+
+"This is carrying things too blamed far."
+
+He was not entirely heedless of her own welfare. He had felt the
+animosity and ridicule that had gathered like sultry electricity in the
+atmosphere when Emma had murmured at the station those words that Orson
+had not heard.
+
+Orson, seated with Tudie at one end of the porch, heard them now at the
+other end of the porch as they were quoted with mockery by Arthur. Orson
+and Tudie forgot their own quarrel in the supernal rapture of
+eavesdropping somebody's else wrangle.
+
+"When you got off the train," Arthur groaned, "you knocked me off my
+pins by what you said to your father and mother."
+
+"And what did I say?" said Em in innocent wonder.
+
+"You said, 'Oh, my dolling m'mah, I cahn't believe it's you'!"
+
+"What was wrong with that?"
+
+"You used to call her 'momma' and you called me 'darrling.' And you
+wouldn't have dared to say 'cahn't'! When I heard you I wanted to die.
+Then you grabbed your father and gurgled, 'Oh, p'pah, you deah old
+angel!' I nearly dropped in my tracks, and so did your father. And then
+you turned to me and I knew what was coming! I tried to stop you, but I
+couldn't. And you said it! You called me 'Ahthuh'!"
+
+"Isn't that your name, deah?"
+
+"No, it is not! My name is 'Arrthurr' and you know it! 'Ahthuh'! what do
+you think I am? My name is good honest 'Arrthurr.'" He said it like a
+good honest watch-dog, and he gnarred the "r" in the manner that made
+the ancients call it the canine letter.
+
+Amelie, born Emma, laughed at his rage. She tried to appease him. "I
+think 'Ahthuh' is prettiah. It expresses my tendah feelings bettah. The
+way you say it, it sounds like garrgling something."
+
+But her levity in such a crisis only excited her lover the more.
+"Everybody at the station was laughing at you. To-night when you
+traipsed down the stairs, looking so pretty in your new dress, you had
+to spoil everything by saying: 'What a chahming pahty. Shall we dahnce,
+Ahthuh?' I just wanted to die."
+
+The victim of his tirade declined to wither. She answered: "I cahn't
+tell you how sorry I am to have humiliated you. But if it's a sin to
+speak correctly you'll have to get used to it."
+
+"No, I won't; but you'll get over it. You can live it down in time; but
+don't you dare try to change your name to Amelie. They'd laugh you out
+of Carthage."
+
+"Oh, would they now? Well, Amelie is my name for heahaftah, and if you
+don't want to call me that you needn't call me anything."
+
+"Look here, Em."
+
+"Amelie."
+
+"Emamelie! for Heaven's sake don't be a snob!"
+
+"You're the snob, not I. There's just as much snobbery in sticking to
+mispronunciation as there is in being correct. And just as much
+affectation in talking with a burr as in dropping it. You think it's all
+right for me to dress as they do in New York. Why shouldn't I talk the
+same way? If it's all right for me to put on a pretty gown and weah my
+haiah the most becoming way, why cahn't I improve my name, too? You
+cahn't frighten me. I'm not afraid of you or the rest of your backwoods
+friends. Beauty is my religion, and if necessary I'll be a mahtah to
+it."
+
+"You'll be a what?"
+
+"A mahtah."
+
+"Do you mean a motto?"
+
+"I mean what you'd call a marrtyrr. But I won't make you one. I'll
+release you from our engagement, and you can go back to Liddy Sovey. I
+understand you've been rushing her very hahd. And you needn't take me
+home. I'll get back by the gahden pahth."
+
+She rose and swept into the house, followed by her despairing swain.
+
+Orson and Tudie eavesdropped in silence. Tudie was full of scorn.
+Amelie's arguments were piffle or worse to her, and her willingness to
+undergo "martyrdom" for them was the most arrant pigheadedness, as the
+martyrdom of alien creeds usually is.
+
+Orson, the alien, was full of amazement. Here was a nice young man in
+love with a beautiful young woman. He had been devoted for years, and
+now, because she had slightly altered her habits in one vowel and one
+consonant, their love was curdled.
+
+
+IV
+
+Greater wars have begun from less causes and been waged more fiercely.
+They say that an avalanche can be brought down from a mountain by a
+whispered word. Small wonder, then, that the murmur of a vowel and the
+murder of a consonant should precipitate upon the town of Carthage the
+stored-up snows of tradition. Business was dull in the village and any
+excitement was welcome. Before Emma's return there had been a certain
+slight interest in pronunciation.
+
+Orson Carver had for a time stimulated amusement by his droll talk. He
+had been suspected for some time of being an impostor because he spoke
+of his university as "Havvad." The Carthaginians did not expect him to
+call it "Harrvarrd," as it was spelled, but they had always understood
+that true graduates called it "Hawvawd," and local humorists won much
+laughter by calling it "Haw-haw-vawd." Orson had bewildered them further
+by a sort of cockneyism of misappropriated letters. He used the flat "a"
+in words where Carthaginians used the soft, as in his own name and his
+university's. He saved up the "r" that he dropped from its rightful
+place and put it on where it did not belong, as in "idear." He had
+provoked roars of laughter one evening when a practical joker requested
+him to read a list of the books of the Bible, and he had mentioned
+"Numbas, Joshuar, Ezrar, Nehemiar, Estha, Provubbs, Isaiar, Jeremiar."
+
+Eventually he was eclipsed by another young man sent to a post in the
+C., T. & R. Railroad by an ambitious parent--Jefferson Digney, of Yale.
+Digney, born and raised in Virginia and removed to Georgia, had taken
+his accent to New Haven and taken it away with him unsullied. His
+Southern speech had given Carthage acute joy for a while.
+
+Arthur Litton had commented once on the contrast between Orson and
+Jefferson. "Neither of you can pronounce the name of his State," said
+Arthur. "He calls it 'Jawja' and you call it 'Jahjar.'"
+
+"What should it be?"
+
+"Jorrjuh."
+
+"Really!"
+
+"You can't pronounce your own name."
+
+"Oh, cahn't I?"
+
+"No, you cahn't I. You call it 'Cavveh.' He calls it 'Cyahvah.'"
+
+"What ought it to be?"
+
+"Carrvurr--as it's spelt."
+
+Yet another new-comer to the town was an Englishman, Anthony Hopper, a
+younger son of a stock-holder abroad. He was not at all the Englishman
+of the stage, and the Carthaginians were astonished to find that he did
+not drop his "h's" or misapply them. And he never once said "fawncy,"
+but flat "fancy." He did not call himself "Hanthony 'Opper," as they
+expected. But he did take a "caold bahth in the mawning."
+
+With a New Englander, an old Englander, and an Atlantan in the town,
+Carthage took an astonishing interest in pronunciation that winter. When
+conversation flagged anybody could raise a laugh by referring to their
+outlandish pronunciations. Quoting their remarks took the place of such
+parlor games as trying to say "She sells sea shells," or "The sea
+ceaseth and it sufficeth us."
+
+The foreigners entered into the spirit of it and retorted with
+burlesques of Carthagese. They were received with excellent
+sportsmanship. One might have been led to believe that the Carthaginians
+took the matter of pronunciation lightly, since they could laugh
+tolerantly at foreigners. This, however, was because the foreigners had
+missed advantages of Carthaginian standards.
+
+Emma Terriberry's crime was not in her pronunciation, but in the fact
+that she had changed it. Having come from Carthage, she must forever
+remain a Carthagenian or face down a storm of wrath. Her quarrel with
+her lover was the beginning of a quarrel with the whole town.
+
+Arthur Litton became suddenly a hero, like the first man wounded in a
+war. The town rallied to his support. Emma was a heartless wretch, who
+had insulted a faithful lover because he would not become as abject a
+toady to the hateful East as she was. Her new name became a byword. Her
+pronunciations were heard everywhere in the most ruthless parody. She
+was accused of things that she never had said, things that nobody could
+ever say.
+
+They inflicted on her the impossible habit of consistency. She was
+reported as calling a hat a "hot," a rat a "rot," of teaching her little
+sister to read from the primer, "Is the cot on the mot?" Pronunciation
+became a test of character. The soft "r" and the hard "a" were taken as
+proofs of effeminate hypocrisy.
+
+Carthage differed only in degree, not in kind, from old Italy at the
+time of the "Sicilian Vespers," when they called upon everybody to
+pronounce the word "ciceri." The natives who could say "chee-cheree"
+escaped, but the poor French who could come no nearer than "seeseree"
+were butchered. Gradually now in Carthage the foreigners from
+Massachusetts, Georgia, England, and elsewhere ceased to be regarded
+with tolerance. Their accents no longer amused. They gave offense.
+
+In the railroad office there were six or seven of these new-comers. They
+were driven together by indignation. They took up Amelie's cause; made
+her their queen; declined invitations in which she was not included;
+gave parties in her honor: took her buggy-riding. Each had his day.
+
+A few girls could not endure her triumph. They broke away from the fold
+and became renegades, timidly softening their speech. This infuriated
+the others, and the town was split into Guelph and Ghibelline.
+
+Amelie enjoyed the notoriety immensely. She flaunted her success. She
+ridiculed the Carthage people as yokels. She burlesqued their jargon as
+outrageously as they hers.
+
+The soda-water fountains became battle-fields of backbiting and mockery.
+The feuds were as bitter, if not as deadly, as those that flourished
+around the fountains in medieval Italian towns. Two girls would perch on
+the drug-store stools back to back, and bicker in pretended ignorance
+of each other's presence. Tudie Litton would order "sahsahpahrillah,"
+which she hated, just to mock Amelie's manner; and Amelie, assuming to
+be ignorant of Tudie's existence, would retort by ordering "a
+strorrburry sody wattur." Then each would laugh recklessly but
+miserably.
+
+The church at which the Terriberrys worshiped was almost torn apart by
+the matter. The more ardent partisans felt that Amelie's unrepentant
+soul had no right in the sacred edifice. Others urged that there should
+be a truce to factions there, as in heaven. One Sunday dear old Dr.
+Brearley, oblivious of the whole war, as of nearly everything else less
+than a hundred years away, chose as his text Judges xii: 6:
+
+"Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for
+he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew
+him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the
+Ephraimites forty and two thousand."
+
+If the anti-Amelites had needed any increase of enthusiasm they got it
+now. They had Scripture on their side. If it were proper for the men of
+Gilead, where the well-known balm came from, to slay forty-two thousand
+people for a mispronunciation, surely the Carthaginians had authority to
+stand by their "alturrs" and their "fi-urs" and protect them from those
+who called them "altahs" and "fiahs."
+
+No country except ours could foster such a feud. No language except the
+chaos we fumble with could make it possible. By and by the war wore out
+of its own violence. People ceased to care how a thing was said, and
+began to take interest again in what was said. Those who had mimicked
+Amelie had grown into the habit of mimicry until they half forgot their
+scorn. The old-time flatness and burr began to soften from attrition, to
+be modified because they were conspicuous. You would have heard Arthur
+subduing his twang and unburring the "r." If you had asked him he would
+have told you his name was either "Arthuh" or "Ahthur."
+
+Amelie and her little bodyguard, on the other hand, grew so nervous of
+the sacred emblems that they avoided their use. When they came to a word
+containing an "a" or a final "r" they hesitated or sidestepped and let
+it pass. Amelie fell into the habit of saying "couldn't" for "cahn't,"
+and "A. M." for "mawning."
+
+People began to smile when they met her, and she smiled back. Slowly
+everybody that had "not been speaking" began speaking, bowing, chatting.
+Now, when one of the disputed words drifted into the talk, each tried to
+concede a little to the other's belief, as soldiers of the blue and the
+gray trod delicately on one another's toes after peace was decreed.
+Everybody was now half and half, or, as Tudie vividly spoke it, "haff
+and hahf." You would hear the same person say "haff-pahst ten,"
+"hahf-passt eleven," and "hahf-pahst twelve."
+
+Carthage became as confused in its language as Alsace-Lorraine.
+
+
+V
+
+All through this tremendous feud Orson Carver had been faithful to
+Amelie. Whether he had given Tudie the sack or she him was never
+decided. But she was loyal to her dialect. He ceased to call; Tudie
+ceased to invite him. They smiled coldly and still more coldly, and then
+she ceased to see him when they met. He was simply transparent.
+
+Orson was Amelie's first cavalier in Carthage. He found her mightily
+attractive. She was brisk of wit and she adored his Boston and his ways.
+She was sufficiently languorous and meek in the moonlight, too--an
+excellent hammock-half.
+
+But when the other Outlanders had begun to gather to her standard it
+crowded the porch uncomfortably.
+
+Dissension rose within the citadel. Orson's father had fought
+Jefferson's father in 1861-65. The great-grandfathers of both of them
+had fought Anthony Hopper's forefathers in '76-83. The pronunciations of
+the three grew mutually distasteful, and dreadful triangular rows took
+place on matters of speech.
+
+Amelie sat in silence while they wrangled, and her thoughts reverted to
+Arthur Litton. He had loved her well enough to be ashamed of her and
+rebuke her. She was afraid that she had been a bit of a snob, a trifle
+caddish. She had aired her new accent and her new clothes a trifle too
+insolently. Old customs grew dear to her like old slippers. She
+remembered the Littons' shabby buggy and the fuzzy horse, and the drives
+Arthur and she had taken under the former moons.
+
+Her father and mother had shocked her with their modes of speech when
+she came home, and she had ventured to rebuke them. She felt now that
+they ought to have spanked her. A great tenderness welled up in her
+heart for them and their homely ways. She wanted to be like them.
+
+The village was taking her back into its slumberous comfortableness.
+
+She would waken from her reveries to hear the aliens arguing their alien
+rules of speech. It suddenly struck her that they were all wrong,
+anyway. She felt an impulse to run for a broom and sweep them off into
+space. She grew curt with them. They felt the chill and dropped away,
+all but Orson. At last his lonely mother bullied his father into
+recalling him from the Western wilds.
+
+He called on Amelie to bid a heartbreaking good-by. He was disconsolate.
+He asked her to write to him. She promised she would. He was excited to
+the point of proposing. She declined him plaintively. She could never
+leave the old folks. "My place is here," she said.
+
+He left her and walked down the street like a moving elegy.
+
+He suffered agonies of regret till he met a girl on the East-bound
+train. She was exceedingly pretty and he made a thrilling adventure of
+scraping acquaintance with her mother first, and thus with her. They
+were returning to Boston, too. They were his home folks.
+
+When at last the train hurtled him back into Massachusetts he had almost
+forgotten that he had ever been in Carthage. He had a sharp awakening.
+
+When he flung his arms about his mother and told her how glad he was to
+see her, her second exclamation was: "But how on uth did you acquiah
+that ghahstly Weste'n accent?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One evening in the far-off Middle West the lonely Amelie was sitting in
+her creaking hammock, wondering how she could endure her loneliness,
+plotting how she could regain her old lover. She was desperately
+considering a call upon his sister. She would implore forgiveness for
+her sin of vanity and beg Tudie's intercession with Arthur. She had
+nearly steeled herself to this glorious contrition when she heard a
+warning squeal from the front gate, a slow step on the front walk, and
+hesitant feet on the porch steps.
+
+And there he stood, a shadow against the shadow. In a sorrowful voice he
+mumbled, "Is anybody home?"
+
+"I am!" she cried. "I was hoping you would come."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes. I was just about ready to telephone you."
+
+There was so much more than hospitality in her voice that he stumbled
+forward. Their shadows collided and merged in one embrace.
+
+"Oh, Amelie!" he sighed in her neck.
+
+And she answered behind his left ear: "Don't call me Amelie any more. I
+like Em betterr from you! It's so shorrt and sweet--as you say it. We'll
+forget the passt forreverr."
+
+"Am! my dolling!"
+
+"Oh, Arrthurr!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+RECENT BOOKS OF TRAVEL
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_IN VACATION AMERICA_ By HARRISON RHODES
+
+_In this book of leisurely wanderings the author journeys among the
+various holiday resorts of the United States from Maine to Atlantic
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