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diff --git a/34829.txt b/34829.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1bfa409 --- /dev/null +++ b/34829.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8899 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sick-a-Bed Lady, by Eleanor Hallowell +Abbott + + +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: The Sick-a-Bed Lady + And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business + + +Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott + + + +Release Date: January 3, 2011 [eBook #34829] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SICK-A-BED LADY*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/American Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/americana) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 34829-h.htm or 34829-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34829/34829-h/34829-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34829/34829-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/American Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/sickabedlady00abborich + + + + + +THE SICK-A-BED LADY + +[Illustration: "_That_ will help you remember where your mouth is"] + + +THE SICK-A-BED LADY + +And Also +Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, +Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, +Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business + +by + +ELEANOR HALLOWELL ABBOTT + +Author of "Molly Make-Believe" + +Illustrated + + + + + + + +New York +The Century Co. +1911 + +Copyright, 1911, by +The Century Co. + +Copyright, 1905, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son +Copyright, 1905, by J. B. Lippincott Company +Copyright, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, by The Ridgway Company +Copyright, 1910, by The Success Company + +Published, October, 1911 + + + + + TO + THE MEMORY OF + TWO FATHERS + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + THE SICK-A-BED LADY 3 + HICKORY DOCK 33 + THE VERY TIRED GIRL 57 + THE HAPPY-DAY 89 + THE RUNAWAY ROAD 127 + SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER 161 + THE AMATEUR LOVER 195 + HEART OF THE CITY 253 + THE PINK SASH 291 + WOMAN'S ONLY BUSINESS 331 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + "_That_ will help you remember where your mouth is" _Frontispiece_ + FACING PAGE + With no other object, except to get home 58 + The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all 96 + Instinctively she clasped it to her 146 + The four of us who remained huddled very close around the fire 164 + "Hello, all you animals!" she cried 244 + The lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist 256 + "Is--a--pink--sash--exactly a--a--passion?" 298 + "Oh, I wish I had a sister," fretted the boy 364 + + + + +THE SICK-A-BED LADY + + +THE Sick-A-Bed Lady lived in a huge old-fashioned mahogany bedstead, +with solid silk sheets, and three great squashy silk pillows edged with +fluffy ruffles. On a table beside the Sick-A-Bed Lady was a tiny little, +shiny little bell that tinkled exactly like silver raindrops on a golden +roof, and all around this Lady and this Bedstead and this Bell was a +big, square, shadowy room with a smutty fireplace, four small paned +windows, and a chintzy wall-paper showered profusely with high-handled +baskets of lavender flowers over which strange green birds hovered +languidly. + + * * * * * + +The Sick-A-Bed Lady, herself, was as old as twenty, but she did not look +more than fifteen with her little wistful white face against the creamy +pillows and her soft brown hair braided in two thick pigtails and tied +with great pink bows behind each ear. + +When the Sick-A-Bed Lady felt like sitting up high against her pillows, +she could look out across the footboard through her opposite window. Now +through that opposite window was a marvelous vista--an old-fashioned +garden, millions of miles of ocean, and then--France! And when the wind +was in just the right direction there was a perfectly wonderful smell to +be smelled--part of it was Cinnamon Pink and part of it was +Salt-Sea-Weed, but most of it, of course, was--France. There were days +and days, too, when any one with sense could feel that the waves beat +perkily against the shore with a very strong French accent, and that all +one's French verbs, particularly "_J'aime_, _Tu aimes_, _Il aime_," were +coming home to rest. What else was there to think about in bed but funny +things like that? + +It was the Old Doctor who had brought the Sick-A-Bed Lady to the big +white house at the edge of the Ocean, and placed her in the cool, quaint +room with its front windows quizzing dreamily out to sea, and its side +windows cuddled close to the curving village street. It was a long, +tiresome, dangerous journey, and the Sick-A-Bed Lady in feverish fancy +had moaned: "I shall die, I shall die, I shall _die_," every step of the +way, but, after all, it was the Old Doctor who did the dying! Just like +a snap of the finger he went at the end of two weeks, and the +Sick-A-Bed Lady rallied to the shock with a plaintive: "Seems to me he +was in an _awful_ hurry," and fell back on her soft bed into days of +unconsciousness that were broken only by riotous visions day and night +of an old man rushing frantically up to a great white throne yelling: +"One, two, three, for Myself!" + +Out of this trouble the Sick-A-Bed Lady woke one day to find herself +quite alone and quite alive. She had often felt alone before, but it was +a long time since she had felt alive. The world seemed very pleasant. +The flowers on the wall-paper were still unwilted, and the green paper +birds hung airily without fatigue. The room was full of the most +enticing odor of cinnamon pinks, and by raising herself up in bed the +merest trifle she could get a smell of good salt, a smell which somehow +you couldn't get unless you actually _saw_ the Ocean, but just as she +was laboriously tugging herself up an atom higher, trying to find the +teeniest, weeniest sniff of France, everything went suddenly black and +silver before her eyes, and she fell down, down, down, as much as forty +miles into Nothing At All. + +When she woke up again all limp and wappsy there was a Young Man's Face +on the Footboard of the bed; just an isolated, unconnected sort of face +that might have blossomed from the footboard, or might have been merely +a mirage on the horizon. Whatever it was, though, it kept staring at +her fixedly, balancing itself all the while most perfectly on its chin. +It was a funny sight, and while the Sick-A-Bed Lady was puckering her +forehead trying to think out what it all meant the Young Man's Face +smiled at her and said "_Boo!_" and the Sick-A-Bed Lady tiptilted her +chin weakly and said--"Boo _yourself_!" Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady fell +into her fearful stupor again, and the Young Man's Face ran home as fast +as it could to tell its Best Friend that the Sick-A-Bed Lady had spoken +her first sane word for five weeks. He thought it was a splendid +victory, but when he tried to explain it to his friend, he found that +"Boo _yourself_!" seemed a fatuous proof of so startling a truth, and +was obliged to compromise with considerable dignity on the statement: +"Well, of course, it wasn't so much what she said as the _way_ she said +it." + +For days and days that followed, the Sick-A-Bed Lady was conscious of +nothing except the Young Man's Face on the footboard of the bed. It +never seemed to wabble, it never seemed to waver, but just stayed there +perfectly balanced on the point of its chin, watching her gravely with +its blue, blue eyes. There was a cleft in its chin, too, that you could +have stroked with your finger if--you could have. Of course, there were +some times when she went to sleep, and some times when she just seemed +to go _out_ like a candle, but whenever she came back from _anything_ +there was always the Young Man's Face for comfort. + +The Sick-A-Bed Lady was so sick that she thought all over her body +instead of in her head, so that it was very hard to concentrate any +particular thought in her mouth, but at last one afternoon with a mighty +struggle she opened her half-closed eyes, looked right in the Young +Man's Face and said: "Got any arms?" + +The Young Man's Face nodded perfectly politely, and smiled as he raised +two strong, lean hands to the edge of the footboard, and hunched his +shoulders obligingly across the sky line. + +"How do you feel?" he asked very gently. + +Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady knew at once that it was the Young Doctor, and +wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. + +"Am I pretty sick?" she whispered deferentially. + +"Yes--I think you are _very pretty_--sick," said the Young Doctor, and +he towered up to a terrible, leggy height and laughed joyously, though +there was almost no sound to his laugh. Then he went over to the window +and began to jingle small bottles, and the Sick-A-Bed Lady lay and +watched him furtively and thought about his compliment, and wondered why +when she wanted to smile and say "Thank you" her mouth should shut +tight and her left foot wiggle, instead. + +When the Young Doctor had finished jingling bottles, he came and sat +down beside her and fed her something wet out of a cool spoon, which she +swallowed and swallowed and swallowed, feeling all the while like a very +sick brown-eyed dog that couldn't wag anything but the far-away tip of +its tail. When she got through swallowing she wanted very much to stand +up and make a low bow, but instead she touched the warm little end of +her tongue to the Young Doctor's hand. After that, though, for quite a +few minutes her brain felt clean and tidy, and she talked quite +pleasantly to the Young Doctor: "Have you got any bones in your arms?" +she asked wistfully. + +"Why, yes, indeed," said the Young Doctor, "rather more than the usual +number of bones. Why?" + +"I'd give my life," said the Sick-A-Bed Lady, "if there were bones in my +silky pillows." She faltered a moment and then continued bravely: "Would +you mind--holding me up stiff and strong for a second? There's no bottom +to my bed, there's no top to my brain, and if I can't find a hard edge +to something I shall topple right off the earth. So would you mind +holding me like an _edge_ for a moment--that is--if there's no lady to +care? I'm not a little girl," she added conscientiously--"I'm twenty +years old." + +So the Young Doctor slipped over gently behind her and lifted her limp +form up into the lean, solid curve of his arm and shoulder. It wasn't +exactly a sumptuous corner like silken pillows, but it felt as glad as +the first rock you strike on a life-swim for shore, and the Sick-A-Bed +Lady dropped right off to sleep sitting bolt upright, wondering vaguely +how she happened to have two hearts, one that fluttered in the usual +place, and one that pounded rather noisily in her back somewhere between +her shoulder-blades. + +On his way home that day the Young Doctor stopped for a long while at +his Best Friend's house to discuss some curious features of the Case. + +"Anything new turned up?" asked the Best Friend. + +"Nothing," said the Young Doctor, pulling moodily at his cigar. + +"Well, it certainly beats _me_," exclaimed the Best Friend, "how any +long-headed, shrewd old fellow like the Old Doctor could have brought a +raving fever patient here and installed her in his own house under that +clumsy Old Housekeeper without once mentioning to any one who the girl +was, or where to communicate with her people. Great Heavens, the Old +Doctor knew what a poor 'risk' he was. He knew absolutely that that +heart of his would burst some day like a firecracker." + +"The Old Doctor never was very communicative," mused the Young Doctor, +with a slight grimace that might have suggested professional memories +not strictly pleasant. "But I'll surely never forget him as long as +ether exists," he added whimsically. "Why, you'd have thought the old +chap invented ether--you'd have thought he ate it, drank it, bathed in +it. I hope the _smell_ of my profession will never be the only part of +it I'm willing to share." + +"That's all right," said the Best Friend, "that's all right. If he +wanted to go off every Winter to the States and work in the Hospitals, +and come back every Spring smelling like a Surgical Ward, with a lot of +wonderful information which he kept to himself, why, that was his own +business. He was a plucky old fellow anyway to go at all. But what I'm +kicking at is his wicked carelessness in bringing this young girl here +in a critical illness without taking a single soul into his confidence. +Here he's dead and buried for weeks, and the Girl's people are probably +worrying themselves crazy about not hearing from her. But why don't they +write? Why in thunder don't they write?" + +"Don't ask me!" cried the Young Doctor nervously. "I don't know! I don't +know anything about it. Why, I don't even know whether the Girl is +going to live. I don't even know whether she'll ever be sane again. How +can I stop to quiz about her name and her home, when, perhaps, her whole +life and reason rests in my foolish hands that have never done anything +yet much more vital than usher a perfectly willing baby into life, or +tinker with croup in some chunky throat? There's only one thing in the +case that I'm sure of, and that is that she doesn't know herself who she +is, and the effort to remember might snap her utterly. She's just a +thread. + +"I have an idea--" the Young Doctor shook his shoulders as though to +shake off his more somber thoughts--"I have an idea that the Old Doctor +rather counted on building up a sort of informal sanitarium here. He was +daft, you know, about the climate on this particular stretch of coast. +You remember that he brought home some athlete last Summer--pretty bad +case of breakdown, too, but the Old Doctor cured him like a magician; +and the Spring before that there was a little lad with epilepsy, wasn't +there? The Old Doctor let me look at him once just to tease me. And +before that--I can count up half-a-dozen people of that sort, people +whom you would have said were 'gone-ers,' too. Oh, the Old Doctor would +have brought home a dead man to cure if any one had 'stumped' him. And +I guess this present case was a 'stump' fast enough. Why, she was raging +like a prairie fire when they brought her here. No other man would have +dared to travel. And they put her down in a great silk bed like a +fairy-story, and the Old Doctor sat and watched her night and day +studying her like a fiend, and she got better after a while: not keen, +you know, but funny like a child, cooing and crooning over her pretty +room, and tickled to pieces with the ocean, and vain as a kitten over +her pink ribbons--the Old Doctor wouldn't let them cut her hair--and +everything went on like that, till in a horrid flash the Old Doctor +dropped dead that morning at the breakfast table, the little girl went +loony again, and every possible clew to her identity was wiped off the +earth!" + +"No baggage?" suggested the Best Friend. + +"Why, of course, there was baggage!" the Young Doctor exclaimed, "a +great trunk. Haven't the Housekeeper and I rummaged and rummaged it till +I can feel the tickle of lace across my wrists even in my sleep? Why, +man alive! she's a _rich_ girl. There never were such clothes in our +town before. She's no free hospital pauper whom the Old Doctor +obligingly took off their hands. That is, I don't see how she can be! + +"Oh, well," he continued bitterly, "everybody in town calls her just the +Sick-A-Bed Lady, and pretty soon it will be the Death-Bed Lady, and +then it will be the Dead-and-Buried Lady--and that's all we'll ever know +about it." He shivered clammily as he finished and reached for a +scorching glass of whisky on the table. + +But the Young Doctor did not feel so lugubrious the next day and the +next and the next, when he found the Sick-A-Bed Lady rallying slowly but +surely to the skill of his head and hands. To be frank, she still lay +for hours at a time in a sort of gentle daze watching the world go by +without her, but little by little her body strengthened as a wilted +flower freshens in water, and little by little she struggled harder for +words that even then did not always match her thoughts. + +The village continued to speculate about her lost identity, but the +Young Doctor seemed to worry less and less about it as time went on. If +the sweetest little girl you ever saw knew perfectly whom you meant when +you said "Dear," what was the use of hunting up such prosy names as May +or Alice? And as to her funny speeches, was there anything in the world +more piquant than to be called a "beautiful horse," when she meant a +"kind doctor"? Was there anything dearer than her absurd wrath over her +blunders, or the way she shook her head like an angry little heifer, +when she occasionally forgot altogether how to talk? It was at one of +these latter times that the Young Doctor, watching her desperate +struggle to focus her speech, forgot all about her twenty years and +stooped down suddenly and kissed her square on her mouth. + +"There," he laughed, "_that_ will help you remember where your mouth +is!" But it was astonishing after that how many times he had to remind +her. + +He couldn't help loving her. No man could have helped loving her. She +was so little and dear and gentle and--lost. + +The Sick-A-Bed Lady herself didn't know who she was, but she would have +perished with fright if she had realized that no one in the village, and +not even the Young Doctor himself, could guess her identity. + +The Young Doctor knew everything else in the world; why shouldn't he +know who she was? He knew all about France being directly opposite the +house; he had known it ever since he was a boy, and had been glad about +it. He stopped her trying to count the green birds on the wall-paper +because he "knew positively" that there were four hundred and seventeen +whole birds, and nineteen half birds cut off by the wainscoting. He +never laughed at her when she slid down the side of her bed by the +village street window, and went to sleep with her curly head pillowed on +the hard, white sill. He never laughed, because he understood perfectly +that if you hung one white arm down over the sidewalk when you went to +sleep, sometimes little children would come and put flowers in your +hand, or, more wonderful still, perhaps, a yellow collie dog would come +and lick your fingers. + +Nothing could surprise the Young Doctor. Sometimes the Sick-A-Bed Lady +took thoughts she did have and mixed them up with thoughts she didn't +have, and _sprung_ them on the poor Young Doctor, but he always said, +"Why, of _course_," as simply as possible. + +But more than all the other wise things he knew was the wise one about +smelly things. He knew that when you were very, very, _very_ sick, +nothing pleased you so much as nice, smelly things. He brought wild +strawberries, for instance, not so much to eat as to smell, but when he +wasn't looking she gobbled them down as fast as she could. And he +brought her all kinds of flowers, one or two at a time, and seemed so +disappointed when she just sniffed them and smiled; but one day he +brought her a spray of yellow jasmine, and she snatched it up and kissed +it and cried "_Home_," and the Young Doctor was so pleased that he wrote +it right down in a little book and ran away to study up something. He +let her smell the fresh green bank-notes in his pocketbook. Oh, they +were good to smell, and after a while she said "Shops." He brought her +a tiny phial of gasoline from his neighbor's automobile, and she +crinkled up her nose in disgust and called it "gloves" and slapped it +playfully out of his hand. But when he brought her his riding-coat she +rubbed her cheek against it and whispered some funny chirruppy things. +His pipe, though, was the most confusing symbol of all. It was his best +pipe, too, and she snuggled it up to her nose and cried "_You, y-o-u_!" +and hid it under her pillow and wouldn't give it back to him, and though +he tried her a dozen times about it, she never acknowledged any +association except that joyous, "_Y-o-u_!" + +So day by day she gained in consecutive thought till at last she grew so +reasonable as to ask: "Why do you call me _Dear_?" + +And the Young Doctor forgot all about his earliest reason and answered +perfectly simply: "Because I love you." + +Then some of the evenings grew to be almost sweetheart evenings, though +the Sick-A-Bed Lady's fragile childishness keyed the Young Doctor into +an almost uncanny tenderness and restraint. + +Those were wonderful evenings, though, after the Sick-A-Bed Lady began +to get better and better. A good deal of the Young Doctor's practice was +scattered up and down the coast, and after the dust and sweat and glare +and rumble of his long day he would come back to the sleepy village in +the early evening, plunge for a freshening swim into the salt water, +don his white clothes and saunter round to the quaint old house at the +edge of the ocean. Here in the breezy kitchen he often sat for as long +as an hour, talking with the Old Housekeeper, till the Sick-A-Bed Lady's +tiny silver bell rang out with absurd peremptoriness. Then for as much +time as seemed wise he went and sat with the Sick-A-Bed Lady. + +One night, one full-moon night, he came back from his day's work +extraordinarily tired and fretted after a series of strident +experiences, and hurried to the old house as to a veritable Haven of +Refuge. The Housekeeper was busy with village company, so he postponed +her report and went at once to the Sick-A-Bed Lady's room. + +Only fools lit lights on such a night as that, and he threw himself down +in the big chair by the bedside, and fairly basked in peacefulness and +moonlight and content, while the Sick-A-Bed Lady leaned over and stroked +his hair with her little white fingers, crooning some pleasant, childish +thing about "nice, smoky Boy." There was no fret or fuss or even sound +in the room, except the drowsy murmur of voices in the Garden, and the +churky splash of little waves against the shore. + +"Hear the French Verbs," said the Sick-A-Bed Lady, at last, with +deliberate mischief. Then she shut her lips tight and waved her hands +distractedly after a manner she had when she wished to imply that she +was suddenly stricken dumb. The Young Doctor laughed and reached over +and kissed her. + +"_J'aime_," he said. + +"_J'aime_," the Sick-A-Bed Lady repeated. + +"_Tu aimes_," he persisted. + +"_Tu aimes_," she echoed on his lips. + +--Then--"There'll be no '_he_ loves' to our story," he cried suddenly, +and caught her so fiercely to his breast that she gave a little quick +gasp of pain and struggled back on her pillows, and the Young Doctor +jumped up in bitter, stinging contrition and strode out of the room. +Just across the threshold he met the Old Housekeeper with a clattering +tray of dishes. + +"I'm going down to the Library to smoke," he said huskily to her. "Come +there when you've finished. I want to talk with you." + +His thoughts of himself were not kind as he wandered into the library +and settled down in the first big chair that struck his fancy. + +Then he fell to wondering whether there was anything gross about his +love, because it took no heed of mental qualifications. He thought of at +least three houses in the village where that very night he would have +found lights and laughter and clever talk, and the prodding sympathy of +earnest women who made the sternest happening of the day seem nothing +more than a dress rehearsal for the evening's narration of it. Then he +thought again of the big, quiet room upstairs, with its unquestioning +peace and love and restfulness and content. What was the best thing +after all that a woman could bring to a man? Yet a year ago he had +bragged of the blatant braininess of his best woman friend! He began to +laugh at himself. + +Slowly the incongruities of the whole situation bore in upon him, and he +sat and smoked and smiled in moody silence, staring with skeptical +interest at the dimly lighted room around him. It was certainly the Old +Doctor's private study, and realization of just what that meant came +over him ironically. + +The Old Doctor had been very stingy with his house and his books and his +knowledge and his patients. It was natural perhaps under the +professional circumstances of waning Age and waxing Youth. Yet the fact +remained. Never before in five years of village association had the +Young Doctor crossed the threshold of the Old Doctor's home, yet now he +came and went like the Man of the House. Here he sat at this instant in +the Old Doctor's private study, in the Old Doctor's chair, his feet upon +the Old Doctor's table, and the whole great room with its tier after +tier of bookcases, and its drawer after drawer of probable memoranda +_free_ before him. He could imagine the Old Doctor's impotent wrath over +such a contingency, yet he felt no sentimental mawkishness over his own +position. As far as he knew the Dead were dead. + +Sitting there in the Old Doctor's study, he conjured up scene after +scene of the Old Doctor's irascibility and exclusiveness. Even as late +as the Sick-A-Bed Lady's arrival, the Old Doctor had snubbed him +unmercifully before a crowd of people. It was at the station when the +little sick stranger was being taken off the car and put into a +carriage, and the Old Doctor had hailed the Younger with unwonted +friendliness. + +"I've got a case in there that would make you famous if you could master +it," he said. + +The Young Doctor remembered perfectly how he had walked into the trap. + +"What is it?" he had cried eagerly. + +"That's none of your business," chuckled the Old Doctor, and drove away +with all the platform loafers shouting with delight. + +Well, it seemed to be the Young Doctor's business _now_, and he got up, +turned the lamp higher and began to hunt through the Old Doctor's rarest +books for some light on certain curious developments in the Sick-A-Bed +Lady's case. + +He was just in the midst of this hunt when the Old Housekeeper glided +in like a ghost and startled him. + +"Sit down," he said absent-mindedly, and went on with his reading. He +had almost forgotten her presence when she coughed and said: "Excuse me, +sir, but I've something very special to say to you." + +The Young Doctor looked up in surprise and saw that the Woman's face was +ashy white. + +"I--don't--think--you quite--understand the case," she stammered. "I +think the little lady upstairs is going to be a Mother!" + +The Young Doctor put his hand up to his face, and his face felt like +parchment. He put his hand down to the book again, and the book cover +quivered like flesh. + +"What do you m-e-a-n?" he asked. + +"I'll tell you what I mean," said the Old Housekeeper, and led him back +to the sick room. + +Two hours later the Young Doctor staggered into his Best Friend's house +clutching a sheet of letter paper in his hand. His shoulders dragged as +though under a pack, and every trace of boyishness was wrung like a rag +out of his face. + +"For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?" cried his friend, starting up. + +"Nothing," muttered the Young Doctor, "except the Sick-A-Bed Lady." + +"When did she die? What happened?" + +The Young Doctor made a gesture of dissent and crawled into a chair and +began to fumble with the paper in his hand. Then he shivered and stared +his Best Friend straight in the face. + +"You might say," he stammered, "that I have just heard from the +Sick-A-Bed Lady's Husband--" he choked at the word, and his Friend sat +up with astonishment: "You heard me _say_ I had heard from the +Sick-A-Bed Lady's Husband?" he persisted. "_You_ heard me say it, mind +you. You heard me say that her Husband is sick in Japan--detained +indefinitely--so we are afraid he won't get here in time for her +confinement--" + +The sweat broke out in great drops on his forehead, and his hand that +held the sheet of paper shook like a hand that has strained its muscles +with heavy weights. + +The Best Friend took a scathing glance at the scribbled words on the +paper and laughed mirthlessly. + +"You're a good fool," he said, "a good fool, and I'll publish your +blessed lie to the whole stupid village, if that's what you want." + +But the Young Doctor sat oblivious with his head in his hands, +muttering: "Blind fool, blind fool, how could I have been such a blind +fool?" + +"What is it to _you_?" asked his Best Friend abruptly. + +The Young Doctor jumped to his feet and squared his shoulders. + +"It's _this_ to me," he cried, "that I wanted her for my own! I could +have cured her. I tell you I could have cured her. I wanted her for my +own!" + +"She's only a waif," said the Best Friend tersely. + +"Waif?" cried the Young Doctor, "_waif_? No woman whom I love is a +_waif_!" His face blazed furiously. "The woman I _love_--that little +gentle girl--a waif?--without a home?--I would make a cool home for her +out of Hell itself, if it was necessary! Damn, damn, _damn_ the brute +that deserted her, but _home is all around her_ NOW! Do I think the Old +Doctor guessed about it? _N-o!_ Nobody could have guessed about it. +Nobody could have known about it much before this. You say _again_ she +isn't _anybody's_? I'll prove to you as soon as it's decent that she's +_mine_." + +His Best Friend took him by the shoulder and shook him roughly. + +"It is no time," he said, "for you to be courting a woman." + +"I'll court my Sweetheart when and where I choose!" the Young Doctor +answered defiantly, and left the house. + +The night seemed a thousand miles long to him, but when he slept at +last and woke again, the air was fresh and hopeful with a new day. He +dressed quickly and hurried off to the scene of last night's tragedy, +where he found the Old Housekeeper arguing in the doorway with a small +boy. She turned to the Doctor complacently. "He's begging for the +postage stamp off the Japanese letter," she exclaimed, "and I'm just +telling him I sent it to my Sister's boy in Montreal." + +There was no slightest trace of self-consciousness in her manner, and +the Young Doctor could not help but smile as he beckoned her into the +house and shut the door. + +Then, "Have you told her?" he asked eagerly. + +The Old Housekeeper humped her shoulders against the door and folded her +arms sumptuously. "No, I haven't told her," she said, "and I'm not going +to. I don't dar'st! I help you out about your business same as I helped +the Old Doctor out about his business. That's all right. That's as it +should be. And I'll go skipping up those stairs to tell the little lady +any highfaluting, pleasant yarn that you can invent, but I don't budge +one single step to tell that poor, innocent, loony Lamb--the _truth_. It +isn't ugliness, Doctor. I haven't got the strength, that's all!" + +Just then the little silver bell tinkled, and the Doctor went heavily up +the few steps that swung the Sick-A-Bed Lady's room just out of line of +real upstairs or downstairs. + +The Sick-A-Bed Lady was lying in glorious state, arrayed in a wonderful +pale green kimono with shimmering silver birds on it. + +"You stayed too long downstairs," she asserted and went on trying to cut +out pictures from a magazine. + +The Young Doctor stood at the window looking out to sea as long as his +legs would hold him, and then he came back and sat down on the edge of +the bed. + +"What's your name, Honey?" he asked with a forced smile. + +"Why, 'Dear,' of course," she answered and dropped her scissors in +surprise. + +"What's my name?" he continued, fencing for time. + +"Just '_Boy_,'" she said with sweet, contented positiveness. + +The Young Doctor shivered and got up and started to leave the room, but +at the threshold he stopped resolutely and came back and sat down again. + +This time he took his Mother's wedding ring from his little finger and +twirled it with apparent aimlessness in his hands. + +Its glint caught the Sick-A-Bed Lady's eye, and she took it daintily in +her fingers and examined it carefully. Then, as though it recalled some +vague memory, she crinkled up her forehead and started to get out of +bed. The Young Doctor watched her with agonized interest. She went +direct to her bureau and began to search diligently through all the +drawers, but when she reached the lower drawer and found some +bright-colored ribbons she forgot her original quest, whatever it was, +and brought all the ribbons back to bed with her. + +The Young Doctor started to leave her again, this time with a little +gesture which she took to be anger, but he had not gone further than the +head of the stairs before she called him back in a voice that was +startlingly mature and reasonable. + +"Oh, Boy, come back," she cried. "I'll be good. What do you want?" + +The Young Doctor came doubtfully. + +"Do you understand me to-day?" he asked in a voice that sent an ominous +chill to her heart. "Can you think pretty clearly to-day?" + +She nodded her head. "Yes," she answered; "it's a good day." + +"Do you know what marriage is?" he asked abruptly. + +"Oh, yes," she said, but her face clouded perceptibly. + +Then he took her in his arms and told her plainly, brutally, clumsily, +without preface, without comment: "Honey, you are going to have a +child." + +For a second her mind wavered before him. He could actually see the +totter in her eyes, and braced himself for the final hopeless crash, but +suddenly all her being focused to the realization of his words, and she +pushed at him with her hands and cried: "No--No--Oh, my God--_n-o_!" and +fainted in his arms. + +When she woke up again the little-girl look was all gone from her face, +and though the Young Doctor smiled and smiled and smiled, he could not +smile it back again. She just lay and watched him questioningly. + +"Sweetheart," he whispered at last, "do you remember what I told you?" + +"Yes," she answered gravely, "I remember that, but I don't remember what +it means. Is it all right? Is it all right to _you_?" + +"Yes," said the Young Doctor, "it's--all--right to--me." + +Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady turned her little face wearily away on her +pillow and went back to those dreams of hers which no one could fathom. + +For all the dragging weeks and months that followed she lay in her bed +or groped her way round her room in a sort of timid stupor. Whenever the +Young Doctor was there she clung to him desperately and seemed to find +her only comfort in his presence, but when she talked to him it was +babbling talk of things and places he could not understand. All the +village feared for the imminent tragedy in the great white house, and +mourned the pathetic absence of the young husband, and the Young Doctor +went his sorrowful way cursing that other "boy" who had wrought this +final disaster on a girl's life. + +But when the Sick-A-Bed Lady's hour of trial came and some one held the +merciful cone of ether to her face, the Sick-A-Bed Lady took one deep, +heedless breath, then gave suddenly a great gasp, snatched the cone from +her face, struggled up and stretched out her arms and cried, "Boy--Boy!" + +The Young Doctor came running to her and saw that her eyes were big and +startled and sharp with terror: + +"Oh, Boy--_Boy_," she cried, "the Ether!--I remember _everything_ +now--I--was his wife--the Old Doctor's Wife!" + +The Young Doctor tried to replace the cone, but she beat at him +furiously with her hands, crying: + +"No, No, No!--If you give me Ether I shall die thinking of him!--Oh, +no!--_n-o_!" + +The Young Doctor's face was like chalk. His knees shook under him. + +"My God!" he said, "what _can_ I give you!" + +The Sick-A-Bed Lady looked up at him and smiled a tortured, gallant +smile. "Give me something to keep me here," she gasped! "Give me a token +of you! Give me your little briarwood pipe to smell--and give it to +me--quickly!" + + + + +HICKORY DOCK + +Used by permission of _Lippincott's Magazine_. + + +THIS is the story of Hickory Dock, and of a Man and a Girl who trifled +with Time. + +Hickory Dock was a clock, and, of course, the Man, being a man, called +it a clock, but the Girl, being a girl, called it a Hickory Dock for no +more legitimate reason than that once upon a time + + "Hickory, Dickory, Dock, + A Mouse ran up the Clock." + +--Girls are funny things. + +The Man and the Girl were very busy collecting a Home--in one room. They +were just as poor as Art and Music could make them, but poverty does not +matter much to lovers. The Man had collected the Girl, a wee diamond +ring, a big Morris chair, two or three green and rose rugs, a shiny +chafing-dish, and various incidentals. The Girl was no less +discriminating. She had accumulated the Man, a Bagdad couch-cover, +half-a-dozen pictures, a huge gilt mirror, three or four bits of fine +china and silver, and a fair-sized boxful of lace and ruffles that +idled under the couch until the Wedding-Day. The room was strikingly +homelike, masculinely homelike, in all its features, but it was by no +means home--yet. No place is home until _two_ people have latch-keys. +The Girl wore _her_ key ostentatiously on a long, fine chain round her +neck, but its mate hung high and dusty on a brass hook over the +fireplace, and the sight of it teased the Man more than anything else +that had ever happened to him in his life. The Girl was easily mistress +of the situation, but the Man, you see, was not yet Master. + +It was tacitly understood that if the Wedding-Day _ever_ arrived, the +Girl should slip the extra key into her husband's hand the very first +second that the Minister closed his eyes for the blessing. She would +have chosen to do this openly in exchange for her ring, but the Man +contended that it might not be legal to be married with a +latch-key--some ministers are so particular. It was a joke, +anyway--everything except the Wedding-Day itself. Meanwhile Hickory Dock +kept track of the passing hours. + +When the Man first brought Hickory Dock to the Girl, in a mysteriously +pulsating tissue-paper package, the Girl pretended at once that she +thought it was a dynamite bomb, and dropped it precipitously on the +table and sought immediate refuge in the Man's arms, from which +propitious haven she ventured forth at last and picked up the package +gingerly, and rubbed her cheek against it--after the manner of girls +with bombs. Then she began to tug at the string and tear at the paper. + +"Why, it's a Hickory Dock!" she exclaimed with delight,--"a real, live +Hickory Dock!" and brandished the gift on high to the imminent peril of +time and chance, and then fled back to the Man's arms with no excuse +whatsoever. She was a bold little lover. + +"But it's a _c-l-o-c-k_," remonstrated the Man with whimsical +impatience. He had spent half his month's earnings on the gift. "Why +can't you call it a clock? Why can't you _ever_ call things by their +right names?" + +Then the Girl dimpled and blushed and burrowed her head in his shoulder, +and whispered humbly, "Right name? Right names? Call things by their +right names? Would you rather I called _you_ by your right name--Mr. +James Herbert Humphrey Jason?" + +_That_ settled the matter--settled it so hard that the Girl had to +whisper the Man's wrong name seven times in his ear before he was +satisfied. No man is practical about everything. + +There are a good many things to do when you are in love, but the Girl +did not mean that the _Art of Conversation_ should be altogether lost, +so she plunged for a topic. + +"I think it was beautiful of you to give me a Hickory Dock," she +ventured at last. + +The Man shifted a trifle uneasily and laughed. "I thought perhaps it +would please you," he stammered. "You see, now I have given you _all my +time_." + +The Girl chuckled with amused delight. "Yes--all your time. And it's +nice to have a Hickory Dock that says 'Till he comes! Till he comes! +Till he comes!'" + +"Till he comes to--_stay_," persisted the Man. There was no sparkle in +his sentiment. He said things very plainly, but his words drove the Girl +across the room to the window with her face flaming. He jumped and +followed her, and caught her almost roughly by the shoulder and turned +her round. + +"Rosalie, Rosalie," he demanded, "will you love me till the _end of +time_?" There was no gallantry in his face but a great, dogged +persistency that frightened the Girl into a flippant answer. She brushed +her fluff of hair across his face and struggled away from him. + +"I will love you," she teased, "until--the clock stops." + +Then the Man burst out laughing, suddenly and unexpectedly, like a boy, +and romped her back again across the room, and snatched up the clock and +stole away the key. + +"Hickory Dock shall _never_ stop!" he cried triumphantly. "I will wind +it till I die. And no one else must ever meddle with it." + +"But suppose you forget?" the Girl suggested half wistfully. + +"I shall _never_ forget," said the Man. "I will wind Hickory Dock every +week as long as I live. I _p-r-o-m-i-s-e_!" His lips shut almost +defiantly. + +"But it isn't fair," the Girl insisted. "It isn't fair for me to let you +make such a long promise. You--might--stop--loving me." Her eyes filled +quickly with tears. "Promise me just for one year,"--she stamped her +foot,--"I won't take any other promise." + +So, half provoked and half amused, the Man bound himself then and there +for the paltry term of a year. But to fulfil his own sincerity and +seriousness he took the clock and stopped it for a moment that he might +start it up again with the Girl close in his arms. A half-frightened, +half-willing captive, she stood in her prison and looked with furtive +eyes into the little, potential face of Hickory Dock. + +"You--and I--for--_all time_," whispered the Man solemnly as he started +the little mechanism throbbing once more on its way, and he stooped +down to seal the pledge with a kiss, but once more the significance of +his word and act startled the Girl, and she clutched at the clock and +ran across the room with it, and set it down very hard on her desk +beside the Man's picture. Then, half ashamed of her flight, she stooped +down suddenly and patted the little, ticking surface of ebony and glass +and silver. + +"It's a wonderful little Hickory Dock," she mused softly. "I never saw +one just like it before." + +The Man hesitated for a second and drew his mouth into a funny twist. "I +don't believe there _is_ another one like it in all the world," he +acknowledged, half laughingly,--"that is, not _just_ like it. I've had +it fixed so that it won't strike _eleven_. I'm utterly tired of having +you say 'There! it's eleven o'clock and you've _got_ to go home.' _Now_, +after ten o'clock nothing can strike till twelve, and that gives me two +whole hours to use my own judgment in." + +The Girl took one eager step towards him, when suddenly over the city +roofs and across the square came the hateful, strident chime of +midnight. Midnight? _Midnight?_ The Girl rushed frantically to her +closet and pulled the Man's coat out from among her fluffy dresses and +thrust it into his hands, and he fled distractedly for his train without +"Good-by." + +That was the trouble with having a lover who lived so far away and was +so busy that he could come only one evening a week. Long as you could +make that one evening, something always got crowded out. If you made +love, there was no time to talk. If you talked, there was no time to +make love. If you spent a great time in greetings, it curtailed your +good-by. If you began your good-by any earlier, why, it cut your evening +right in two. So the Girl sat and sulked a sad little while over the +general misery of the situation, until at last, to comfort herself with +the only means at hand, she went over to the closet and opened the door +just wide enough to stick her nose in and sniff ecstatically. + +"Oh! O--h!" she crooned. "O--h! What a nice, smoky smell." + +Then she took Hickory Dock and went to bed. This method of bunking was +nice for her, but it played sad havoc with Hickory Dock, who lay on his +back and whizzed and whirred and spun around at such a rate that when +morning came he was minutes and hours, not to say days, ahead of time. + +This gain in time seemed rather an advantage to the Girl. She felt that +it was a good omen and must in some manner hasten the Wedding-Day, but +when she confided the same to the Man at his next visit he viewed the +fact with righteous scorn, though the fancy itself pleased him +mightily. The Girl learned that night, however, to eschew Hickory Dock +as a rag doll. She did not learn this, though, through any particular +solicitude for Hickory Dock, but rather because she had to stand by +respectfully a whole precious hour and watch the Man's lean, clever +fingers tinker with the little, jeweled mechanism. It was a fearful +waste of time. "You are so kind to _little_ things," she whispered at +last, with a catch in her voice that made the Man drop his work suddenly +and give all his attention to _big_ things. And another evening went, +while Hickory Dock stood up like a hero and refused to strike eleven. + +So every Sunday night throughout the Winter and the Spring and the +Summer, the Man came joyously climbing up the long stairs to the Girl's +room, and every Sunday night Hickory Dock was started off on a fresh +round of Time and Love. + +Hickory Dock, indeed, became a very precious object, for both Man and +Girl had reached that particular stage of love where they craved the +wonderful sensation of owning some vital thing together. But they were +so busy loving that they did not recognize the instinct. The man looked +upon Hickory Dock as an exceedingly blessed toy. The Girl grew gradually +to cherish the little clock with a certain tender superstition and +tingling reverence that sent her heart pounding every time the Man's +fingers turned to any casual tinkering. + +And the Girl grew so exquisitely dear that the Man thought all women +were like her. And the Man grew so sturdily precious that the Girl knew +positively there was no person on earth to be compared with him. Over +this happiness Hickory Dock presided throbbingly, and though he balked +sometimes and bolted or lagged, he never stopped, and he never struck +eleven. + +Thus things went on in the customary way that things do go on with men +and girls--until the Chronic Quarrel happened. The Chronic Quarrel was a +trouble quite distinct from any ordinary lovers' disturbance, and it was +a very silly little thing like this: The Girl had a nature that was +emotionally apprehensive. She was always looking, as it were, for "dead +men in the woods." She was always saying, "Suppose you get tired of me?" +"Suppose I died?" "Suppose I found out that you had a wife living?" +"Suppose you lost all your legs and arms in a railroad accident when you +were coming here some Sunday night?" + +And one day the Man had snapped her short with "Suppose? Suppose? What +arrant nonsense! Suppose?--Suppose I fall in love with the Girl in the +Office?" + +It seemed to him the most extravagant supposition that he could +possibly imagine, and he was perfectly delighted with its effect on his +Sweetheart. She grew silent at once and very wistful. + +After that he met all her apprehensions with "Suppose?--Suppose I fall +in love with the Girl in the Office!" + +And one day the Girl looked up at him with hot tears in her eyes and +said tersely, "Well, why don't you fall in love with her if you _want_ +to?" + +That, of course, made a little trouble, but it was delicious fun making +up, and the "Girl in the Office" became gradually one of those +irresistibly dangerous jokes that always begin with laughter and end +just as invariably with tears. When the Girl was sad or blue the Man was +clumsy enough to try and cheer her with facetious allusions to the "Girl +in the Office," and when the Girl was supremely, radiantly happy she +used to boast, "Why, I'm so happy I don't care a _rap_ about your old +'Girl in the Office.'" But whatever way the joke began, it always ended +disastrously, with bitterness and tears, yet neither Man nor Girl could +bear to formally taboo the subject lest it should look like the first +shirking of their perfect intimacy and freedom of speech. The Man felt +that in love like theirs he ought to be able to say anything he wanted +to, so he kept on saying it, while the Girl claimed an equal if more +caustic liberty of expression, and the Chronic Quarrel began to fester +a little round its edges. + +One night in November, when Hickory Dock was nearly a year old in love, +the Chronic Quarrel came to a climax. The Man was very listless that +evening, and absent-minded, and altogether inadequate. The Girl accused +him of indifference. He accused her in return of a shrewish temper. She +suggested that perhaps he regretted his visit. He failed to contradict +her. Then the Girl drew herself up to an absurd height for so small a +creature and said stiffly,-- + +"You don't have to come next Sunday night if you don't want to." + +At her scathing words the Man straightened up very suddenly in his chair +and gazed over at the little clock in a startled sort of way. + +"Why, of course I shall come," he retorted impulsively, "Hickory Dock +needs me, if you don't." + +"Oh, come and wind the clock by all means," flared the Girl. "I'm glad +_something_ needs you!" + +Then the Man followed his own judgment and went home, though it was only +ten o'clock. + +"I'm not going to write to him this week," sobbed poor Rosalie. "I think +he's very disagreeable." + +But when the next Sunday came and the Man was _late_, it seemed as +though an Eternity had been tacked onto a hundred years. It was fully +quarter-past eight before he came climbing up the stairs. + +The Girl looked scornfully at the clock. Her throat ached like a bruise. +"You didn't hurry yourself much, did you?" she asked spitefully. + +The Man looked up quickly and bit his lip. "The train was late," he +replied briefly. He did not stop to take off his coat, but walked over +to the table and wound Hickory Dock. Then he hesitated the smallest +possible fraction of a moment, but the Girl made no move, so he picked +up his hat and started for the door. + +The Girl's heart sank, but her pride rose proportionally. "Is that all +you came for?" she flushed. "Good! I am very tired to-night." + +Then the Man went away. She counted every footfall on the stairs. In the +little hush at the street doorway she felt that he must surely turn and +come running back again, breathless and eager, with outstretched arms +and all the kisses she was starving for. But when she heard the front +door slam with a vicious finality she went and threw herself, sobbing on +the couch. "Fifty miles just to wind a clock!" she raged in grief and +chagrin. "I'll punish him for it if that's all he comes for." + +So the next Sunday night she took Hickory Dock with a cruel jerk, and +put him on the floor just outside her door, and left a candle burning so +that the Man could not possibly fail to see what was intended. "If all +he comes for is to wind the clock, just because he _promised_, there's +no earthly use of his coming in," she reasoned, and went into her room +and shut and locked her door, waiting nervously with clutched hands for +the footfall on the stairs. "He loves some one else! He loves some one +else!" she kept prodding herself. + +Just at eight o'clock the Man came. She heard him very distinctly on the +creaky board at the head of the stairs, and her heart beat to +suffocation. Then she heard him come close to the door, as though he +stooped down, and then he--laughed. + +"Oh, very well," thought the Girl. "So he thinks it's funny, does he? He +has no business to laugh while I am crying, even if he does love some +one else.--I _hate him_!" + +The Man knocked on the door very softly, and the Girl gripped tight hold +of her chair for fear she should jump up and let him in. He knocked +again, and she heard him give a strange little gasp of surprise. Then he +tried the door-handle. It turned fatuously, but the door would not open. +He pushed his weight against it,--she could almost feel the soft whirr +of his coat on the wood,--but the door would not yield.--Then he turned +very suddenly and went away. + +The Girl got up with a sort of gloating look, as though she liked her +pain. "Next Sunday night is the last Sunday night of his year's +promise," she brooded; "then everything will be over. He will see how +wise I was not to let him promise forever and ever. I will send Hickory +Dock to him by express to save his coming for the final ceremony." Then +she went out and got Hickory Dock and brought him in and shook him, but +Hickory Dock continued to tick, "Till he comes! Till he comes! Till he +comes!" + +It was a very tedious week. It is perfectly absurd to measure a week by +the fact that seven days make it--some days are longer than others. By +Wednesday the Girl's proud little heart had capitulated utterly, and she +decided not to send Hickory Dock away by express, but to let things take +their natural course. And every time she thought of the "natural course" +her heart began to pound with expectation. Of course, she would not +acknowledge that she really expected the Man to come after her cruel +treatment of him the previous week. "Everything is over. Everything is +over," she kept preaching to herself with many gestures and +illustrations; but next to God she put her faith in promises, and hadn't +the Man promised a great, sacred lover's promise that he would come +every Sunday for a year? So when the final Sunday actually came she went +to her wedding-box and took out her "second best" of everything, silk +and ruffles and laces, and dressed herself up for sheer pride and joy, +with tingling thoughts of the night when she should wear her "first +best" things. She put on a soft, little, white Summer dress that the Man +liked better than anything else, and stuck a pink bow in her hair, and +big rosettes on her slippers, and drew the big Morris chair towards the +fire, and brought the Man's pipe and tobacco-box from behind the gilt +mirror. Then she took Hickory Dock very tenderly and put him outside the +door, with two pink candles flaming beside him, and a huge pink rose +over his left ear. She thought the Man could smell the rose the second +he opened the street door. Then she went back to her room, and left her +door a wee crack open, and crouched down on the floor close to it, like +a happy, wounded thing, and _waited_-- + +But the Man did not come. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, +eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock, she waited, cramped and cold, hoping +against hope, fearing against fear. Every creak on the stairs thrilled +her. Every fresh disappointment chilled her right through to her heart. +She sat and rocked herself in a huddled heap of pain, she taunted +herself with lack of spirit, she goaded herself with intricate +remorse--but she never left her bitter vigil until half-past two. Then +some clatter of milkmen in the street roused her to the realization of a +new day, and she got up dazed and icy, like one in a dream, and limped +over to her couch and threw herself down to sleep like a drunken person. + +Late the next morning she woke heavily with a vague, dull sense of loss +which she could not immediately explain. She lay and looked with +astonishment at the wrinkled folds of the white mull dress that bound +her limbs like a shroud. She clutched at the tightness of her collar, +and fingered with surprise the pink bow in her hair. Then slowly, one by +one, the events of the previous night came back to her in all their +significance, and with a muffled scream of heartbreak she buried her +face in the pillow. She cried till her heart felt like a clenched fist +within her, and then, with her passion exhausted, she got up like a +little, cold, rumpled ghost and pattered out to the hall in her +silk-stockinged feet, and picked up Hickory Dock with his wilted pink +rose and brought him in and put him back on her desk. Then she brought +in the mussy, pink-smooched candlesticks and stowed them far away in her +closet behind everything else. The faintest possible scent of +tobacco-smoke came to her from the closet depths, and as she reached +instinctively to take a sad little whiff she became suddenly conscious +that there was a strange, uncanny _hush_ in the room, as though a soul +had left its body. She turned back quickly and cried out with a +smothered cry. Hickory Dock had stopped! + +"Until--the--end--of--Time," she gasped, and staggered hard against the +closet-door. Then in a flash she burst out laughing stridently, and +rushed for Hickory Dock and grabbed him by his little silver handle, +opened the window with a bang, and threw him with all her might and main +down into the brick alley four stories below, where he fell with a +sickening crash among a wee handful of scattered rose petals. + +--The days that followed were like horrid dreams, the nights, like +hideous realities. The fire would not burn. The sun and moon would not +shine, and life itself settled down like a pall. Every detail of that +Sunday night stamped and re stamped itself upon her mind. Back of her +outraged love was the crueller pain of her outraged faith. The Man of +his own free will had made a sacred promise and broken it! She realized +now for the first time in her life why men went to the devil because +women had failed them--not disappointed them, but _failed_ them! She +could even imagine how poor mothers felt when fathers shirked their +fatherhood. She tasted in one week's imagination all possible woman +sorrows of the world. + +At the end of the second week she began to realize the depth of +isolation into which her engagement had thrown her. For a year and a +half she had thought nothing, dreamed nothing, cared for nothing except +the Man. Now, with the Man swept away, there was no place to turn either +for comfort or amusement. + +At the end of the third week, when no word came, she began to gather +together all the Man's little personal effects, and consigned them to a +box out of sight--the pipe and tobacco, a favorite book, his soft +Turkish slippers, his best gloves, and even a little poem which he had +written for her to set to music. It was a pretty little love-song that +they had made together, but as she hummed it over now for the last time +she wondered if, after all, _woman's music_ did not do more than man's +words to make love Singable. + +When a month was up she began to strip the room of everything that the +Man had brought towards the making of their Home. It was like stripping +tendons. She had never realized before how thoroughly the Man's +personality had dominated her room as well as her life. When she had +crowded his books, his pictures, his college trophies, his Morris chair, +his rugs, into one corner of her room and covered them with two big +sheets, her little, paltry, feminine possessions looked like chiffon in +a desert. + +While she was pondering what to do next her rent fell due. The month's +idling had completely emptied her pewter savings-bank that she had been +keeping as a sort of precious joke for the Honeymoon. The rent-bill +startled her into spasmodic efforts at composition. She had been quite +busy for a year writing songs for some Educational people, but how could +one make harmony with a heart full of discord and all life off the key. +A single week convinced her of the utter futility of these efforts. In +one high-strung, wakeful night she decided all at once to give up the +whole struggle and go back to her little country village, where at least +she would find free food and shelter until she could get her grip again. + +For three days she struggled heroically with burlap and packing-boxes. +She felt as though every nail she pounded was hurting the Man as well as +herself, and she pounded just as hard as she possibly could. + +When the room was stripped of every atom of personality except her +couch, and the duplicate latch-key, which still hung high and dusty, a +deliciously cruel thought came to the Girl, and the irony of it set her +eyes flashing. On the night before her intended departure she took the +key and put it into a pretty little box and sent it to the Man. + +"He'll know by that token," she said, "that there's no more 'Home' for +him and me. He will get his furniture a few days later, and then he will +see that everything is scattered and shattered. Even if he's married by +this time, the key will hurt him, for his wife will want to know what it +means, and he never can tell her." + +Then she cried so hard that her overwrought, half-starved little body +collapsed, and she crept into her bed and was sick all night and all the +next day, so that there was no possible thought or chance of packing or +traveling. But towards the second evening she struggled up to get +herself a taste of food and wine from her cupboard, and, wrapping +herself in her pink kimono, huddled over the fire to try and find a +little blaze and cheer. + +Just as the flames commenced to flush her cheeks the lock clicked. She +started up in alarm. The door opened abruptly, and the Man strode in +with a very determined, husbandly look on his haggard face. For the +fraction of a second he stood and looked at her pitifully frightened and +disheveled little figure. + +"Forgive me," he cried, "but I _had_ to come like this." Then he took +one mighty stride and caught her up in his arms and carried her back to +her open bed and tucked her in like a child while she clung to his neck +laughing and sobbing and crying as though her brain was turned. He +smoothed her hair, he kissed her eyes, he rubbed his rough cheek +confidently against her soft one, and finally, when her convulsive +tremors quieted a little, he reached down into his great overcoat pocket +and took out poor, battered, mutilated Hickory Dock. + +"I found him down in the Janitor's office just now," he explained, and +his mouth twitched just the merest trifle at the corners. + +"Don't smile," said the Girl, sitting up suddenly very straight and +stiff. "Don't smile till you know the whole truth. _I_ broke Hickory +Dock. I threw him _purposely_ four stories down into the brick alley!" + +The Man began to examine Hickory Dock very carefully. + +"I should judge that it was a _brick_ alley," he remarked with an odd +twist of his lips, as he tossed the shattered little clock over to the +burlap-covered armchair. + +Then he took the Girl very quietly and tenderly in his arms again, and +gazed down into her eyes with a look that was new to him. + +"Rosalie," he whispered, "I will mend Hickory Dock for you if it takes +a thousand years,"--his voice choked,--"but I wish to God I could mend +my broken promise as easily!" + +And Rosalie smiled through her tears and said,-- + +"Sweetheart-Man, you do love me?" + +"With all my heart and soul and body and breath, and past and present +and future I _love you_!" said the Man. + +Then Rosalie kissed a little path to his ear, and whispered, oh, so +softly,-- + +"Sweetheart-Man, I love _you_ just that same way." + +And Hickory Dock, the Angel, never ticked the passing of a single +second, but lay on his back looking straight up to Heaven with his two +little battered hands clasped eternally at Love's _high noon_. + + + + +THE VERY TIRED GIRL + + +ON one of those wet, warm, slushy February nights when the vapid air +sags like sodden wool in your lungs, and your cheek-bones bore through +your flesh, and your leaden feet seem strung directly from the roots of +your eyes, three girls stampeded their way through the jostling, peevish +street crowds with no other object in Heaven or Earth except just to +get--HOME. + +It was supper time, too, somewhere between six and seven, the caved-in +hour of the day when the ruddy ghost of Other People's dinners flaunts +itself rather grossly in the pallid nostrils of Her Who Lives by the +Chafing-Dish. + +One of the girls was a Medical Masseuse, trained brain and brawn in the +German Hospitals. One was a Public School Teacher with a tickle of chalk +dust in her lungs. One was a Cartoon Artist with a heart like chiffon +and a wit as accidentally malicious as the jab of a pin in a flirt's +belt. + +All three of them were silly with fatigue. The writhing city cavorted +before them like a sick clown. A lame cab horse went strutting like a +mechanical toy. Crape on a door would have plunged them into hysterics. +Were you ever as tired as that? + +It was, in short, the kind of night that rips out every one according to +his stitch. Rhoda Hanlan the Masseuse was ostentatiously sewed with +double thread and backstitched at that. Even the little Teacher, Ruth +MacLaurin, had a physique that was embroidered if not darned across its +raveled places. But Noreen Gaudette, the Cartoon Drawer, with her +spangled brain and her tissue-paper body, was merely basted together +with a single silken thread. It was the knowledge of being only basted +that gave Noreen the droll, puckered terror in her eyes whenever Life +tugged at her with any specially inordinate strain. + +Yet it was Noreen who was popularly supposed to be built with an +electric battery instead of a heart. + +The boarding-house that welcomed the three was rather tall for beauty, +narrow-shouldered, flat-chested, hunched together in the block like a +prudish, dour old spinster overcrowded in a street car. To call such a +house "Home" was like calling such a spinster "Mother." But the three +girls called it "Home" and rather liked the saucy taste of the word in +their mouths. + +Across the threshold in a final spurt of energy the jaded girls pushed +with the joyous realization that there were now only five flights of +stairs between themselves and their own attic studio. + +On the first floor the usual dreary vision greeted them of a hall table +strewn with stale letters--most evidently bills, which no one seemed in +a hurry to appropriate. + +It was twenty-two stumbling, bundle-dropping steps to the next floor, +where the strictly Bachelor Quarters with half-swung doors emitted a +pleasant gritty sound of masculine voices, and a sumptuous cloud of +cigarette smoke which led the way frowardly up twenty-two more toiling +steps to the Old Maid's Floor, buffeted itself naughtily against the +sternly shut doors, and then mounted triumphantly like sweet incense to +the Romance Floor, where with door alluringly open the Much-Loved Girl +and her Mother were frankly and ingenuously preparing for the +Monday-Night-Lover's visit. + +The vision of the Much-Loved Girl smote like a brutal flashlight upon +the three girls in the hall. + +Out of curl, out of breath, jaded of face, bedraggled of clothes, they +stopped abruptly and stared into the vista. + +Before their fretted eyes the room stretched fresh and clean as a newly +returned laundry package. The green rugs lay like velvet grass across +the floor. The chintz-covered furniture crisped like the crust of a +cake. Facing the gilt-bound mirror, the Much-Loved Girl sat joyously in +all her lingerie-waisted, lace-paper freshness, while her Mother hovered +over her to give one last maternal touch to a particularly rampageous +blond curl. + +[Illustration: With no other object, except to get home] + +The Much-Loved Girl was a cordial person. Her liquid, mirrored +reflection nodded gaily out into the hall. There was no fatigue in the +sparkling face. There was no rain or fog. There was no street-corner +insult. There was no harried stress of wherewithal. There was just +Youth, and Girl, and Cherishing. + +She made the Masseuse and the little School Teacher think of a pale-pink +rose in a cut-glass vase. But she made Noreen Gaudette _feel_ like a +vegetable in a boiled dinner. + +With one despairing gasp--half-chuckle and half-sob--the three girls +pulled themselves together and dashed up the last flight of stairs to +the Trunk-Room Floor, and their own attic studio, where bumping through +the darkness they turned a sulky stream of light upon a room more +tired-looking than themselves, and then, with almost fierce abandon, +collapsed into the nearest resting-places that they could reach. + +It was a long time before any one spoke. + +Between the treacherous breeze of the open window and a withering +blast of furnace heat the wilted muslin curtain swayed back and forth +with languid rhythm. Across the damp night air came faintly the +yearning, lovery smell of violets, and the far-off, mournful whine of a +sick hand-organ. + +On the black fur hearth-rug Rhoda, the red-haired, lay prostrated like a +broken tiger lily with her long, lithe hands clutched desperately at her +temples. + +"I am so tired," she said. "I am so tired that I can actually feel my +hair fade." + +Ruth, the little Public School Teacher, laughed derisively from her +pillowed couch where she struggled intermittently with her suffocating +collar and the pinchy buckles on her overshoes. + +"That's nothing," she asserted wanly. "I am so tired that I would like +to build me a pink-wadded silk house, just the shape of a slipper, where +I could snuggle down in the toe and go to sleep for a--million years. It +isn't to-morrow's early morning that racks me, it's the thought of all +the early mornings between now and the Judgment Day. Oh, any sentimental +person can cry at night, but when you begin to cry in the morning--to +lie awake and cry in the morning--" Her face sickened suddenly. "Did you +see that Mother downstairs?" she gasped, "fixing that curl? Think of +having a Mother!" + +Then Noreen Gaudette opened her great gray eyes and grinned +diabolically. She had a funny little manner of cartooning her emotions. + +"Think of having a Mother?" she scoffed. "What nonsense!--_Think of +having a c-u-r-l!_ + +"You talk like Sunday-Paper debutantes," she drawled. "You don't know +anything about being tired. Why, I am so tired--I am so tired--that I +wish--I wish that the first man who ever proposed to me would come back +and ask me--_again_!" + +It was then that the Landlady, knocking at the door, presented a card, +"Mr. Ernest T. Dextwood," for Miss Gaudette, and the innocent-looking +conversation exploded suddenly like a short-fused firecracker. + +Rhoda in an instant was sitting bolt upright with her arms around her +knees rocking to and fro in convulsive delight. Ruth much more +thoughtfully jumped for Noreen's bureau drawer. But Noreen herself, +after one long, hyphenated "Oh, my _H-e-a-v-e-n-s_!" threw off her damp, +wrinkled coat, stalked over to the open window, and knelt down +quiveringly where she could smother her blazing face in the inconsequent +darkness. + +For miles and miles the teasing lights of Other Women's homes stretched +out before her. From the window-sill below her rose the persistent +purple smell of violets, and the cooing, gauzy laughter of the +Much-Loved Girl. Fatigue was in the damp air, surely, but Spring was +also there, and Lonesomeness, and worst of all, that desolating sense of +patient, dying snow wasting away before one's eyes like Life itself. + +When Noreen turned again to her friends her eyelids drooped defiantly +across her eyes. Her lips were like a scarlet petal under the bite of +her teeth. There in the jetty black and scathing white of her dress she +loomed up suddenly like one of her own best drawings--pulseless ink and +stale white paper vitalized all in an instant by some miraculous +emotional power. A living Cartoon of "_Fatigue_" she stood +there--"_Fatigue_," as she herself would have drawn it--no flaccid +failure of wilted bone and sagging flesh, but _Verve_--the taut Brain's +pitiless rally of the Body that can not afford to rest--the verve of +Factory Lights blazing overtime, the verve of the Runner who drops at +his goal. + +"All the time I am gone," she grinned, "pray over and over, 'Lead Noreen +not into temptation.'" Her voice broke suddenly into wistful laughter: +"Why to meet again a man who used to love you--it's like offering +store-credit to a pauper." + +Then she slammed the door behind her and started downstairs for the +bleak, plush parlor, with a chaotic sense of absurdity and bravado. + +But when she reached the middle of the bachelor stairway and looked down +casually and spied her clumsy arctics butting out from her wet-edged +skirt all her nervousness focused instantly in her shaking knees, and +she collapsed abruptly on the friendly dark stair and clutching hold of +the banister, began to whimper. + +In the midst of her stifled tears a door banged hard above her, the +floor creaked under a sturdy step, and the tall, narrow form of the +Political Economist silhouetted itself against the feeble light of the +upper landing. + +One step down he came into the darkness--two steps, three steps, four, +until at last in choking miserable embarrassment, Noreen cried out +hysterically: + +"Don't step on me--I'm _crying_!" + +With a gasp of astonishment the young man struck a sputtering match and +bent down waving it before him. + +"Why, it's _you_, Miss Gaudette," he exclaimed with relief. "What's the +matter? Are you ill? What are you crying about?" and he dropped down +beside her and commenced to fan her frantically with his hat. + +"What _are_ you crying about?" he persisted helplessly, drugged +man-like, by the same embarrassment that mounted like wine to the +woman's brain. + +Noreen began to laugh snuffingly. + +"I'm not crying about anything special," she acknowledged. "I'm just +crying. I'm crying partly because I'm tired--and partly because I've got +my overshoes on--but _mostly_"--her voice began to catch again--"but +mostly--because there's a _man_ waiting to see me in the parlor." + +The Political Economist shifted uneasily in his rain coat and stared +into Noreen's eyes. + +"Great Heavens!" he stammered. "Do you always cry when men come to see +you? Is that why you never invited _me_ to call?" + +Noreen shook her head. "I never have men come to see me," she answered +quite simply. "I go to see _them_. I study in their studios. I work on +their newspapers. I caricature their enemies. Oh, it isn't _men_ that +I'm afraid of," she added blithely, "but _this_ is something particular. +_This_ is something really very funny. Did you ever make a wish that +something perfectly preposterous would happen?" + +"Oh, yes," said the Political Economist reassuringly. "This very day I +said that I wished my Stenographer would swallow the telephone." + +"But she didn't swallow it, did she?" persisted Noreen triumphantly. +"Now I said that I wished some one would swallow the telephone and she +_did_ swallow it!" + +Then her face in the dusky light flared piteously with harlequined +emotions. Her eyes blazed bright with toy excitement. Her lips curved +impishly with exaggerated drollery. But when for a second her head +drooped back against the banister her jaded small face looked for all +the world like a death-mask of a Jester. + +The Political Economist's heart crinkled uncomfortably within him. + +"Why, you poor little girl," he said. "I didn't know that women got as +tired as that. Let me take off your overshoes." + +Noreen stood up like a well-trained pony and shed her clumsy footgear. + +The Man's voice grew peremptory. "Your skirt is sopping wet. Are you +crazy? Didn't have time to get into dry things? Nonsense! Have you had +any supper? What? _N-o?_ Wait a minute." + +In an instant he was flying up the stairs, and when he came back there +was a big glass of cool milk in his hand. + +Noreen drank it ravenously, and then started downstairs with abrupt, +quick courage. + +When she reached the ground floor the Political Economist leaned over +the banisters and shouted in a piercing whisper: + +"I'll leave your overshoes outside my door where you can get them on +your way up later." + +Then he laughed teasingly and added: +"I--hope--you'll--have--a--good--time." + +And Noreen, cleaving for one last second to the outer edge of the +banisters, smiled up at him, so strainingly _up_, that her face, to the +man above her, looked like a little flat white plate with a +crimson-lipped rose wilting on it. + +Then she disappeared into the parlor. + +With equal abruptness the Political Economist changed his mind about +going out, and went back instead to his own room and plunged himself +down in his chair, and smoked and thought, until his friend, the Poet at +the big writing-desk, slapped down his manuscript and stared at him +inquisitively. + +"Lord Almighty! I wish I could draw!" said the Political Economist. It +was not so much an exclamation as a reverent entreaty. His eyes narrowed +sketchily across the vision that haunted him. "If I could draw," he +persisted, "I'd make a picture that would hit the world like a knuckled +fist straight between its selfish old eyes. And I'd call that picture +'Talent.' I'd make an ocean chopping white and squally, with _black_ +clouds scudding like fury across the sky, and no land in sight except +rocks. And I'd fill that ocean full of sharks and things--not showing +too much, you know, but just an occasional shimmer of fins through the +foam. And I'd make a sailboat scooting along, tipped 'way over on her +side toward you, with just a slip of an eager-faced girl in it. And I'd +wedge her in there, wind-blown, spray-dashed, foot and back braced to +the death, with the tiller in one hand and the sheet in the other, and +weather-almighty roaring all around her. And I'd make the riskiest +little leak in the bottom of that boat rammed desperately with a box of +chocolates, and a bunch of violets, and a large paper compliment in a +man's handwriting reading: 'Oh, how _clever_ you are.' And I'd have that +girl's face haggard with hunger, starved for sleep, tense with fear, +ravished with excitement. But I'd have her chin _up_, and her eyes +_open_, and the tiniest tilt of a quizzical smile hounding you like mad +across the snug, gilt frame. Maybe, too, I'd have a woman's magazine +blowing around telling in chaste language how to keep the hair 'smooth' +and the hands 'velvety,' and admonishing girls above all things not to +be eaten by sharks! Good Heavens, Man!" he finished disjointedly, "a +girl doesn't know how to sail a boat anyway!" + +"_W-h-a-t_ are you talking about?" moaned the Poet. + +The Political Economist began to knock the ashes furiously out of his +pipe. + +"What am I talking about?" he cried; "I'm talking about _girls_. I've +always said that I'd gladly fall in love if I only could decide what +kind of a girl I wanted to fall in love with. Well, I've decided!" + +The Poet's face furrowed. "Is it the Much-Loved Girl?" he stammered. + +The Political Economist's smoldering temper began to blaze. + +"No, it isn't," ejaculated the Political Economist. "The Much-Loved Girl +is a sweet enough, airy, fairy sort of girl, but I'm not going to fall +in love with just a pretty valentine." + +"Going to try a 'Comic'?" the Poet suggested pleasantly. + +The Political Economist ignored the impertinence. "I am reasonably well +off," he continued meditatively, "and I'm reasonably good-looking, and +I've contributed eleven articles on 'Men and Women' to modern economic +literature, but it's dawned on me all of a sudden that in spite of all +my beauteous theories regarding life in general, I am just one big shirk +when it comes to life in particular." + +The Poet put down his pen and pushed aside his bottle of rhyming fluid, +and began to take notice. + +"Whom are you going to fall in love with?" he demanded. + +The Political Economist sank back into his chair. + +"I don't quite know," he added simply, "but she's going to be some +tired girl. Whatever else she may or may not be, she's got to be a tired +girl." + +"A tired girl?" scoffed the Poet. "That's no kind of a girl to marry. +Choose somebody who's all pink and white freshness. That's the kind of a +girl to make a man happy." + +The Political Economist smiled a bit viciously behind his cigar. + +"Half an hour ago," he affirmed, "I was a beast just like you. Good +Heavens! Man," he cried out suddenly, "did you ever see a girl cry? +Really cry, I mean. Not because her manicure scissors jabbed her thumb, +but because her great, strong, tyrant, sexless brain had goaded her poor +little woman-body to the very cruelest, last vestige of its strength and +spirit. Did you ever see a girl like that Miss Gaudette upstairs--she's +the Artist, you know, who did those cartoons last year that played the +devil itself with 'Congress Assembled'--did you ever see a girl like +_that_ just plain thrown down, tripped in her tracks, sobbing like a +hurt, tired child? Your pink and white prettiness can cry like a rampant +tragedy-queen all she wants to over a misfitted collar, but my hand is +going here and now to the big-brained girl who cries like a child!" + +"In short," interrupted the Poet, "you are going to help--Miss Gaudette +sail her boat?" + +"Y-e-s," said the Political Economist. + +"And so," mocked the Poet, "you are going to jump aboard and steer the +young lady adroitly to some port of your own choosing?" + +The older man's jaws tightened ominously. "No, by the Lord Almighty, +that's just what I am not going to do!" he promised. "I'm going to help +her sail to the port of her own choosing!" + +The Poet began to rummage in his mind for adequate arguments. "Oh, +allegorically," he conceded, "your scheme is utterly charming, but from +any material, matrimonial point of view I should want to remind myself +pretty hard that overwrought brains do not focus very easily on domestic +interests, nor do arms which have tugged as you say at 'sheets' and +'tillers' curve very dimplingly around youngsters' shoulders." + +The Political Economist blew seven mighty smoke-puffs from his pipe. + +"That would be the economic price I deserve to pay for not having +arrived earlier on the scene," he said quietly. + +The Poet began to chuckle. "You certainly are hard hit," he scoffed. + + "Political Economy + Gone to rhyme with Hominy! + +It's an exquisite scheme!" + +"It's a rotten rhyme," attested the Political Economist, and strode over +to the mantelpiece, where he began to hunt for a long piece of twine. + +"Miss Gaudette," he continued, "is downstairs in the parlor now +entertaining a caller--some resurrected beau, I believe. Anyway, she +left her overshoes outside my door to get when she comes up again, and +I'm going to tie one end of this string to them and the other end to my +wrist, so that when she picks up her shoes a few hours later it will +wake me from my nap, and I can make one grand rush for the hall and--" + +"Propose then and there?" quizzed the Poet. + +"No, not exactly. But I'm going to ask her if she'll let me fall in love +with her." + +The Poet sniffed palpably and left the room. + +But the Political Economist lay back in his chair and went to sleep with +a great, pleasant expectancy in his heart. + +When he woke at last with a sharp, tugging pain at his wrist the room +was utterly dark, and the little French clock had stopped aghast and +clasped its hands at eleven. + +For a second he rubbed his eyes in perplexity. Then he jumped to his +feet, fumbled across the room and opened the door to find Noreen staring +with astonishment at the tied overshoes. + +"Oh, I wanted to speak to you," he began. Then his eyes focused in +amazement on a perfectly huge bunch of violets which Noreen was clasping +desperately in her arms. + +"Good Heavens!" he cried. "Is anybody dead?" + +But Noreen held the violets up like a bulwark and commenced to laugh +across them. + +"He did propose," she said, "and I accepted him! Does it look as though +I had chosen to be engaged with violets instead of a ring?" she +suggested blithely. "It's only that I asked him if he would be apt to +send me violets, and when he said: 'Yes, every week,' I just asked if I +please couldn't have them all at once. There must be a Billion dollars' +worth here. I'm going to have a tea-party to-morrow and invite the +Much-Loved Girl." The conscious, childish malice of her words twisted +her lips into an elfish smile. "It's Mr. Ernest Dextwood," she rattled +on: "Ernest Dextwood, the Coffee Merchant. He's a widower now--with +three children. Do--you--think--that--I--will--make--a--good--stepmother?" + +The violets began to quiver against her breast, but her chin went higher +in rank defiance of the perplexing _something_ which she saw in the +Political Economist's narrowing eyes. She began to quote with playful +recklessness Byron's pert parody: + + "There is a tide in the affairs of women + Which taken at its flood leads--God Knows Where." + +But when the Political Economist did not answer her, but only stared +with brooding, troubled eyes, she caught her breath with a sudden +terrifying illumination. "Ouch!" she said. "O-u-c-h!" and wilted +instantly like a frost-bitten rose under heat. All the bravado, all the +stamina, all the glint of her, vanished utterly. + +"Mr. Political Economist," she stammered, "Life--is--too--hard--for--me. +I am not Rhoda Hanlan with her sturdy German peasant stock. I am not +Ruth MacLaurin with her Scotch-plaited New Englandism. Nationality +doesn't count with me. My Father was a Violinist. My Mother was an +Actress. In order to marry, my Father swapped his music for discordant +factory noises, and my Mother shirked a dozen successful roles to give +one life-long, very poor imitation of Happiness. My Father died of too +much to drink. My Mother died of too little to eat. And I was bred, I +guess, of very bitter love, of conscious sacrifice--of thwarted +genius--of defeated vanity. Life--is--too--hard--for--me--_alone_. I can +not finance it. I can not safeguard it. I can not weather it. _I am not +seaworthy!_ You might be willing to risk your _own_ self-consciousness, +but when the dead begin to come back and clamor in you--when you laugh +unexpectedly with your Father's restive voice--when you quicken +unexplainably to the Lure of gilt and tinsel--" A whimper of pain went +scudding across her face, and she put back her head and grinned--"You +can keep my overshoes for a souvenir," she finished abruptly. "I'm not +allowed any more to go out when it storms!" Then she turned like a flash +and ran swiftly up the stairs. + +When he heard the door slam hard behind her, the Political Economist +fumbled his way back through the darkened room to his Morris chair, and +threw himself down again. Ernest Dextwood? He knew him well, a +prosperous, kindly, yet domestically tyrannical man, bright in the +office, stupid at home. Ernest Dextwood! So much less of a girl would +have done for him. + +A widower with three children? The eager, unspent emotionalism of +Noreen's face flaunted itself across his smoky vision. All that hunger +for Life, for Love, for Beauty, for Sympathy, to be blunted once for all +in a stale, misfitting, ready-made home? A widower with three children! +God in Heaven, was she as tired as that! + +It was a whole long week before he saw Noreen again. When he met her at +last she had just come in from automobiling, all rosy-faced and out of +breath, with her thin little face peering almost plumply from its heavy +swathings of light-blue veiling, and her slender figure deeply wrapped +in a wondrous covert coat. + +Rhoda Hanlan and Ruth MacLaurin were close behind her, much more +prosaically garnished in golf capes and brown-colored mufflers. The +Political Economist stood by on the stairs to let them pass, and Noreen +looked back at him and called out gaily: + +"It's lots of fun to be engaged. We're all enjoying it very much. It's +bully!" + +The next time he saw her she was on her way downstairs to the parlor, in +a long-tailed, soft, black evening gown that bothered her a bit about +managing. Her dark hair was piled up high on her head, and she had the +same mischievous, amateur-theatrical charm that the blue chiffon veil +and covert coat had given her. + +Quite frankly she demanded the Political Economist's appreciation of her +appearance. + +"Just see how nice I can look when I really try?" she challenged him, +"but it took me all day to do it, and my work went to smash--and my +dress cost seventy dollars," she finished wryly. + +But the Political Economist was surly about his compliment. + +"No, I like you better in your little business suit," he attested +gruffly. And he lied, and he knew that he lied, for never before had he +seen the shrewd piquancy of her eyes so utterly swamped by just the +wild, sweet lure of girlhood. + +Some time in May, however, when the shop windows were gay with women's +luxuries, he caught a hurried glimpse of her face gazing rather +tragically at a splurge of lilac-trimmed hats. + +Later in the month he passed her in the Park, cuddled up on a bench, +with her shabby business suit scrunched tight around her, her elbows on +her knees, her chin burrowed in her hands, and her fiercely narrowed +eyes quaffing like some outlawed thing at the lusty new green grass, the +splashing fountain, the pinky flush of flowering quince. But when he +stopped to speak to her she jumped up quickly and pleaded the haste of +an errand. + +It was two weeks later in scorching June that the biggest warehouses on +the river caught fire in the early part of the evening. The day had been +as harsh as a shining, splintery plank. The night was like a gray silk +pillow. In blissful, soothing consciousness of perfect comfort every one +in the boarding-house climbed up on the roof to watch the gorgeous, +fearful conflagration across the city. The Landlady's voice piped high +and shrill discussing the value of insurance. The Old Maids scuttled +together under their knitted shawls. The Much-Loved Girl sat amiably +enthroned among the bachelors with one man's coat across her shoulders, +another man's cap on her yellow head, and two deliciously timid hands +clutched at the coat-sleeves of the two men nearest her. Whenever she +bent her head she trailed the fluff of her hair across the enraptured +eyelids of the Poet. + +Only Noreen Gaudette was missing. + +"Where is Miss Gaudette?" probed the Political Economist. + +The Masseuse answered vehemently: "Why, Noreen's getting ready to go to +the fire. Her paper sent for her just as we came up. There's an awful +row on, you know, about the inefficiency of the Fire Department, and +there's no other person in all the city who can make people look as +silly as Noreen can. If this thing appeals to her to-night, and she gets +good and mad enough, and keeps her nerve, there'll be the biggest +overhauling of the Fire Department that _you_ ever saw! But I'm sorry it +happened. It will be an all-night job, and Noreen is almost dead enough +as it is." + +"An 'all-night job'?" The Much-Loved Girl gasped out her startled sense +of propriety, and snuggled back against the shoulder of the man who sat +nearest to her. She was very genuinely sorry for any one who had to be +improper. + +The Political Economist, noting the incident in its entirety, turned +abruptly on his heel, climbed down the tremulous ladder to the +trunk-room floor and knocked peremptorily at Noreen's door. + +In reply to the answer which he thought he heard, he turned the handle +of the door and entered. The gas jet sizzled blatantly across the room, +and a tiny blue flame toiled laboriously in a cooking lamp beneath a pot +of water. The room was reeking strong with the smell of coffee, the rank +brew that wafted him back in nervous terror to his college days and the +ghastly eve of his final examinations. A coat, a hat, a mouse-gray +sweater, a sketch-book, and a bunch of pencils were thrown together on +the edge of the divan. Crouched on the floor with head and shoulders +prostrate across her easel chair and thin hands straining at the +woodwork was Noreen Gaudette. The startled face that lifted to his was +haggard with the energy of a year rallied to the needs of an hour. + +"I thought you told me to come in," said the Political Economist. "I +came down to go to the fire with you." + +Noreen was on her feet in an instant, hurrying into her hat and coat, +and quaffing greedily at the reeking coffee. + +"You ought to have some one to look after you," persisted the man. +"Where's Mr. Dextwood?" + +Noreen stood still in the middle of the floor and stared at him. + +"Why, I've broken my engagement," she exclaimed, trying hard to speak +tamely and reserve every possible fraction of her artificial energy. + +"Oh, yes," she smiled wanly, "I couldn't afford to be engaged! I +couldn't afford the time. I couldn't afford the money. I couldn't afford +the mental distraction. I'm working again now, but it's horribly hard to +get back into the mood. My drawing has all gone to smash. But I'll get +the hang of it again pretty soon." + +"You look in mighty poor shape to work to-night," said the Political +Economist. "What makes you go?" + +"What makes me go?" cried Noreen, with an extravagant burst of +vehemence. "What makes me go?--Why, if I make good to-night on those +Fire-Department Pictures I get a Hundred Dollars, as well as the +assurance of all the Republican cartooning for the next city election. +It's worth a lot of money to me!" + +"Enough to kill yourself for?" probed the Man. + +Noreen's mouth began to twist. "Yes--if you still owe for your +automobile coat, and your black evening gown, and your room rent and a +few other trifles of that sort. But come on, if you'll promise not to +talk to me till it's all over." Like a pair of youngsters they scurried +down the stairs, jumped into the waiting cab, and galloped off toward +the river edge of the city. + +True to his promise, the Political Economist did not speak to her, but +he certainly had not promised to keep his eyes shut as well as his +mouth. From the very first she sat far forward on the seat where the +passing street-lights blazed upon her unconscious face. The Man, the +cab, love-making, debt-paying, all were forgotten in her desperate +effort to keep keyed up to the working-point. Her brain was hurriedly +sketching in her backgrounds. Her suddenly narrowed eyes foretold the +tingling pride in some particular imagining. The flashing twist of her +smile predicted the touch of malice that was to make her pictures the +sensation of--a day. + +The finish of the three-mile drive found her jubilant, prescient, +pulsing with power. The glow from the flames lit up the cab like a room. +The engine bells clanged around them. Sparks glittered. Steam hissed. +When the cabman's horse refused to scorch his nose any nearer the +conflagration, Noreen turned to the Political Economist with some +embarrassment. "If you really want to help me," she pleaded, "you'll +stay here in the cab and wait for me." + +Then, before the Political Economist could offer his angry protest, she +had opened the door, jumped from the step, and disappeared into the +surging, rowdy throng of spectators. A tedious hour later the cab door +opened abruptly, and Noreen reappeared. + +Her hat was slouched down over her heat-scorched eyes. Her shoulders +were limp. Her face was dull, dumb, gray, like a Japanese lantern robbed +of its candle. Bluntly she thrust her sketch-book into his hands and +threw herself down on the seat beside him. + +"Oh, take me home," she begged. "Oh, take me home _quick_. It's no use," +she added with a shrug, "I've seen the whole performance. I've been +everywhere--inside the ropes--up on the roofs--out on the waterfront. +The Fire Department Men are not 'inefficient.' They're simply _bully_! +_And I make no caricatures of heroes!_" + +The lurch of the cab wheel against a curbstone jerked a faint smile into +her face. "Isn't it horrid," she complained, "to have a Talent and a +Living that depend altogether upon your _getting mad_?" Then her eyes +flooded with worry. "What _shall_ I do?" + +"You'll marry me," said the Political Economist. + +"Oh, no!" gasped Noreen. "I shall never, never marry any one! I told you +that I couldn't afford to be engaged. It takes too much time, and +besides," her color flamed piteously, "I didn't like being engaged." + +"I didn't ask you to be engaged," persisted the Political Economist. "I +didn't ask you to serve any underpaid, ill-fed, half-hearted +apprenticeship to Happiness. I asked you to be married." + +"Oh, no!" sighed Noreen. "I shall never marry any one." + +The Political Economist began to laugh. "Going to be an old maid?" he +teased. + +The high lights flamed into Noreen's eyes. She braced herself into the +corner of the carriage and fairly hurled her defiance at him. +Indomitable purpose raged in her heart, unutterable pathos drooped +around her lips. Every atom of blood in her body was working instantly +in her brain. No single drop of it loafed in her cheeks under the flimsy +guise of embarrassment. + +"I am not an 'Old Maid!' I am not! No one who creates anything is an +'Old Maid'!" + +The passion of her mood broke suddenly into wilful laughter. She shook +her head at him threateningly. + +"Don't you ever dare to call me an 'Old Maid' again.--But I'll tell you +just what you can call me--Women are supposed to be the Poetry of Life, +aren't they--the Sonnet, the Lyric, the Limerick? Well--I am blank +verse. _That_ is the trouble with me. I simply _do not rhyme_.--That is +all!" + +"Will you marry me?" persisted the Political Economist. + +Noreen shook her head. "No!" she repeated. "You don't seem to +understand. Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I +am _Talent_, and I do not _rhyme_ with Love. I am _Talent_ and I do not +rhyme with _Man_. There is no place in my life for you. You can not come +into my verse and rhyme with me!" + +"Aren't you a little bit exclusive?" goaded the Political Economist. + +Noreen nodded gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am brutally exclusive. But +everybody isn't. Life is so easy for some women. Now, the Much-Loved +Girl is nothing in the world except 'Miss.' She rhymes inevitably with +almost anybody's kiss.--_I_ am not just '_Miss_.' The Much-Loved Girl is +nothing in the world except 'Girl.'--She rhymes inevitably with 'Curl.' +_I_ am not just '_Girl_.' She is 'Coy' and rhymes with 'Boy.' She is +'Simple' and rhymes with 'Dimple.' _I am none of those things!_ I +haven't the Lure of the Sonnet. I haven't the Charm of the Lyric. I +haven't the Bait of the Limerick. At the very best I am 'Brain' and +rhyme with 'Pain.' And I wish I was _dead_!" + +The Political Economist's heart was pounding like a gong smothered in +velvet. But he stooped over very quietly and pushed the floor cushion +under her feet and snuggled the mouse-gray sweater into a pillowed roll +behind her aching neck. Then from his own remotest corner he reached out +casually and rallied her limp, cold hand into the firm, warm clasp of +his vibrant fingers. + +"Of course, you never have rhymed," he said. "How could you possibly +have rhymed when--_I am the missing lines of your verse_?" His clasp +tightened. "Never mind about Poetry to-night, Dear, but _to-morrow_ +we'll take your little incomplete lonesome verse and quicken it into a +Love-Song that will make the Oldest Angel in Heaven sit up and +carol!" + + + + +THE HAPPY-DAY + + +IT was not you, yourself, who invented your Happy-day. It was your +Father, long ago in little-lad time, when a Happy-Day or a Wooden +Soldier or High Heaven itself lay equally tame and giftable in the +cuddling, curving hollow of a Father's hand. + +Your Father must have been a very great Genius. How else could he have +invented any happy thing in the black-oak library? + +The black-oak library was a cross-looking room, dingy, lowering, and +altogether boggy. You could not stamp your boot across the threshold +without joggling the heart-beats out of the gaunt old clock that loomed +in the darkermost corner of the alcove. You could not tiptoe to the +candy box without plunging headlong into a stratum of creakiness that +puckered your spine as though an electric devil were pulling the very +last basting thread out of your little soul. Oh, it must have been a +very, very aged room. The darkness was abhorrent to you. The dampness +reeked with the stale, sad breath of ancient storms. Worst of all, +blood-red curtains clotted at the windows; rusty swords and daggers hung +most imminently from the walls, and along the smutted hearth a huge, +moth-eaten tiger skin humped up its head in really terrible ferocity. + +Through all the room there was no lively spot except the fireplace +itself. + +Usually, white birch logs flamed on the hearth with pleasant, crackling +cheerfulness, but on this special day you noted with alarm that between +the gleaming andirons a soft, red-leather book writhed and bubbled with +little gray wisps of pain, while out of a charry, smoochy mass of +nothingness a blue-flowered muslin sleeve stretched pleadingly toward +you for an instant, shuddered, blazed, and was--gone. + +It was there that your Father caught you, with that funny, strange sniff +of havoc in your nostrils. + +It was there that your Father told you his news. + +When you are only a little, little boy and your Father snatches you +suddenly up in his arms and tells you that he is going to be married +again, it is very astonishing. You had always supposed that your Father +was perfectly married! In the dazzling sunshine of the village church +was there not a thrilly blue window that said quite distinctly, "Clarice +Val Dere" (that was your Mother) "Lived" (_Lived_, it said!) "June, +1860--December, 1880"? All the other windows said "Died" on them. Why +should your Father marry again? + +In your Dear Father's arms you gasped, "Going to be _married_?" and your +two eyes must have popped right out of your head, for your Father +stooped down very suddenly and kissed them hard--whack, whack, back into +place. + +"N--o, not going to be married," he corrected, "but going to be +married--again." + +He spoke as though there were a great difference; but it was man-talk +and you did not understand it. + +Then he gathered you into the big, dark chair and pushed you way out on +his knees and scrunched your cheeks in his hands and ate your face all +up with his big eyes. When he spoke at last, his voice was way down deep +like a bass drum. + +"Little Boy Jack," he said, "you must never, never, never forget your +Dear Mother!" + +His words and the bir-r-r of them shook you like a leaf. + +"But what was my Dear Mother like?" you whimpered. You had never seen +your Mother. + +Then your Father jumped up and walked hard on the creaky floor. When he +turned round again, his eyes were all wet and shiny like a brown +stained-glass window. + +"What was your Dear Mother like?" he repeated. "Your Dear Mother was +like--was like--the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea. And your +Dear Mother's name was 'Clarice.' I give it to you for a Memorial. What +better Memorial could a little boy have than his Dear Mother's name? And +there is a date--" His voice grew suddenly harsh and hard like iron, and +his lips puckered on his words as with a taste of rust--"there is a +date--the 26th of April--No, that is too hard a date for a little boy's +memory! It was a Thursday. I give you Thursday for your--Happy-Day. +'Clarice' for a Memorial, and Thursday for your Happy-Day." His words +began to beat on you like blows. "As--long--as--you--live," he cried, +"be very kind to any one who is named 'Clarice.' And no matter what Time +brings you--weeks, months, years, centuries--_keep Thursday for your +Happy-Day_. No cruelty must ever defame it, no malice, no gross +bitterness." + +Then he crushed you close to him for the millionth, billionth fraction +of a second, and went away, while you stayed behind in the scary +black-oak library, feeling as big and achy and responsible as you used +to feel when you and your Dear Father were carrying a heavy suit-case +together and your Dear Father let go his share just a moment to light +his brown cigar. It gave you a beautiful feeling in your head, but way +off in your stomach it tugged some. + +So you crept away to bed at last, and dreamed that on a shining path +leading straight from your front door to Heaven you had to carry all +alone two perfectly huge suit-cases packed tight with love, and one of +the suit-cases was marked "Clarice" and one was marked "Thursday." Tug, +tug, tug, you went, and stumble, stumble, stumble, but your Dear Father +could not help you at all because he was perfectly busy carrying a fat +leather bag, some golf sticks, and a bull-terrier for a strange lady. + +It was not a pleasant dream, and you screamed out so loud in the night +that the Housekeeper-Woman had to come and comfort you. It was the +Housekeeper-Woman who told you that on the morrow your Father was going +far off across the salt seas. It was the Housekeeper-Woman who told you +that you, yourself, were to be given away to a Grandmother-Lady in +Massachusetts. It was also the Housekeeper-Woman who told you that your +puppy dog Bruno--Bruno the big, the black, the curly, the waggy, was not +to be included in the family gift to the Grandmother-Lady. Everybody +reasoned, it seemed, that you would not need Bruno because there would +be so many other dogs in Massachusetts. That was just the trouble. They +_would_ all be "other dogs." It was Bruno that you wanted, for he was +the only _dog_, just as _you_ were the only _boy_ in the world. All the +rest were only "other boys." You could have explained the matter +perfectly to your Father if the Housekeeper-Woman had not made you cry +so that you broke your explainer. But later in the night the most +beautiful thought came to you. At first perhaps it tasted a little bit +sly in your mouth, but after a second it spread like ginger, warm and +sweet over your whole body except your toes, and you crept out of bed +like a flannel ghost and fumbled your way down the black hall to your +Dear Father's room and woke him shamelessly from his sleep. His eyes in +the moonlight gleamed like two frightened dreams. + +"Dear Father," you cried--you could hardly get the words fast enough out +of your mouth--"Dear--Father--I--do--not--think--Bruno--is--a--very--good +--name--for--a--big--black--dog--I--am--going--to--name--him--Clarice +--instead!" + +That was how you and Bruno-Clarice happened to celebrate together your +first Happy-Day with a long, magic, joggling train journey to +Massachusetts--the only original _boy_ and the only original _dog_ in +all the world. + +The Grandmother-Lady proved to be a very pleasant purple sort of +person. Exactly whose Grandmother she was, you never found out. She was +not your Father's mother. She was not your Mother's mother. With these +links missing, whose Grandmother could she be? You could hardly press +the matter further without subjecting her to the possible mortification +of confessing that she was only adopted. Maybe, crudest of all, she was +just a Paid-Grandmother. + +The Grandmother-Lady lived in a perfectly brown house in a perfectly +green garden on the edge of a perfectly blue ocean. That was the Sight +of it. Salted mignonette was the Smell of it. And a fresh wind flapping +through tall poplar trees was always and forever the Sound of it. + +The brown house itself was the living image of a prim, old-fashioned +bureau backed up bleakly to the street, with its piazza side yanked out +boldly into the garden like a riotous bureau drawer, through which the +Rising Sun rummaged every morning for some particular new shade of +scarlet or yellow nasturtiums. As though quite shocked by such bizarre +untidiness, the green garden ran tattling like mad down to the ocean and +was most frantically shooed back again, so that its little trees and +shrubs and flowers fluttered in a perpetual nervous panic of not knowing +which way to blow. + +[Illustration: The blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all] + +But the blue ocean was the most wonderful thing of all. Never was there +such an ocean! Right from the far-away edge of the sky it came, roaring, +ranting, rumpling, till it broke against the beach all white and frilly +like the Grandmother-Lady's best ruching. It was morning when you saw +the ocean first, and its pleasant waters gleamed like a gorgeous, +bright-blue looking-glass covered with paper ships all filled with Other +Boys' fathers. It was not till the first night came down--black and +mournful and moany--it was not till the first night came down that you +saw that the ocean was Much Too Large. There in your chill linen bed, +with the fear of Sea and Night and Strangers upon you, you discovered a +very strange droll thing--that your Father was a Person and might +therefore leave you, but that your Mother was a _feeling_ and would +never, never, never forsake you. Bruno-Clarice, slapping his fat, black +tail against your bedroom floor, was something of a _feeling_ too. + +Most fortunately for your well-being, the Grandmother-Lady's house was +not too isolated from its neighbors. To be sure, a tall, stiff hedge +separated the green garden from the lavender-and-pink garden next door, +but a great scraggly hole in the hedge gave a beautiful prickly zest to +friendly communication. + +More than this, two children lived on the other side of the hedge. +You had never had any playmates before in all your life! + +One of the children was just Another Boy--a duplicate of you. But the +other one was--_the only original girl_. Next to the big ocean, she was +the surprise of your life. She wore skirts instead of clothes. She wore +curls instead of hair. She wore stockings instead of legs. She cried +when you laughed. She laughed when you cried. She was funny from the +very first second, even when the Boy asked you if your big dog would +bite. The Boy stood off and kept right on asking: "Will he bite? Will he +bite? _W-i-l-l_ he _bite_?" But the Girl took a great rough stick and +pried open Bruno-Clarice's tusky mouth _to see if he would_, and when he +_g-r-o-w-l-e-d_, she just kissed him smack on his black nose and called +him "A Precious," and said, "Why, of course he'll bite." + +The Boy was ten years old--a year older, and much fatter than you. His +name was Sam. The Girl was only eight years old, and you could not tell +at first whether she was thin or fat, she was so ruffledy. She had a +horrid dressy name, "Sophia." But everybody called her Ladykin. + +Oh, it is fun to make a boat that will flop sideways through the waves. +It is fun to make a windmill that will whirl and whirl in the grass. It +is fun to make an education. It is fun to make a fortune. But most of +anything in the world it is fun to make a _friend_! + +You had never made a _friend_ before. First of all you asked, "How old +are you?" "Can you do fractions?" "Can you name the capes on the west +coast of Africa?" "What is your favorite color? Green? Blue? Pink? Red? +Or yellow?" Sam voted for green. Ladykin chose green _and_ blue _and_ +pink _and_ red _and_ yellow, _also_ purple. Then you asked, "Which are +you most afraid of, the Judgment Day or a Submarine Boat?" Sam chose the +Submarine Boat right off, so you had to take the Judgment Day, which was +not a very pleasant fear to have for a pet. Ladykin declared that she +wasn't afraid of anything in the world except of Being Homely. Wasn't +that a silly fear? Then you got a little more intimate and asked, "What +is your Father's business?" Sam and Ladykin's Father kept a huge candy +store. It was mortifying to have to confess that your Father was only an +Artist, but you laid great stress on his large eyes and his long +fingers. + +Then you three went off to the sandy beach and climbed up on a great +huddly gray rock to watch the huge yellow sun go down all shiny and +important, like a twenty-dollar gold piece in a wad of pink cotton +batting. The tide was going out, too, the mean old "injun-giver," +taking back all the pretty, chuckling pebbles, the shining ropes of +seaweed, the dear salt secrets it had brought so teasingly to your feet +a few hours earlier. You were very lonesome. But not till the gold and +pink was almost gone from the sky did you screw your courage up to its +supreme point. First you threw four stones very far out into the surf, +then-- + +"What--is--your--Mother--like?" you whispered. + +Ladykin went to her answer with impetuous certainty: + +"Our Mother," she announced, "is fat and short and wears skin-tight +dresses, and is President of the Woman's Club, and is sometimes cross." + +A great glory came upon you and you clutched for wonder at the choking +neck of your little blouse. + +"M-y Mother," you said, "m-y Mother is like the Flash of a White Wing +across a Stormy Sea!" + +You started to say more, but with a wild war-whoop of amusement, Sam +lost his balance and fell sprawling into the sand. "Oh, what a funny +Mother!" he shouted, but Ladykin jumped down on him furiously and began +to kick him with her scarlet sandals. "Hush! hush!" she cried, "Jack's +Mother is dead!" and then in an instant she had clambered back to your +side again and snuggled her little soft girl-cheek close against yours, +while with one tremulous hand she pointed way out beyond the surf line +where a solitary, snow-white gull swooped down into the Blue. "Look!" +she gasped, "L-o-o-k!" and when you turned to her with a sudden gulping +sob, she kissed you warm and sweet upon your lips. + +It was not a Father kiss with two tight arms and a scrunching pain. It +was not a Grandmother-Lady kiss complimenting your clean face. It was +not a Bruno-Clarice kiss, mute and wistful and lappy. There was no pain +in it. There was no compliment. There was no doggish fealty. There was +just _sweetness_. + +Then you looked straight at Ladykin, and Ladykin looked straight at you, +looked and _looked_ and LOOKED, and you both gasped right out loud +before the first miracle of your life, the Miracle of the Mating of +Thoughts. Without a word of suggestion, without a word of explanation, +you and Ladykin clasped hands and tiptoed stealthily off to the very +edge of the water, and knelt down slushily in the sand, and stooped way +over, oh, way, way over, with the cold waves squirting up your cuffs; +and kissed two perfectly round floaty kisses out to the White Sea-Gull, +and after a minute the White Gull rose in the sky, swirled round and +round and round, stopped for a second, and then with a wild cry swooped +down again into the blue--Once! Twice! and then with a great fountainy +splash of wings rose high in the air like a white silk kite and went +scudding off like mad into the Grayness, then into the Blackness, then +into the Nothingness of the night. And you stayed behind on that +pleasant, safe, sandy edge of things with all the sweetness gone from +your lips, and nothing left you in all the world but the thudding of +your heart, and a queer, sad, salty pucker on your tongue that gave you +a thirst not so much for water as for _life_. + +Oh, you learned a great deal about living in those first few days and +weeks and months at the Grandmother-Lady's house. + +You learned, for instance, that if you wanted to _do_ things, Boys were +best; but if you wanted to _think_ things, then Girls were infinitely +superior. You, yourself, were part Thinker and part Doer. + +Sam was a _doer_ from start to finish, strong of limb, long of wind, +sturdy of purpose. But Sam was certainly prosy in his head. Ladykin, on +the contrary, had "gray matter" that jumped like a squirrel in its cage, +and fled hither and yon, and turned somersaults, and leaped through +hoops, and was altogether alert beyond description. But she could not +_do_ things. She could not stay in the nice ocean five minutes without +turning blue. She could not climb a tree without falling and bumping +her nose. She could not fight without getting mad. Out of these proven +facts you evolved a beautiful theory that if Thinky-Girls could only be +taught to _do_ things, they would make the most perfect playmates in all +the wide, wide world. Yet somehow you never made a theory to improve +Sam, though Sam's inability to think invariably filled you with a very +cross, unholy contempt for him, while Ladykin's inability to _do_ only +served to thrill you with the most delicious, sweet, puffy pride in +_yourself_. + +Sam was very evidently a Person. Ladykin was a Feeling. You began almost +at once to distinguish between Persons and Feelings. Anything that +straightened out your head was a Person. Anything that puckered up your +heart was a Feeling. Your Father, you had found out, was a Person. The +Grandmother-Lady was a Person. Sam was a Person. Sunshine was a Person. +A Horse was a Person. A Chrysanthemum was a Person. But your Mother was +a Feeling. And Ladykin was a Feeling. And Bruno-Clarice was a Feeling. +And the Ocean Blue was a Feeling. And a Church Organ was a Feeling. And +the Smell of a June Rose was a Feeling. Perhaps your Happy-Day was the +biggest Feeling of All. + +Thursday, to be sure, came only once a week, but--_such a Thursday_! +Even now, if you shut your eyes tight and gasp a quick breath, you can +sense once more the sweet, crisp joy of fresh, starched clothes, and +the pleasant, shiny jingle of new pennies in your small white cotton +pockets. White? Yes; your Father had said that always on that day you +should go like a little white Flag of Truce on an embassy to Fate. And +Happiness? Could anything in the world make more for happiness than to +be perfectly clean in the morning and perfectly dirty at night, with +something rather frisky to eat for dinner, and Sam and Ladykin +invariably invited to supper? Your Happy-Day was your Sacristy, too. +Nobody ever punished you on Thursday. Nobody was ever cross to you on +Thursday. Even if you were very black-bad the last thing Wednesday +night, you were perfectly, blissfully, lusciously safe until Friday +morning. + +Oh, a Happy-Day was a very simple thing to manage compared with the +terrible difficulties of being kind to everybody named "Clarice." There +was _nobody_ named Clarice! In all the town, in all the directory, in +all the telephone books, you and Ladykin could not find a single person +named Clarice. Once in a New York newspaper you read about a young +Clarice-Lady of such and such a street who fell and broke her hip; and +you took twenty shiny pennies of your money and bought a beautiful, +hand-painted celluloid brush-holder and sent it to her; but you never, +never heard that it did her any good. You did not want your Father to +be mad at you, but Ladykin reasoned you out of your possible worry by +showing you how if you ever saw your Father again you could at least +plant your feet firmly, fold your arms, puff out your chest, and affirm +distinctly: "Dear Father, I have _never_ been cruel to _any one_ named +'Clarice.'" Ladykin knew perfectly well how to manage it. Ladykin knew +perfectly well how to manage everything. + +Sam was the stupid one. Sam took a certain pleasure in Bruno-Clarice, +but he never realized that Bruno-Clarice was a sacred dog. Sam thought +that it was very fine for you to have a Happy-Day, with Clean Clothes, +and Ice-Cream, and Pennies, but he never almost _burst_ with the wonder +of the day. + +Sam thought that it was pleasant enough for you to have a dead Mother +who was like "the flash of a white wing across a stormy sea," but he did +not see any possible connection between that fact and stoning all the +white sea-gulls in sight. Ladykin, on the contrary, told Sam distinctly +that she'd knock his head off if he ever hit a gull, but fortunately--or +unfortunately--Ladykin's aim was not so sure as Sam's. It was you who +had to stay behind on the beach and pommel more than half the life out +of Sam while Ladykin, pink as a posy in her best muslin, scared to death +of wet and cold, plunged out to her little neck in the chopping waves +to rescue a quivering fluff of feathers that struggled broken-winged +against the cruel, drowning water. "Gulls are gulls!" persisted Sam with +every blubbering breath. "Gulls are _Mothers_!" gasped Ladykin, +staggering from the surf all drenched and dripping like a bursted +water-pail. "Well, boy-gulls are gulls!" Sam screamed in a perfect +explosion of outraged _truth_. But Ladykin defied him to the last. +Through chattering teeth her vehement reassertion sounded like some +horrid, wicked blasphemy: "Nnnnnnnnnnnn-oo! Bbb-o-y ggggg-ggulls are +MMMMMM-Mothers too!" Then with that pulsing drench of feathers cuddled +close to her breast, she struggled off alone to the house to have the +Croup, while you and Sam went cheerily up the beach to find some shiners +and some seaweed for your new gull hospital. Not till you were quite an +old boy did you ever find out what became of that gull. Sacred +Bruno-Clarice ate him. Ladykin, it seems, knew always what had happened +to him, but she never dreamed of telling you till you were old enough to +bear it. To Ladykin, Truth out of season was sourer than strawberries at +Christmas time. + +Sam would have told you _anything_ the very first second that he found +it out. Sam was perfectly great for Truth. He could tell more Great +Black Truths in one day than there were thunder-clouds in the whole hot +summer sky. This quality made Sam just a little bit dangerous in a +crowd. He was always and forever shooting people with Truths that he +didn't know were loaded. He was always telling the Grandmother-Lady, for +instance, that her hair looked _exactly_ like a wig. He was always +telling Ladykin that she smelled of raspberry jam. He was always telling +you that he didn't believe your Father really loved you. Oh, everything +that Sam said was as straight and lank and honest as a lady's hair when +it's out of crimp. Nothing in the world could be straighter than that. + +But sometimes, when you had played sturdily with Sam for a good many +hours, you used to coax Ladykin off all alone to the puffy, +scorchy-looking smoke tree, where you could cuddle up on the rustic seat +and rest your Honesty. And when you were thoroughly rested, you used to +stretch your little arms behind your yawning face and beg: + +"Oh, Ladykin, wouldn't you, couldn't you _please_ say something curly?" + +Ladykin's mind seemed to curl perfectly naturally. The crimp of it never +came out. Almost any time you could take her words that looked so little +and tight, and unwind them and unwind them into yards and yards and +yards of pleasant, magic meanings. + +There were no magic meanings in Sam's words. Sam, for instance, could +throw as many as a hundred stones into the water, yet when he got +through he just lay down in the sand and groaned, "Oh, how tired I am! +Oh, how tired I am!" But Ladykin, after she'd thrown only two +stones--one that hit the beach, and one that hit you--would stand right +up and declare that her arm was "_be_-witched." Tired? No, not a bit of +it, but "_be_-witched!" Hadn't she seen, hadn't you seen, hadn't +everybody seen that _perfectly awful_ sea-witch's head that popped out +of the wave just after she had thrown her first stone? Oh, indeed, and +it wasn't the first time either that she had been so frightened! Once +when she was sitting on the sand counting sea-shells, hadn't the Witch +swooped right out of the water and grabbed her legs? So, now if you +wanted to break the cruel spell, save Ladykin's life, marry Ladykin, and +live in a solid turquoise palace--where all the walls were papered with +foreign postage-stamps, and no duplicates--you, not Sam, but _you_, +_you_, chosen of all the world, must go down to the little harbor +between the two highest, reariest rocks and stick a spiked stick through +every wave that came in. There was no other way! Now you, yourself, +might possibly have invented the witch, but you never, never would have +thought of harpooning the waves and falling in and drowning your best +suit, while Ladykin rested her arms. + +Yet in the enforced punishment of an early bedtime you were not +bereaved, but lay in rapturous delight untangling the minutest detail of +Ladykin's words, till turquoise cities blazed like a turquoise +flashlight across your startled senses, wonderful little princes and +princesses kowtowed perpetually to royal Mother Ladykin and royal Father +Yourself, and life-sized postage-stamps loomed so lusciously large that +envelopes had to be pasted to the corners of stamps instead of stamps to +the corners of envelopes. And before you had half straightened out the +whole thought, you were fast asleep, and then fast awake, and it was +suddenly morning! Oh, it is very comforting to have a playmate who can +say curly things. + +Sometimes, too, when Sam's and Ladykin's Mother had been rude to them +about brushing their teeth or tracking perfectly good mud into the +parlor, and Sam had gone off to ease his sorrow, scating hens or stoning +cats, you and Ladykin would steal down to the gray rock on the beach to +watch the white, soft, pleasant sea-gulls. There were times, you think, +when Ladykin wished that _her_ Mother was a sea-gull. Then you used to +wonder and wonder about your own Mother, and tell Ladykin all over +again about the creaky, black-oak library, and the smoky, smelly +hearth-fire with the hurt red book, and the blue-flowered muslin sleeve +beckoning and beckoning to you; and Ladykin used to explain to you how, +very evidently, you were the only souvenir that your Father did not +burn. With that thought in mind, you used to try and guess what could +possibly have happened long ago on a Thursday to make a Happy-Day +forever and ever. Ladykin said that of course it was something about +"Love," but when you ran off to ask the Grandmother-Lady just exactly +what Love was, the Grandmother-Lady only laughed and said that Love was +a fever that came along a few years after chicken-pox and measles and +scarlet fever. Ladykin was saucy about it. "That may be _true_," Ladykin +acknowledged, "but _t'aint so_!" Then you went and found Sam and asked +him if he knew what Love was. Sam knew at once. Sam said that Love was +the feeling that one had for mathematics. Now that was all _bosh_, for +the feeling that you and Ladykin had for Mathematics would not have made +a Happy-Day for a cow. + +But even if there were a great many things that you could not find out, +it was a good deal of fun to grow up. Apart from a few stomach-aches +and two or three gnawing pains in the calves of your legs, aging was a +most alluring process. + +Springs, summers, autumns, winters, went hurtling over one another, till +all of a sudden, without the slightest effort on your part, you were +fifteen years old, Bruno-Clarice had grown to be a sober, industrious, +middle-aged dog, Sam was idolatrously addicted to geometry, and Ladykin +subscribed to a fashion magazine for the benefit of her paper dolls. + +Most astonishing of all, however, your Father had invited you to go to +Germany and visit him. It was a glorious invitation. You were all +athrill with the geography and love of it. Already your nostrils +crinkled to the lure of tar and oakum. Already your vision feasted on +the parrot-colored crowds of Come-igrants and Go-igrants that huddled +along the wharves with their eager, jabbering faces and their soggy, +wadded feet. + +Oh, the prospect of the journey was a most beautiful experience, but +when the actual Eve of Departure came, the scissors of separation +gleamed rather hard and sharp in the air, and you hunched your neck a +little bit wincingly before the final crunching snip. That last evening +was a dreadful evening. The Cook sat sobbing in the kitchen. The +Grandmother-Lady's eyes were red with sewing. The air was all heavy with +_goingawayness_. To escape the strangle of it, you fled to the beach +with Bruno-Clarice tagging in mournful excitement at your heels, his +smutty nose all a-sniff with the foreboding leathery smell of trunks and +bags. There on the beach in a scoopy hollow of sand backed up against +the old gray rock were Sam and Ladykin. Sam's round, fat face was +fretted like a pug-dog's, and Ladykin's eyes were blinky-wet with tears. + +It was not a pleasant time to say good-by. It had been a beautiful, +smooth-skied day, crisp and fresh and bright-colored as a "Sunday +supplement"; but now the clouds piled gray and crumpled in the west like +a poor stale, thrown-away newspaper, with just a sputtering blaze in one +corner like the kindling of a half-hearted match. + +"_Please_ be kind to Bruno-Clarice," you began; "I shall miss you very +much--very, very much. But I will come back--" + +"N--o, I do not think you will come back," said Ladykin. "You will go to +Germany to live with your Father and your Play-Mother, and you will +gargle all your words like a throat tonic till you don't know how to be +friends in English any more; and even if you did come back Bruno-Clarice +would bark at you, and I shall be married, and Sam will have a long, +black beard." + +Now you could have borne Ladykin's marriage; you could even have borne +Bruno-Clarice's barking at you; but you could not, simply could not bear +the thought of Sam's growing a long black beard without you. Even +Ladykin with all her wonderfulness sat utterly helpless before the +terrible, unexpected climax of her words. It was Sam who leaped into the +breach. The clutch of his hand was like the grit of sand-paper. "Jack," +he stammered, "Jack, I promise you--anyhow I won't _cut_ my beard until +you come!" + + * * * * * + +It was certainly only the thought of Sam's faithful beard that sustained +you on your rough, blue voyage to Germany. It was certainly only the +thought of Sam's faithful beard that rallied your smitten forces when +you met your Father face to face and saw him reel back white as chalk +against the silky shoulder of your Play-Mother, and hide his eyes behind +the crook of his elbow. + +It is not pleasant to make people turn white as chalk, even in Germany. +Worse yet, every day your Father grew whiter and whiter and whiter, and +every day your pretty Play-Mother wrinkled her forehead more and more in +a strange, hurty sort of trouble. Never once did you dare think of +Ladykin. Never once did you dare think of Bruno-Clarice. You just named +all your upper teeth "Sam," and all your lower teeth "Sam," and ground +them into each other all day long--"Sam! Sam! Sam!" over and over and +over. There were also no Happy-Days in Germany, and nobody ever spoke of +Clarice. + +You were pretty glad at last after a month when your Father came to you +with his most beautiful face and his most loving hands, and said: + +"Little Boy Jack, there is no use in it. You have got to go away again. +You are a wound that will not heal. It is your Dear Mother's eyes. It is +your Dear Mother's mouth. It is your Dear Mother's smile. God forgive +me, but I cannot bear it! I am going to send you away to school in +England." + +You put your finger cautiously up to your eyes and traced their round, +firm contour. Your Mother's eyes? They felt like two heaping +teaspoonfuls of tears. Your Mother's mouth? Desperately you poked it +into a smile. "Going to send me away to school in England?" you +stammered. "Never mind. Sam will not cut his beard until I come." + +"_What?_" cried your Father in a great voice. "_W-h-a-t?_" + +But you pretended that you had not said anything, because it was +boy-talk and your Father would not have understood it. + +Never, never, never had you seen your Father so suffering; yet when he +took you in his arms and raised your face to his and quizzed you: +"Little Boy Jack, do you love me? Do you love me?" you scanned him out +of your Mother's made-over eyes and answered him out of your Mother's +made-over mouth: + +"N--o! N--o! I _don't_ love you!" + +And he jumped back as though you had knifed him, and then laughed out +loud as though he were glad of the pain. + +"But I ask you this," he persisted, and the shine in his eyes was like a +sunset glow in the deep woods, and the touch of his hands would have +lured you into the very heart of the flame. "It is not probable," he +said, "that your Dear Mother's child and mine will go through Life +without knowing Love. When your Love-Time comes, if you understand all +Love's tragedies _then_, and forgive me, will you send me a message?" + +"Oh, yes," you cried out suddenly. "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" and +clung to him frantically with your own boyish hands, and kissed him with +your Mother's mouth. But you did not love him. It was your Mother's +mouth that loved him. + +So you went away to school in England and grew up and up and up some +more; but somehow this latter growing up was a dull process without +savor, and the years went by as briefly and inconsequently as a few +dismissing sentences in a paragraph. There were plenty of people to work +with and play with, but almost no one to think with, and your +hard-wrought book knowledge faded to nothingness compared to the three +paramount convictions of your youthful experience, namely, that neither +coffee nor ocean nor Life tasted as good as it smelled. + +And then when you were almost twenty-one you met "Clarice"! + +It was a Christmas supper party in a cafe. Some one looked up suddenly +and called the name "Clarice! Clarice!" and when your startled eyes shot +to the mark and saw her there in her easy, dashing, gorgeous beauty, +something in your brain curdled, and all the lonesomeness, all the +mystery, all the elusiveness of Life pounded suddenly in your heart like +a captured Will-o'-the-Wisp. "Clarice?" Here, then, was the end of your +journey? The eternal kindness? The flash of a white wing across _your_ +stormy sea? "Clarice!" And you looked across unbidden into her eyes and +smiled at her a gaspy, astonished smile that brought the strangest light +into her face. + +Oh, but Clarice was very beautiful! Never had you seen such a type. Her +hair was black and solemn as crape. Her eyes were bright and noisy as +jet. Her heart was barren as a blot of ink. And she took your dreamy, +paper-white boy life and scourged it like a tongue of flame across a +field of Easter lilies! + +And when the wonder of the flame was gone, you sat aghast in your room +among the charred, scorched fragments of your Youth. The thirst for +death was very strong upon you, and the little, long, narrow cup of your +revolver gleamed very brimming full of death's elixir. Even the +June-time could not save you. Your Mother's name was an agony on your +lips. The frenzied reiteration of your thoughts scraped on your brain +like a sledge on gravel. You would drink very deep, you thought, of your +little slim cup of death. Yet the thing that was tortured within you was +scarcely Love, and you had no message of understanding for your Father. +Just with wrecked life, wrecked faith, wrecked courage, you huddled at +your desk, catching your breath for a second before you should reach out +your fretted fingers for the little cool cunning, toy hand of Death. + +"Once again," you said to yourself, "once again I will listen to the +children's voices in the garden. Once again I will lure the smell of +June roses into my heart." The children prattled and passed. Your hand +reached out and fumbled. Once more you shut your scalding eyes, hunched +up your shoulders, and breathed in like an ultimate tide the ravishing +sweetness of the June--one breath, another, another--longer--longer. Oh, +God in Heaven, if one could only die of such an anesthetic--smothered +with sweetbrier, spiced with saffron, buried in bride roses. _Die?_ Your +wild hand leaped to the task and faltered stricken before the strange, +grim fact that blazed across your consciousness. It was Thursday. It was +your "Happy-Day!" Your Father's words came pounding back like blows into +your sore brain! Your "Happy-Day!" "No cruelty must ever defame it, no +malice, no gross bitterness!" Somewhere in air or sky or sea there was a +Mother-Woman who must not be _hurt_. Your "Happy-Day?" HAPPY-DAY? Rage +and sorrow broke like a fearful storm across your senses, and you put +down your head and cried like a child. + +Tears? Again you felt on your lips that queer, sad, salty pucker, that +taste of the sea that gave you a thirst not so much for water as for +Life. _Life?_ _Life?_ The thought thrilled through you like new nerves. +Your ashy pulses burst into flame. Your dull heart jumped. Your vision +woke. Your memory quickened. You saw the ocean, blue, blue, blue before +you. You saw a small, rude boy lie sprawling in the sand. You saw a +little girl's face, wild with wonder, tremulous with sweetness. You felt +again the flutter of a kiss against your cheek. The little girl +who--understood. Your salt lips puckered into a smile, and the smile ran +back like a fuse into the inherent happiness of your heart. Sam? +Ladykin? Home? You began to laugh! Haggard, harried, wrecked, ruined, +you began to laugh! Then, faltering like a hysterical girl, you +staggered down the stairs, out of the house, along the streets to the +cable office, and sent a message to Sam. + +"How long is your beard?" the message said. "How long is your beard?" +Just that silly, magic message across miles and miles and miles of waves +and seaweeds. How the great cable must have simpered with the +foolishness of it. How the pink coral must have chuckled. How the big, +tin-foiled fishes must have wondered. + +You did not wait for an answer. What answer was there? You could picture +Sam standing in stupefied awkwardness before the amazing nothingness of +such a message. But Ladykin would remember. Oh, yes, Ladykin would +remember. You could see her peering past Sam's shoulder and snatching +out suddenly for the fluttering paper. Ladykin would remember. What were +six years? + +Joy sang in your heart like a purr of a sea-shell. The blue blur of +ocean, the dear green smell of mignonette, the rush of wind through the +poplar trees were tonic memories to you. You did not wait to pack your +things. You did not wait to notify your Father. You sped like a wild boy +to the first wharf, to the first steamer that you could find. + +The week's ocean voyage went by like a year. The silly waves dragged on +the steamer like a tired child on the skirts of its mother. Haste raged +in your veins like a fever. You wanted to throw all the fat, heavy +passengers overboard. You wanted to swim ahead with a towing rope in +your teeth. You wanted to kill the Captain when he stuttered. You wanted +to flay the cook for serving an extra course for dinner. Yet all the +while the huge machinery throbbed in rhythm, "Time _will_ pass. It +_always does_. It _always does_. It _always does_." + +And then at last you stood again on your Native Land, _alive, well, +vital, at home_! + +With the sensation of an unbroken miracle, you found your way again to +the little Massachusetts sea town, along the peaceful village walk to +the big brown house that turned so bleakly to the street. There on the +steps, wonder of wonders, you found two elderly people, Bruno-Clarice +and the Grandmother-Lady, and your knees gave out very suddenly and you +sank down beside Bruno-Clarice and smothered the bark right out of him. + +"Good lack!" cried the Grandmother-Lady, "Good _lack_!" and made so +much noise that Sam himself came running like mad from the next house; +and though he had no beard, you liked him very much and shook and shook +his hand until he squealed. + +With the Grandmother-Lady plying you with questions, and Sam feeling +your muscle, and Bruno-Clarice trying to crawl into your lap like a +pug-dog baby, it was almost half an hour before you had a chance to ask, + +"Where is Ladykin?" + +"She's down on the beach," said Sam. "I'll go and help you find her." + +You looked at Sam speculatively. "I'll give you ten dollars if you +won't," you said. + +Sam considered the matter gravely before he began to grin. "I wouldn't +think of charging you more than five," he acquiesced. + +So you went off with Bruno-Clarice hobbling close at your heels to find +Ladykin for yourself. When you saw her she was perched up on the very +top of the huddly gray rock playing tinkle tunes on her mandolin, and +you stole up so quietly behind her that she did not see you till you +were close beside her. + +Then she turned very suddenly and looked down upon you and pretended +that she did not know you, with her color coming and going all luminous +and intermittent like a pink and white flashlight. In six years you had +not seen such a wonderful playmatey face. + +"Who are you?" she asked. "Who are you?" + +"I am 'Little Boy Jack' come back to marry you," you began, but +something in the wistful, shy girl-tenderness of her face and eyes +choked your bantering words right off in your throat. + +"Yes, Ladykin," you said, "I have come home, and I am very tired, and I +am very sad, and I am very lonesome, and I have not been a very good +boy. But please be good to me! I am so lonesome I cannot wait to make +love to you. Oh, _please_, _please_ love me _n-o-w_. I _need_ you to +love me N-O-W!" + +Ladykin frowned. It was not a cross frown. It was just a sort of a cosy +corner for her thoughts. Surprise cuddled there, and a sorry feeling, +and a great tenderness. + +"You have not been a very good boy?" she repeated after you. + +The memory of a year crowded blackly upon you. "No," you said, "I have +not been a very good boy, and I am very suffering-sad. But _please_ love +me, and forgive me. No one has ever loved me!" + +The surprise and the sorry feeling in Ladykin's forehead crowded +together to make room for something that was just _womanliness_. She +began to smile. It was the smile of a hurt person when the opiate first +begins to overtake the pain. + +"Oh, I'm sure it was an accidental badness," she volunteered softly. "If +I were accidentally bad, you would forgive _me_, wouldn't you?" + +"Oh, yes, yes, yes," you stammered, and reached up your lonesome hands +to her. + +"Then you don't have to make love," she whispered. "It's all made," and +slipped down into your arms. + +But something troubled her, and after a minute she pushed you away and +tried to renounce you. + +"But it is not Thursday," she sobbed; "it is Wednesday; and my name is +not 'Clarice'; it is Ladykin." + +Then all the boyishness died out of you--the sweet, idle reveries, the +mystic responsibilities. You shook your Father's dream from your eyes, +and squared your shoulders for your own realities. + +"A Man must make his own Happy-Day," you cried, "and a Man must choose +his own Mate!" + +Before your vehemence Ladykin winced back against the rock and eyed you +fearsomely. + +"Oh, I will love you and cherish you," you pleaded. + +But Ladykin shook her head. "That is not enough," she whispered. There +was a kind of holy scorn in her eyes. + +Then a White Gull flashed like an apparition before your sight. +Ladykin's whole figure drooped, her cheek paled, her little mouth +quivered, her vision narrowed. There with her eyes on the White Gull and +your eyes fixed on hers, you saw her shy thoughts journey into the +Future. You saw her eyes smile, sadden, brim with tears, smile again, +and come homing back to you with a timid, glad surprise as she realized +that your thoughts too had gone all the long journey with her. + +She reached out one little hand to you. It was very cold. + +"If I should pass like the flash of a white wing," she questioned, +"would you be true to me--and _mine_?" + +The Past, the Present, the Future rushed over you in tumult. Your lips +could hardly crowd so big a vow into so small a word. "Oh, YES, YES, +YES!" you cried. + +In reverent mastery you raised her face to yours. "A Man must make his +own Happy-Day," you repeated. "A Man must make his own Happy-Day!" + +Timorously, yet assentingly, she came back to your arms. The whisper of +her lips against your ear was like the flutter of a rose petal. + +"It will be Wednesday, then," she said, "for us and--ours." + +Clanging a strident bell across the magic stillness of the garden, Sam +bore down upon you like a steam-engine out of tune. + +"Oh, I say," he shouted, "for heaven's sake cut it out and come to +supper." + +The startled impulse of your refusal faded before the mute appeal in +Ladykin's eyes. + +"All right," you answered; "but first I must go and cable 'love' to my +Father." + +"Oh, hurry!" cried Ladykin. Her word was crumpled and shy as a kiss. + +"Oh, hurry!" cried Sam. His thought was straight and frank as a knife +and fork. + +Joy sang in your heart like a prayer that rhymed. Your eager heart was +pounding like a race horse. The clouds in the sky were scudding to +sunset. The surf on the beach seemed all out of breath. The green meadow +path to the village stretched like the paltriest trifle before a man's +fleet running pace. + +"But I can't hurry," you said, for Bruno-Clarice came poking his +grizzled old nose into your hand. "Oh, wait for me," he seemed to plead. +"Oh, please, _please_ wait for me." + + + + +THE RUNAWAY ROAD + + +THE Road ran spitefully up a steep, hot, rocky, utterly shadeless hill, +and then at the top turned suddenly in a flirty little green loop, and +looked back, and called "Follow me!" + +Wouldn't you have considered that a dare? + +The Girl and the White Pony certainly took it as such, and proceeded at +once to "follow," though the White Pony stumbled clatteringly on the +rolling stones, and the Girl had to cling for dear life to the rocking +pommels of her saddle. + +It was a cruel climb, puff--pant--scramble--dust--glare--every step of +the way, but when the two adventurers really reached the summit at last, +a great dark chestnut-tree loomed up for shade, every sweet-smelling +breeze in the world was there to welcome them, and the whole green +valley below stretched out before them in the shining, woodsy wonder of +high noon and high June. + +You know, yourself, just how the world looks and feels and smells at +high noon of a high June! + +Even a pony stands majestically on the summit of a high hill--neck +arched, eyes rolling, mane blowing, nostrils quivering. Even a girl +feels a tug of power at her heart. + +And still the Road cried "Follow me!" though it never turned its head +again in doubt or coquetry. It was a kind-looking Road now, all gracious +and sweet and tender, with rustly green overhead, and soft green +underfoot, and the pleasant, buzzing drone of bees along its clovered +edges. + +"We might just as well follow it and see," argued the Girl, and the +White Pony took the suggestion with a wild leap and cantered eagerly +along the desired way. + +It was such an extraordinarily lonesome Road that you could scarcely +blame it for picking up companionship as best it might. There was +stretch after stretch of pasture, and stretch after stretch of woodland, +and stretch after stretch of black-stumped clearing--with never a house +to cheer it, or a human echo to break its ghostly stillness. Yet with +all its isolation and remoteness the landscape had that certain vibrant, +vivid air of self-consciousness that thrills you with an uncanny sense +of an invisible presence--somewhere. It's just a trick of June! + +Tramps, pirates, even cannibals, seemed deliciously imminent. The Girl +remembered reading once of a lonely woman bicyclist who met a runaway +circus elephant at the turn of a country road. Twelve miles from home is +a long way off to have anything happen. + +Her heart began to quicken with the joyous sort of fear that is one of +the prime sweets of youth. It's only when fear reaches your head that it +hurts. The loneliness, the mystery, the uncertainty, were tonic to her. +The color spotted in her cheeks. Her eyes narrowed defensively to every +startling detail of woods or turf. Her ears rang with the sudden, new +acuteness of her hearing. She felt as though she and the White Pony were +stalking right across the heartstrings of the earth. Once the White Pony +caught his foot and sent a scared sob into her throat. + +Oh, everything was magic! A little brown rabbit reared up in the Road as +big as a kangaroo, and beckoned her with his ears. A red-winged +blackbird bulky as an eagle trumpeted a swamp-secret to her as he +passed. A tiny chipmunk in the wall loomed like a lion in his lair, and +sent a huge rock crashing like an avalanche into the field. The whole +green and blue world seemed tingling with toy noises, made suddenly big. + +The White Pony's mouth was frothing with the curb. The White Pony's +coat was reeking wet with noon and nervousness, but the Girl sat tense +and smiling and important in her saddle, as though just once for all +time she was the only italicized word in the Book of Life. + +"It's just the kind of a road that I like to travel alone," she gasped, +a little breathlessly, "but if I were engaged and my man let me do it, I +should consider him--careless." + +That was exactly the sort of Road it was! + +Yet after three or four miles the White Pony shook all the skittishness +out of his feet, and settled down to a zigzag, browsing-clover gait, and +the Girl relaxed at last, and sat loosely to ease her own muscles, and +slid the bridle trustingly across the White Pony's neck. + +Then she began to sing. Never in all her life had she sung outside the +restricting cage of house or church. A green and blue loneliness on a +June day is really the only place in the world that is big enough for +singing! In dainty ballad, in impassioned hymn, in opera, in anthem, the +Girl's voice, high and sweet and wild as a boy's, rang out in fluttering +tremolo. Over and over again, as though half unconscious of the words, +but enraptured with the melody, she dwelt at last on that dream-song of +every ecstatic young soul who tarries for a moment on the edge of an +unfocused exultation: + + The King of Love my Shepherd is + Whose Goodness faileth never, + I nothing lack if I am _his_ + And he is _mine f-o-r-e-v-e-r_! + Forever!----Is _mine f-o-r-e-v-e-r_! + +Her pulsing, passionate crescendo came echoing back to her from a gray +granite hillside, and sent a reverent thrill of power across her senses. + +Then--suddenly--into her rhapsody broke the astonishing, harsh clash and +clatter of a hay-rake. The White Pony lurched, stood stock-still, gave a +hideous snort of terror, grabbed the bit in his teeth, and bolted like +mad on and on and on and on till a quick curve in the Road dashed him +into the very lap of a tiny old gray farmhouse that completely blocked +the way. + +In another second he would have stumbled across the threshold and hurled +his rider precipitously into the front hall if she had not at that very +second recovered her "yank-hold" on his churning mouth and wrenched him +back so hard that any animal but a horse would have sat down. + +Then the girl straightened up very tremblingly in her saddle and said +"O--h!" + +Some one had to say something, for there in the dooryard close beside +her were an Artist, a Bossy, and a White Bulldog, who all +instantaneously, without the slightest cordiality or greeting, stopped +whatever they were doing and began to stare at her. + +Now it's all very well to go dashing like mad into a person's front yard +on a runaway horse. Anybody could see that you didn't do it on purpose; +but when at last you have stopped dashing, what are you going to do +next, particularly when the Road doesn't go any farther? Shall you say, +"Isn't this a pleasant summer?" or "What did you really like best at the +theater last winter?" If you gallop out it looks as though you were +frightened. If you amble out, you might hear some one laugh behind your +back, which is infinitely worse than being grabbed on the stairs. + +The situation was excessively awkward. And the Artist evidently was not +clever in conversational emergencies. + +The Girl straightened her gray slouch hat. Then she ran the cool metal +butt of her riding-whip back and forth under the White Pony's sweltering +mane. Then she swallowed very hard once or twice and remarked inanely: + +"Did the Road go right into the house?" + +"Yes," said the Artist, with a nervous blue dab at his canvas. + +The Girl's ire rose at his churlishness. "If that is so," she announced, +"if the Road really went right into the house, I'll just wait here a +minute till it comes out again." + +But the Artist never smiled an atom to make things easier, though the +Bossy began to tug most joyously at his chain, and the White Bulldog +rolled over and over with delight. + +The Girl would have given anything now to escape at full speed down the +Road along which she had come, but escape of that sort had suddenly +assumed the qualities of a panicky, ignominious retreat, so she parried +for time by riding right up behind the Artist and watching him change a +perfectly blue canvas sky into a regular tornado. + +"Oh, do you think it's going to rain as hard as that?" she teased. +"Perhaps I'd better settle down here until the storm is over." + +But the Artist never smiled or spoke. He just painted and sniffed as +though he worked by steam, and when his ears had finally grown so +crimson that apoplexy seemed impending, she took pity on his miserable +embarrassment and backed even the shadow of her pony out of his sight. +Then with a desperate effort at perfect ease she remarked: + +"Well--I guess I'll ride round to your back door. Perhaps the Road came +out that way and went on without me." + +But though she and the White Pony hunted in every direction through +white birch and swaying alders, they found no possible path by which the +Road could have escaped, and were obliged at last to return with some +hauteur, and make as dignified an exit as possible from the scene. + +The Artist bowed with stiff relief at their departure, but the White +Bulldog preceded them with friendly romps and yells, and the Bossy +pulled up his iron hitching stake and chain and came clanking after them +with furious bounds and jingles. + +No one but the White Pony would have stood the racket for a moment, and +even the White Pony began to feel a bit staccato in his feet. The Girl +kept her saddle like a circus rider, but the amusement on her face was +just a trifle studied. It was a fine procession, clamor and all, with +the Bulldog scouting ahead, the White Pony following skittishly, and the +Bossy see-sawing behind, clanking a dungeon chain that left a cloud of +dust as far as you could see. + +It must have startled the Youngish Man who loomed up suddenly at a bend +of the Road and caught the wriggling Bulldog in his arms. + +"Who comes here?" he cried with a regular war-whoop of a challenge. "Who +comes here?" + +"Just a lady and a bossy," said the Girl, as she reined in the Pony +abruptly, and sent the Bossy caroming off into the bushes. + +"But it's my brother's Bossy," protested the Youngish Man. + +"Oh, no, it isn't," the Girl explained a little wearily. "It's mine now. +It chose between us." + +The Youngish Man eyed her with some amusement. + +"Did you really see my brother at the house?" he probed. + +The Girl nodded, flushing. It was very hot, and she was beginning to +feel just a wee bit faint and hungry and irritable. + +"Yes, I saw your brother," she reiterated, "but I didn't seem to care +for him. I rode by mistake right into the picture he was painting. +There's probably paint all over me. It was very awkward, and he didn't +do a thing to make it easier. I abominate that kind of person. If a man +can't do anything else he can always ask you if you wouldn't like a +drink of water!" She scowled indignantly. "It was the Road's fault +anyway! I was just exploring, and the Road cried 'Follow me,' and I +followed--a little faster than I meant to--and the Road ran right into +your house and shut the door. Oh, _slammed_ the door right in my face!" + +"Would you like a drink of water, _now_?" suggested the Youngish Man. + +"No, I thank you," said the Girl, with stubborn dignity, and then +weakened to the alluring offer with "But my White Pony is very cruelly +thirsty." + +Both adventurers looked pretty jaded with heat and dust. + +The Youngish Man led the way into a tiny, pungent wood-path that ended +in a gurgling spring-hole, where the White Pony nuzzled his nose with +deep-breathed, dripping satisfaction, while the Girl kept to her saddle +and looked down on the Youngish Man with frank interest. + +He looked very picturesque and brown and clever in his khaki suit with a +game bag slung across his shoulder. + +"You're not a hunter," she exclaimed impulsively. "You're not a +hunter--because you haven't any gun." + +"No," said the Man, "I'm a collector." + +The Girl cried out with pleasure and clapped her hands. "A +collector?--oh, goody! So am I! What do you collect? Minerals? Oh--dear! +_Mine_ is lots more interesting. I collect adventures." + +"Adventures?" The Man made no slightest effort to conceal his amused +curiosity. "Adventures? Now I call that a jolly thing to collect. Is it +a good country to work in? And what have you found?" + +The Girl smiled at him appreciatively--a little flitting, whimsical +sort of smile, and commenced to rummage in the blouse of her white +shirt-waist, from which she finally produced a small, red-covered +notebook. She fluttered its diminutive pages for a second, and then +began to laugh: + +"You'd better sit down if you really want to hear what I've found." + +The Man dropped comfortably into place beside the spring and watched +her. She was very watchable. Some people have to be beautiful to rivet +your attention. Some people _don't_ have to be. It's all a matter of +temperament. Her hair was very, very brown, though, and her eyes were +deep and wide and hazel, and the red in her cheeks came and went with +every throb of her heart. + +"Of course," she explained apologetically, "of course I haven't found a +lot of things yet--I've only been working at it a little while. But I've +collected a 'Runaway Accident with the Rural Free-Delivery Man.' It was +awfully scary and interesting. And I've collected a 'Den of Little Foxes +Down in the Woods Back of My House,' and 'Two Sunrises with a Crazy +Woman who Thinks that the Sun Can't Get Up Until She Does,' and I've +collected a 'Country Camp-Meeting all Hallelujahs and By Goshes,' and a +'Circus Where I Spent All Day with the Snake-Charmer,' and a 'Midnight +Ride Alone through the Rosedale Woods in a Thunder-Storm.' Of course, +as I say, I haven't found a lot of things yet, but then it's only the +middle of June and I have two more weeks' vacation yet." + +The Man put back his head and laughed, but it was a pleasant sort of +laugh that flooded all the stern lines in his face. + +"I'm sure I never thought of making a regular business of collecting +adventures," he admitted, "but it certainly is a splendid idea. But +aren't you ever afraid?" he asked. "Aren't you ever afraid, for +instance, riding round on a lonesome trip like this?" + +The Girl laughed. "Yes," she acknowledged, "I'm often afraid +of--squirrels--and falling twigs--and black-looking stumps. I'm often +afraid of toy noises and toy fears--but I never saw a real fear in all +my life. Even when you jumped up in the Road I wasn't afraid of +you--because you are a gentleman--and--gentlemen are my friends." + +"Have you many friends?" asked the Man. The question seemed amusingly +justifiable. "You look to me about eighteen. Girls of your age are +usually too busy collecting Love to collect anything else--even ideas. +Have you collected any Love?" + +The Girl threw out her hands in joking protest. "Collected any Love? +Why, I don't even know what Love looks like! Maybe what I'd collect +would be--poison ivy." Her eyes narrowed a little. Her voice quivered +the merest trifle. "There's a Boy at Home--who talks--a little--about +it. But how can I tell that it's Love?" + +Her sudden vehemency startled him. "Where _is_ 'Home'?" he asked. + +For immediate answer the Girl slipped down from the White Pony's back, +and loosened the saddle creakingly before she helped herself to a long, +dripping draught from the birch cup that hung just over the spring. + +"You're nice to talk to," she acknowledged, "and almost no one is nice +to talk to. It's a whole year since I've talked right out to any one! +Where do I live? Well, my headquarters are in New York, but my +heartquarters are over at Rosedale. There's quite a difference, you +know!" + +"Yes," said the Man, "I remember--there used to--be--quite a difference. +But how did you ever happen to think of collecting adventures?" + +The girl pulled at the White Pony's mane for a long, hesitating moment, +then she turned and looked searchingly into the Man's face. She very +evidently liked what she saw. + +"I collect adventures because I am lonesome!" Her voice shook a little, +but her eyes were frankly untroubled. "I collect adventures because the +life that interests me doesn't happen to come to me, and I have to go +out and search for it!--I'm companion all the year to a woman who +doesn't know right from wrong in any dear, big sense, but who could +define propriety and impropriety to you till your ears split. And all +her friends are just like her. They haven't any mental muscle to them. +It's just dress and etiquette, dress and etiquette, dress and etiquette! +So I have to live all alone in my head, and think and think and think, +till my poor brain churns and overlaps like a surf without any shore. Do +you know what I mean? Then when my June vacation comes, I run right off +to Rosedale and collect all the adventures I possibly can to take back +with me for the long dreary year. Things to think about, you know, when +I have to sit up at night giving medicine, or when I have to mend heavy +black silk clothes, or when the dinners are so long that I could scream +over the extra delay of a salad course. So I make June a sort of pranky, +fancy-dress party for my soul. Do you know what I mean?" + +"Yes, I know what you mean," said the Man. "I know just what you mean. +You mean you're eighteen. That's the whole of it. You mean that there's +no fence to your pasture, no bottom to your cup, no crust to your bread. +You mean that you can't sleep at night for the pounding of your heart. +You mean most of all that there's no limit to your vision. You're +inordinately keen after life. That's all. You'll get over it!" + +"_I won't get over it!_" There was fire in the Girl's eyes and she drew +her breath sharply. "I say I _won't_ get over it! There's nothing on +earth that could stale me! If I live to be a hundred I sha'n't +wither!--why, how could I?" + +Buoyant, blooming, aquiver with startled emotions, she threw out her +hands with a passionate gesture of protest. + +The Man shook his shoulders and jumped up. "Perhaps you're right," he +muttered. "Perhaps you _are_ the kind that won't ever grow old. If you +are--Heaven help you! Youth's nothing but a wound, anyway. Do you want +to be a wound that never heals?" He laughed stridently. + +Then the Girl began to fumble through sudden tears at the buckles of her +saddle. Her growing hunger and faintness and the heat of the day were +telling on her. + +"You must think me a crazy fool," she confessed, "the way I have plunged +into personalities. Why, I could go a whole year with an alien +running-mate and never breathe a word or a sigh about myself, but with +some people--the second you see them you know they are part of your +chord. Chord is the only term in music that I understand, and I +understand that as though I had made the word myself." She tried to +laugh. "Now I'm going home! I've had a good time. You seem almost like a +friend. I've never had a talky friend." + +And she was in her saddle and half-way down the wood-path before his +mind quickened to cry out "Stop! Wait a minute!" + +A little out of breath he caught up with her, and stood for a moment +like an embarrassed schoolboy, though his face in the sunlight was as +old as young forty. + +"I'm afraid you haven't had much of an adventure this morning," he +volunteered whimsically. "If you really want an adventure why don't you +come back to the house and have dinner with my brother and me? There's +no one else there. Think how it would tease my brother! You're twelve or +fifteen miles from home, and it's already two o'clock and very hot. My +brother has done some pictures that are going to be talked about next +winter, and I--I've got rather a conspicuous position ahead of me in +Washington. Wouldn't it amuse you a little bit afterward, if any one +spoke of us, to remember our little farmhouse dinner to-day?--Would you +be afraid to come?" His last question was very direct. + +A look came into the Girl's eyes that was very good for a man to see. + +"Why, of course I wouldn't be afraid to come," she said. "Gentlemen are +my friends." + +But she was shy about going, just the same, with a certain frank, boyish +shyness that only served to emphasize the general artlessness of her +verve. + +With a quick dive into the bushes the Man collared the Bossy and +transferred his clanking chain to the bit of the astonished White Pony. + +"Now you've got to come," he laughed up at her, and the whole party +started back for the tiny old gray farmhouse where the Artist greeted +them with sad concern. + +"I've brought Miss Girl back to have dinner with us," announced the +Pony-leader cheerfully, relying on his brother's serious nature to +overlook any strangeness of nomenclature. "You evidently didn't remember +meeting her at Mrs. Moyne's house-party last spring?" + +The Girl fell readily into the game. She turned the White Pony loose in +the dooryard, and then went into the queer old kitchen, rolled up her +sleeves, wound herself round with a blue-checked apron, and commenced to +work. She had a deft touch at household matters, and the Man followed +her about as humbly as though he himself had not been adequately +providing meals for the past two months. + +The color rose high in the Girl's cheeks, and her voice took on the +thrill and breathiness of amused excitement. Wherever she found a huddle +of best china or linen or silver she raided it for her use, and the +table flared forth at last with a dainty, inconsequent prettiness that +quite defied the Artist's prescribed rules for beauty. + +It was a funny dinner, with an endless amount of significant bantering +going on right under the Artist's sunburned nose. Yet for all the mirth +of the situation, the Girl had quite a chance to study the face of her +special host, in all its full detail of worldliness, of spirituality, of +hardness, of sweetness. Her final impression, as her first one, was of a +wonderful affinity and congeniality. "His face is like a harbor for all +my stormy thoughts," was the way she described it to herself. + +After dinner the three washed up the dishes as sedately as though they +had been working together day-in, day-out through the whole season, and +after that the Artist escaped as quickly as possible to catch a cloud +effect which he seemed to consider preposterously vital. + +Then with a dreary little feeling of a prize-pleasure all spent and +gone, the Girl went over to the mirror in the sitting-room and pinned on +her gray slouch hat and patted her hair and straightened her belt. + +But it was not her own reflection that interested her most. The mirror +made a fine frame for the whole quaint room, with its dingy landscape +wall-paper from which the scarlet petticoat of a shepherdess or the +vivid green of a garland stood out with cheerful crudity. The battered, +blackened fireplace was lurid here and there with gleams of copper +kettles, and a huge gray cat purred comfortably in the curving seat of a +sun-baked rocking-chair. + +It was a good picture to take home in your mind for remembrance, when +walls should be brick and rooms ornate and life hackneyed, and the Girl +shut her eyes for a second, experimentally, to fix the vision in her +consciousness. + +When she opened her eyes again the Man was struggling through the +doorway dragging a small, heavy trunk. + +"Oh, don't go yet!" he exclaimed. "Here are a lot of your things in this +trunk. I brought them in to show you." + +And he dragged the trunk to the middle of the room and knelt down on the +floor and commenced to unlock it. + +"_My_ things?" cried the Girl in amazement, and ran across the room and +sat down on the floor beside him. "_My_ things?" + +There was a funny little twist to the Man's mouth that never relaxed all +the time he was tinkering with the lock. "Yes--_your_ things," was all +he said till the catch yielded finally, and he raised the cover to +display the full contents to his companion's curious eyes. + +[Illustration: Instinctively she clasped it to her] + +"Oh--_books_!" she cried out, with a sudden, sweeping flush of +comprehension, and darted her hand into the dusty pile and pulled out a +well-worn copy of the Rubaiyat. Instinctively she clasped it to her. + +"I thought so!" said the Youngish Man quizzically. "I thought that was +one of your books. + + "When Time lets slip a little, perfect hour, + Oh, take it--for it will not come again." + +His eyes narrowed, and his hands reached nervously to regain possession +of the volume. Then he laughed. + +"_I_, also, used to think that Life was made for me," he scoffed +teasingly. "It's a glorious idea--as long as it lasts! You take every +harsh old happening and every flimsy friendship and line it with your +own silk, and then sit by and say, 'Oh, _isn't_ the World a rustly, +shimmery, luxurious place!' And all the time the happening _is_ harsh, +and the friendship _is_ flimsy, and it's just your own perishable silk +lining that does the rustle and the shimmer and the luxury act. Oh, I +suppose that's 'woman talk' about silk linings, but I know a thing or +two, even if I am a man." + +But the radiancy of the Girl's face defied his cynicism utterly. Her +eyes were absolutely fathomless with Youth. + +Then his mood changed suddenly. He reached out with a little brooding +gesture of protection. "These are my college books," he confided, "my +Dream Library. I've scarcely thought of them for a dozen years. I don't +meet many dreamers nowadays. You've probably got a lot of newer books +than these, but I'll wager you anything in the world that every book +here is a precious friend to you. I shouldn't wonder if your own copies +opened exactly to the same places. Here's young Keats with his shadowing +tragedy. How you have mooned over it. And here's Tennyson. What about +the starlit vision: + + "And on her lover's arm she leant, + And round her waist she felt it fold,--" + +The Girl took up the words softly in unison: + + "And far across the hills they went + To that new world which is the old." + +In rushing, eager tenderness she browsed through one book after another, +sometimes silently, sometimes with a little crooning quotation, where +corners were turned down. And when she had quite finished, her eyes +were like stars, and she looked up tremulously, and whispered: + +"Why, we--like--just--the--same--things." + +But the Youngish Man did not smile back at her. His face in that second +turned suddenly old-looking and haggard and gray. He threw the books +back into their places, and slammed the trunk-cover with a bang. + +For just the infinitesimal fraction of a second the Man and the Girl +looked into each other's eyes. For just that infinitesimal fraction of a +second the Man's eyes were as unfathomable as the Girl's. + +Then with a great sniff and scratching and whine, the White Bulldog +pushed his way into the room, and the Girl jumped up in alarm to note +that the sun was dropping very low in the west, and that the shadows of +late afternoon crept palpably over her companion's face. + +For a moment the two stood awkwardly without a word, and then the Girl +with a conscious effort at lightness queried: + +"But _where_ did the Runaway Road go to? I _must_ find out." + +The Youngish Man turned as though something had startled him. + +"Wouldn't you rather leave things just as they are?" he asked. + +"NO!" The Girl stamped her foot vehemently. "NO! I want everything. I +want the whole adventure." + +"The whole adventure?" The Youngish Man winced at the phrase, and then +laughed to cover his seriousness. + +"All right," he acquiesced. "I'll show you just where the Runaway Road +goes to." + +Without further explanation he stepped to the dooryard and scooped up +two heaping handfuls of gravel from the Road. As he came back into the +room he trailed a little line of earth across the floor to the foot of +the stairs, and threw the remaining handful up the steps just as a +heedless child might have done. + +"Go follow your Runaway Road," he smiled, "and see where it leads to, if +you are so eager! I'm going down to the woods to see if my brother is +quite lost in his clouds." + +Wasn't that _another_ dare? It seemed a craven thing to tease for a +climax and then shirk it. She had never shirked anything yet that was +right, no matter how unusual it was. + +She started for the stairs. One step, two steps, three steps, four +steps--her riding-boots grated on the gravel. "Oh, you funny Runaway +Road," she trembled, "where _do_ you go to?" + +At the top stairs a tiny waft of earth turned her definitely into the +first doorway. + +She took one step across the threshold, and then stood stock-still and +stared. It was a _woman's room_. And from floor to ceiling and from wall +to wall flaunted an incongruous, moneyed effort to blot out all +temperament and pang and trenchant life-history from one spot at least +of the little old gray farmhouse. Bauble was there, and fashion and +novelty, but the whole gay decoration looked and felt like the sumptuous +dressing of a child whom one _hated_. + +With a gasp of surprise the Girl went over and looked at herself in the +mirror. + +"Wouldn't I look queer in a room like this?" she whispered to herself. +But she didn't look queer at all. She only felt queer, like a flatted +note. + +Then she hurried right down the stairs again, and went out in the yard, +and caught the White Pony, and climbed up into her saddle. + +The Youngish Man came running to say good-by. + +"Well?" he said. + +The Girl's eyes were steady as her hand. If her heart fluttered there +was no sign of it. + +"Why, it was a _woman's_ room," she answered to his inflection. + +"Yes," said the Youngish Man quite simply. "It is my wife's room. My +wife is in Europe getting her winter clothes. All people do not +happen--to--like--the--same--things." + +The Girl put out her hand to him with bright-faced friendliness. + +"In Europe?" she repeated. "Indeed, I shall not be so local when I think +of her. Wherever she is--all the time--I shall always think of your wife +as being--most of anything else--_in luck_." + +She drew back her hand and chirruped to the White Pony, but the Youngish +Man detained her. + +"Wait a second," he begged. "Here's a copy of Matthew Arnold for you to +take home as a token, though there's only one thing in it for us, and +you won't care for that until you are forty. You can play it's about the +mountains that you pass going home. Here it is: + + "Unaffrighted by the silence round them, + Undistracted by the sights they see, + _THESE_ demand not that the things about them + Yield them love, amusement, sympathy." + +"Rather cracked-ice comfort, isn't it?" the Girl laughed as she tucked +the little book into her blouse. + +"Rather," said the Youngish Man, "but cracked ice is good for fevers, +and Youth is the most raging fever that I know about." + +Then he stood back from the White Pony, and smiled quizzically, and the +Girl turned the White Pony's head, and started down the Road. + +Just before the first curve in the alders, she whirled in her saddle and +looked back. The Youngish Man was still standing there watching her, and +she held up her hand as a final signal. Then the Road curved her out of +sight. + +It was chilly now in the gloaming shade of the woods, and home seemed a +long way off. After a mile or two the White Pony dragged as though his +feet were sore, and when she tried to force him into a jarring canter +the sharp corners of the Matthew Arnold book goaded cruelly against her +breast. + +"It isn't going to be a very pleasant ride," she said. "But it was quite +an adventure. I don't know whether to call it the 'Adventure of the +Runaway Road' or the 'Adventure of the Little Perfect Hour.'" + +Then she shivered a little and tried to keep the White Pony in the +rapidly fading sun spots of the Road, but the shadows grew thicker and +cracklier and more lonesome every minute, and the only familiar sound of +life to be heard was 'way off in the distance, where some little lost +bossy was calling plaintively for its mother. + +There were plenty of unfamiliar sounds, though. Things--nothing special, +but just Things--sighed mournfully from behind a looming boulder. +Something dark, with gleaming eyes, scudded madly through the woods. A +ghastly, mawkish chill like tomb-air blew dankly from the swamp. Myriads +of tiny insects droned venomously. The White Pony shied at a flash of +heat lightning, and stumbled bunglingly on a rolling stone. Worst of +all, far behind her, sounded the unmistakable tagging step of some +stealthy creature. + +For the first time in her life the girl was frightened--hideously, +sickeningly frightened of Night! + +Back in the open clearing round the tiny farmhouse, the light, of +course, still lingered in a lulling yellow-gray. It would be an hour +yet, she reasoned, before the great, black loneliness settled there. She +could picture the little, simple, homely, companionable activities of +early evening--the sputter of a candle, the good smell of a pipe, the +steamy murmur of a boiling kettle. O--h! But could one go back wildly +and say: "It is darker and cracklier than I supposed in the woods, and I +am a wilful Girl, and there are fifteen wilful miles between me and +home--and there is a cemetery on the way, and a new grave--and a +squalid camp of gypsies--and a broken bridge--_and I am afraid! What +shall I do?_" + +She laughed aloud at the absurdity, and cut at the White Pony sharply +with her whip. It would be lighter, she thought, on the open village +road below the hill. + +Love? Amusement? Sympathy? She shook her young fist defiantly at the +hulking contour of a stolid, bored old mountain that loomed up through a +gap in the trees. "_Drat_ Self-sufficiency," she cursed, with a vehement +little-girl curse. "I won't be a bored old Mountain. I _won't_! I +_won't_! I _won't_!" + +All her short, eager life, it seemed, she had been floundering like a +stranger in a strange land--no father or mother, no chum, no friend, no +lover, no anything--and now just for a flash, just for one "little, +perfect hour" she had found a voice at last that _spoke her own +language_, and the voice belonged to a Man who belonged to another +woman! + +She remembered her morning's singing with a bitter pang. "_Nothing_ is +mine forever. Nothing, _nothing_, NOTHING!" she sobbed. + +A great, black, smothering isolation like a pall settled down over her, +and seemed to pin itself with a stab through her heart. Everybody, once +in his time, has tried to imagine his Dearest-one absolutely +nonexistent, unborn, and tortured himself with the possibility of such a +ghostly vacuum in his life. To the Girl suddenly it seemed as though +puzzled, lonely, unmated, all her short years, she had stumbled now +precipitously on the Great Cause Of It--a _vacuum_. It was not that she +had lost any one, or missed any one. _It was simply that some one had +never been born!_ + +The thought filled her with a whimsical new terror. She pounded the +White Pony into a gallop and covered the last half-mile of the Runaway +Road. At the crest of the hill the valley vista brightened palely and +the White Pony gave a whimper of awakened home instinct. Cautiously, +warily, with legs folding like a jack-knife he began the hazardous +descent. + +Was he sleepy? Was he clumsy? Was he footsore? Just before the Runaway +Road smoothed out into the village highway his knees wilted suddenly +under him, and he pitched headlong with a hideous lurch that sent the +Girl hurtling over his neck into a pitiful, cluttered heap among the +dust and stones, where he came back after his first panicky run, and +blew over her with dilated nostrils, and whimpered a little before he +strayed off to a clover patch on the highway below. + +Twilight deepened to darkness. Darkness quickened at last to stars. It +was Night, real Night, black alike in meadow, wood, and dooryard, +before the Girl opened her eyes again. Part of an orange moon, waning, +wasted, decadent, glowed dully in the sky. + +For a long time, stark-still and numb, she lay staring up into space, +conscious of nothing except consciousness. It was a floaty sort of +feeling. Was she dead? That was the first thought that twittered in her +brain. Gradually, though, the reassuring edges of her cheeks loomed into +sight, and a beautiful, real pain racked along her spine and through her +side. It was the pain that whetted her curiosity. "If it's my neck +that's broken," she reasoned, "it's all over. If it's my heart it's only +just begun." + +Then she wriggled one hand very cautiously, and a White Doggish +Something came over and licked her fingers. It felt very kind and +refreshing. + +Now and then on the road below, a carriage rattled by, or one voice +called to another. She didn't exactly care that no one noticed her, or +rescued her--indeed, she was perfectly, sluggishly comfortable--but she +remembered with alarming distinctness that once, on a scorching city +pavement, she had gone right by a bruised purple pansy that lay wilting +underfoot. She could remember just how it looked. It had a funny little +face, purple and yellow, and all twisted with pain. And she had gone +right by. And she felt very sorry about it now. + +She was still thinking about that purple pansy an hour later, when she +heard the screeching toot of an automobile, the snort of a horse, and +the terrified clatter of hoofs up the hill. Then the White Doggish +Something leaped up and barked a sharp, fluttery bark like a signal. + +The next thing she knew, pleasant voices and a lantern were coming +toward her. "They will be frightened," she thought, "to find a body in +the Road." So, "Coo-o! Coo-o!" she cried in a faint little voice. + +Then quickly a bright light poured into her face, and she swallowed very +hard with her eyes for a whole minute before she could see that two men +were bending over her. One of the men was just a man, but the other one +was the Boy From Home. As soon as she saw him she began to cry very +softly to herself, and the Boy From Home took her right up in his great, +strong arms and carried her down to the cushioned comfort of the +automobile. + +"Where--did--you--come--from?" she whispered smotheringly into his +shoulder. + +The harried, boyish face broke brightly into a smile. + +"I came from Rosedale to-night, to find _you_!" he said. "But they sent +me up here on business to survey a new Road." + +"To survey a new Road?" she gasped. "That's--good. All the Roads that I +know--go--to--Other People's Homes." + +Her head began to droop limply to one side. She felt her senses reeling +away from her again. "If--I--loved--you," she hurried to ask, +"would--you--make--me--a--safe Road--_all my own_?" + +The Boy From Home gave a scathing glance at the hill that reared like a +crag out of the darkness. + +"If I couldn't make a safer Road than _that_--" he began, then stopped +abruptly, with a sudden flash of illumination, and brushed his trembling +lips across her hair. + +"I'll make you the safest, smoothest Road that ever happened," he said, +"if I have to dig it with my fingers and gnaw it with my teeth." + +A little, snuggling sigh of contentment slipped from the Girl's lips. + +"Do--you--suppose," she whispered, +"do--you--suppose--that--after--all--_this_--was--the real--end--of--the +Runaway Road?" + + + + +SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER + + +MONDAY, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it had rained. Day in, day +out, day in, day out, day in, it had rained and rained and rained and +rained and rained, till by Friday night the great blue mountains loomed +like a chunk of ruined velvet, and the fog along the valley lay thick +and gross as mildewed porridge. + +It was a horrid storm. Slop and shiver and rotting leaves were rampant. +Even in Alrik's snug little house the chairs were wetter than moss. +Clothes in the closets hung lank and clammy as undried bathing-suits. +Worst of all, across every mirror lay a breathy, sad gray mist, as +though ghosts had been back to whimper there over their lost faces. + +It had never been so before in the first week of October. + +There were seven of us who used to tryst there together every year in +the gorgeous Scotch-plaid Autumn, when the reds and greens and blues +and browns and yellows lapped and overlapped like a festive little kilt +for the Young Winter, and every crisp, sweet day that dawned was like +the taste of cider and the smell of grapes. + +That is the kind of October well worth living, and seven people make a +wonderfully proper number to play together in the country, particularly +if six of you are men and women, and one of you is a dog. + +Yet, after all, it was October, and October alone, that lured us. We +certainly differed astonishingly in most of our other tastes. + +Three of us belonged to the peaceful Maine woods--Alrik and Alrik's Wife +and his Growly-Dog-Gruff. Four of us came from the rackety cities--the +Partridge Hunter, the Blue Serge Man, the Pretty Lady, and Myself--a +newspaper woman. + +Incidentally, I may add that the Blue Serge Man and the Pretty Lady were +husband and wife, but did not care much about it, having been married, +very evidently, in some gorgeously ornate silver-plated emotion that +they had mistaken at the time for the "sterling" article. The shine and +beauty of the marriage had long since worn away, leaving things quite a +little bit edgy here and there. Alrik's young spouse was, wonder of +wonders, a transplanted New York chorus girl. No other biographical +data are necessary except that Growly-Dog-Gruff was a brawling, black, +fat-faced mongrel whose complete sense of humor had been slammed in the +door at a very early age. For some inexplainable reason, he seemed to +hold all the rest of the crowd responsible for the catastrophe, but was +wildly devoted to me. He showed this devotion by never biting me as hard +as he bit the others. + +Yet even with Growly-Dog-Gruff included among our assets, we had always +considered ourselves an extremely superior crowd. + +There were seven of us, I said, who _used_ to tryst there together every +autumn. But now, since the year before, three of us had _gone_, Alrik's +Wife, Alrik's Dog, and the Blue Serge Man. So the four of us who +remained huddled very close around the fire on that stormy, dreary, +ghastly first night of our reunion, and talked-talked-talked and +laughed-laughed-laughed just as fast as we possibly could for fear that +a moment's silence would plunge us all down, whether or no, into the +sorrow-chasm that lurked so consciously on every side. Yet we certainly +looked and acted like a very jovial quartet. + +The Pretty Lady, to be sure, was a black wisp of crape in her prim, +four-footed chair; but Alrik's huge bulk tipped jauntily back against +the wainscoting in a gaudy-colored Mackinaw suit, with merely a broad +band of black across his left sleeve--as one who, neither affirming nor +denying the formalities of grief, would laconically warn the public at +large to "Keep Off My Sorrow." I liked Alrik, and I had liked Alrik's +Wife. But I had loved Alrik's Dog. I do not care especially for temper +in women, but a surly dog, or a surly man, is as irresistibly funny to +me as Chinese music, there is so little plot to any of them. + +[Illustration: The four of us who remained huddled very close around the +fire] + +But now on the hearth-rug at my feet the Partridge Hunter lay in amiable +corduroy comfort, with the little puff of his pipe and his lips +throbbing out in pleasant, dozy regularity. He had traveled in Japan +since last we met, and one's blood flowed pink and gold and purple, +one's flesh turned silk, one's eyes onyx, before the wonder of his +narrative. + +No one was to be outdone in adventurous recital. Alrik had spent the +summer guiding a party of amateur sports along the Allagash, and his +garbled account of it would have stocked a comic paper for a month. The +Pretty Lady had christened a warship, and her eager, brooky voice went +rippling and churtling through such major details as blue chiffon velvet +and the goldiest kind of champagne. Even Alrik's raw-boned Old Mother, +clinking dirty supper dishes out in the kitchen, had a crackle-voiced +tale of excitement to contribute about a floundering spring bear that +she had soused with soap-suds from her woodshed window. + +But all the time the storm grew worse and worse. The poor, tiny old +house tore and writhed under the strain. Now and again a shutter blew +shrilly loose, or a chimney brick thudded down, or a great sheet of rain +sucked itself up like a whirlpool and then came drenching and hurtling +itself in a perfect frenzy against the frail, clattering window-panes. + +It was a good night for four friends to be housed together in a red, red +room, where the low ceiling brooded over you like a face and the warped +floor curled around you like the cuddle of a hand. A living-room should +always be red, I think, like the walls of a heart, and cluttered, as +Alrik's was, with every possible object, mean or fine, funny or +pathetic, that typifies the owner's personal experience. + +Yet there are people, I suppose, people stuffed with arts, not hearts, +who would have monotoned Alrik's bright walls a dull brain-gray, ripped +down the furs, the fishing-tackle, the stuffed owls, the gaudy +theatrical posters, the shelf of glasses, the spooky hair wreaths, the +really terrible crayon portrait of some much-beloved ancient grandame; +and, supplementing it all with a single, homesick Japanese print, +yearning across the vacuum at a chalky white bust of a perfect stranger +like Psyche or Ruskin, would have called the whole effect more +"successful." Just as though the crudest possible room that represents +the affections is not infinitely more worth while than the most esoteric +apartment that represents the intellect. + +There were certainly no vacuums in Alrik's room. Everything in it was +crowded and scrunched together like a hard, friendly hand-shake. It was +the most fiercely, primitively sincere room that I have ever seen, and +king or peasant therefore would have felt equally at home in it. Surely +no mere man could have crossed the humpy threshold without a blissful, +instinctive desire to keep on his hat and take off his boots. Alrik knew +how to make a room "homeful." Alrik knew everything in the world except +grammar. + +Red warmth, yellow cheer, and all-colored jollity were there with us. + +Faster and faster we talked, and louder and louder we laughed, until at +last, when the conversation lost its breath utterly, Alrik jumped up +with a grin and started our old friend the phonograph. His first choice +of music was a grotesque _duo_ by two back-yard cats. It was one of +those irresistibly silly minstrel things that would have exploded any +decent bishop in the midst of his sermon. Certainly no one of us had +ever yet been able to withstand it. _But now no bristling, injuriated +dog jumped from his sleep and charged like a whole regiment on the +perfectly innocent garden._ And the duo somehow seemed strangely flat. + +"Here is something we used to like," suggested Alrik desperately, and +started a splendid barytone rendering of "Drink to Me Only with Thine +Eyes." _But no high-pitched, mocking tenor voice took up the solemn +velvet song and flirted it like a cheap chiffon scarf._ And the Pretty +Lady rose very suddenly and went out to the kitchen indefinitely "for a +glass of water." It was funny about the Blue Serge Man. I had not liked +him overmuch, but I missed _not-liking-him_ with a crick in my heart +that was almost sorrow. + +"Oh, for heaven's sake try some other music!" cried the Partridge Hunter +venomously, and Alrik clutched out wildly for the first thing he could +reach. It was "Give My Regards to Broadway." We had practically worn out +the record the year before, but its mutilated remains whirred along, +dropping an occasional note or word, with the same cheerful spunk and +unconcern that characterized the song itself: + + "Give my regards to Broadway, + Remember me to Herald Square, + Tell all the--whirry--whirry, whirrrrry--whirrrrrrr + That I will soon be there." + +The Partridge Hunter began instantly to beat muffled time with his soft +felt slippers. Alrik plunged as usual into a fearfully clever and +clattery imitation of an ox shying at a street-car. _But what of it? No +wakened, sparkling-eyed girl came stealing forth from her corner to +cuddle her blazing cheek against the cool, brass-colored jowl of the +phonograph horn._ An All-Goneness is an amazing thing. It was strange +about Alrik's Wife. Her presence had been as negative as a dead gray +dove. But her _absence_ was like scarlet strung with bells! + +The evening began to drag out like a tortured rubber band getting ready +to snap. + +It was surely eleven o'clock before the Pretty Lady returned from the +kitchen with our hot lemonades. The tall glasses jingled together +pleasantly on the tray. The height was there, the breadth, the precious, +steaming fragrance. _But the Blue Serge Man had always mixed our +nightcaps for us._ + +With grandiloquent pleasantry, the Partridge Hunter jumped to his feet, +raised his glass, toasted "Happy Days," choked on the first swallow, +bungled his grasp, and dropped the whole glass in shattering, messy +fragments to the floor. + +"Lord," he muttered under his breath, "one could stand missing a fellow +in a church or a graveyard or a mournful sunset glow--but to miss him +in a foolish, folksy--hot lemonade!--Lord!" And he shook his shoulders +almost angrily and threw himself down again on the hearth-rug. + +The darkening room was warm as an oven now, and the great, soft, glowing +pile of apple-wood embers lured one's drowsy eyes like a flame-colored +pillow. No one spoke at all until midnight. + +But the clock had only just finished complaining about the hour when the +Partridge Hunter straightened up abruptly and cried out to no one in +particular: + +"Well, I simply can't bluff this out any longer. I've just _got_ to know +how it all happened!" + +No one stopped to question his meaning. No one stopped to parry with +word or phrase. Like two tense music-boxes wound to their utmost +resonance, but with mechanism only just that instant released, Alrik and +the Pretty Lady burst into sound. + +The Pretty Lady spoke first. Her breath was short and raspy and cross, +like the breath of a person who runs for a train--and misses it. + +"It was--in--Florida," she gasped, "the--last--of March. The sailboat +was a dreadful, flimsy, shattered thing. But he _would_ go out in +it--_alone_--storm or no storm!" She spoke with a sudden sense of +emotional importance, with a certain strange, fierce, new pride in the +shortcomings of her Man. "He must have swamped within an hour. They +found his boat. But they never found his body. Just as one could always +find his pocket, but never his watch--his purse, but never his money--his +song, but never his soul." Her broken self-control plunged deeper and +deeper into bitterness. "It was a stupid--wicked--wilful--accident," +she persisted, "and I can see him in his last, smothery--astonished-- +moment--just--as--as--plainly--as--though--I--had--been--there. +Do you think for an instant that he would swallow even--Death--without +making a fuss about it? Can't you hear him rage and sputter: '_This_ is +too salt! _This_ is too cold! Take it away and bring me another!' While +all the time his frenzied mind was racing up and down some precious, +memoried playground like the Harvard Stadium or the New York Hippodrome, +whimpering, 'Everybody'll be there except--_me_--except M-E!'" + +The Pretty Lady's voice took on a sudden hurt, left-out resentment. "Of +course," she hurried on, "he wasn't exactly sad to go--nothing could +make him sad. But I know that it must have made him very _mad_. He had +just bought a new automobile. And he had rented a summer place at +Marblehead. And he wanted to play tennis in June--" + +She paused for an instant's breath, and Alrik crashed like a moose into +the silence. + +"It was lung trouble!" he attested vehemently. "Cough, cough, cough, all +the time. It came on specially worse in April, and she died in May. She +wasn't never very strong, you know, but she'd been brought up in your +wicked old steam-heated New York, and she would persist in wearing +tissue-paper clothes right through our rotten icy winters up here. And +when I tried to dose her like the doctor said, with cod-liver oil or any +of them thick things, I couldn't fool her--she just up an' said it was +nothin' but liquid flannel, and spit it out and sassed me. And +Gruff--Growly-Dog-Gruff," he finished hastily, "I don't know what ailed +him. He jus' kind of followed along about June." + +The Partridge Hunter drew a long, heavy breath. When he spoke at last, +his voice sounded like the voice of a man who holds his hat in his hand, +and the puffs of smoke from his pipe made a sort of little halo round +his words. + +"Isn't it nice," he mused, "to think that while we four are cozying +here to-night in the same jolly old haunts, perhaps they three--Man, +Girl, and Dog--are cuddling off together somewhere in the big, +spooky Unknown, in the shade of a cloud, or the shine of a +star--talking--perhaps--about--_us_?" + +The whimsical comfort of the thought pleased me. I did not want any one +to be alone on such a night. + +But Alrick's tilted chair came crashing down on the floor with a +resounding whack. His eyes were blazing. + +"She _ain't_ with him!" he cried. "She _ain't_, she AIN'T, she A-I-N-'T! +I won't have it. Why, it's the middle of the night!" + +And in that electric instant I saw the Pretty Lady's face set rigidly, +all except her mouth, which twisted in my direction. + +"I'll wager she _is_ with him," she whispered under her breath. "She +always did tag him wherever he went!" + +Then I felt the toe of my slipper meet the recumbent elbow of the +Partridge Hunter. Had I reached out to him? Or had he reached back to +me? There was no time to find out, for the smooth, round conversation +shattered prickingly in the hand like a blown-glass bauble, and with +much nervous laughter and far-fetched joke-making, we rose, rummaged +round for our candles, and climbed upstairs to bed. + +Alrik's Old Mother burrowed into a corner under the eaves. + +The Pretty Lady had her usual room, and mine was next to hers. For a +lingering moment I dallied with her, craving some tiny, absurd bit of +loving service. First, I helped her with a balky hook on her collar. +Then I started to put her traveling coat and hat away in the closet. On +the upper shelf something a little bit scary brushed my hands. _It was +the Blue Serge Man's cap, with a ragged gash across it where +Growly-Dog-Gruff had worried it on a day I remembered well._ With a +hurried glance over my shoulder to make sure that the Pretty Lady had +not also spied it, I reached up and shoved it--oh, 'way, 'way back out +of sight, where no one but a detective or a lover could possibly find +it. + +Then I hurried off to my room with a most garish human wonder: How could +a _man_ be all gone, but his silly cap _last_? + +My little room was just as I remembered it, bare, bleak, and gruesomely +clean, with a rag rug, a worsted motto, and a pink china vase for really +sensuous ornamentation. I opened the cheap pine bureau to stow away my +things. _A trinket jingled--a tawdry rhinestone side-comb. Caught in the +setting was a tiny wisp of brown hair._ I slammed the drawer with a +bang, and opened another. _Metal and leather slid heavily along the +bottom._ It might have been my beast's collar, if distinctly across the +name-plate had not run the terse phrase "Alrik's Cross Dog." I did not +like to have my bureau haunted! When I slammed that drawer, it cracked +the looking-glass. + +Then, with candle burning just as cheerfully as possible, I lay down on +the bed in all my clothes and began to _wake up_--wider and wider and +wider. + +My reason lay quite dormant like some drugged thing but my memory, +photographic as a lens, began to reproduce the ruddy, blond face of the +Blue Serge Man beaming across a chafing-dish; the mournful, sobbing +sound of a dog's dream; the crisp, starched, Monday smell of the blue +gingham aprons that Alrik's Wife used to wear. The vision was altogether +too vivid to be pleasant. + +Then the wet wind blew in through the window like a splash of alcohol, +chilling, revivifying, stinging as a whip-lash. The tormented candle +flame struggled furiously for a moment, and went out, hurtling the black +night down upon me like some choking avalanche of horror. In utter +idiotic panic I jumped from my bed and clawed my way toward the feeble +gray glow of the window-frame. The dark dooryard before me was drenched +with rain. The tall linden trees waved and mourned in the wind. + +"Of course, of course, there are no ghosts," I reasoned, just as one +reasons that there is no mistake in the dictionary, no flaw in the +multiplication table. But sometimes one's fantastically jaded nerves think +they have found the blunder in language, the fault in science. Ghosts +or no ghosts--if you _thought_ you saw one, wouldn't it be just as bad? +My eyes strained out into the darkness. Suppose--I--should--_think_--that +I heard the bark of a dog? Suppose--suppose--that from that black shed +door where the automobile used to live, I should _think_--even T-H-I-N-K +that I saw the Blue Serge Man come stumbling with a lantern? The black +shed door burst open with a bang-bang-bang, and I screamed, jumped, +snatched a blanket, and fled for the lamp-lighted hall. + +A little dazzled by the sudden glow, I shrank back in alarm from a +figure on the top stair. It was the Pretty Lady. Wrapped clumsily like +myself in a big blanket, she sat huddled there with the kerosene lamp +close beside her, mending the Blue Serge Man's cap. On the step below +her, smothered in a soggy lavender comforter, crouched Alrik's Old +Mother, her dim eyes brightened uncannily with superstitious excitement. +I was evidently a welcome addition to the party, and the old woman +cuddled me in like a meal-sack beside her. + +"Naw one could sleep a night like this," she croaked. + +"_Sleep?_" gasped the Pretty Lady. Scorn infinite was in her tone. + +But comfortably and serenely from the end of the hall came the heavy, +regular breathing of the Partridge Hunter, and from beyond that, Alrik's +blissful, oblivious snore. Yet Alrik was the only one among us who +claimed an agonizing, personal sorrow. + +I began to laugh a bit hysterically. "Men are funny people," I +volunteered. + +Alrik's Old Mother caught my hand with a chuckle, then sobered suddenly, +and shook her wadded head. + +"Men _ain't_ exactly--people," she confided. "Men _ain't_ exactly +people--at all!" + +The conviction evidently burned dull, steady, comforting as a +night-light, in the old crone's eighty years' experience, but the Pretty +Lady's face grabbed the new idea desperately, as though she were trying +to rekindle happiness with a wet match. Yet every time her fretted lips +straightened out in some semblance of Peace, her whole head would +suddenly explode in one gigantic sneeze. There was no other sound, I +remember, for hours and hours, except the steady, monotonous, slobbery +swash of a bursting roof-gutter somewhere close in the eaves. + +Certainly Dawn itself was not more chilled and gray than we when we +crept back at last to our beds, thick-eyed with drowsy exhaustion, +limp-bodied, muffle-minded. + +But when we woke again, the late, hot noonday sun was like a scorching +fire in our faces, and the drenched dooryard steamed like a dye-house in +the sudden burst of unseasonable heat. + +After breakfast, the Pretty Lady, in her hundred-dollar ruffles, went +out to the barn with shabby Alrik to help him mend a musty old plow +harness. The Pretty Lady's brains were almost entirely in her fingers. +So were Alrik's. The exclusiveness of their task seemed therefore to +thrust the Partridge Hunter and me off by ourselves into a sort of +amateur sorrow class, and we started forth as cheerfully as we could to +investigate the autumn woods. + +Passing the barn door, we heard the strident sound of Alrik's +complaining. Braced with his heavy shoulders against a corner of the +stall, he stood hurling down his new-born theology upon the glossy blond +head of the Pretty Lady who sat perched adroitly on a nail keg with two +shiny-tipped fingers prying up the corners of her mouth into a smile. +One side of the smile was distinctly wry. But Alrik's face was deadly +earnest. Sweat bubbled out on his forehead like tears that could not +possibly wait to reach his eyes. + +"There ought to be a separate heaven for ladies and gentlemen," he was +arguing frantically. "'Tain't fair. 'Tain't right. I won't have it! I'll +see a priest. I'll find a parson. If it ain't proper to live with +people, it ain't proper to die with 'em. I tell you I won't have Amy +careerin' round with strange men. She always was foolish about men. And +I'm breakin' my heart for her, and Mother's gettin' old, and the house +is goin' to rack and ruin, but how--_how_ can a man go and get married +comfortable again when his mind's all torturin' round and round and +round about his first wife?" + +The Partridge Hunter gave a sharp laugh under his breath, yet he did not +seem exactly amused. "Laugh for _two_!" I suggested, as we dodged out of +sight round the corner and plunged off into the actual Outdoors. + +The heat was really intense, the October sun dazzlingly bright. Warmth +steamed from the earth, and burnished from the sky. A plushy brown +rabbit lolling across the roadway dragged on one's sweating senses like +overshoes in June. Under our ruthless, heavy-booted feet the wet green +meadow winced like some tender young salad. At the edge of the forest +the big pines darkened sumptuously. Then, suddenly, between a scarlet +sumach and a slim white birch, the cavernous wood-path opened forth +mysteriously, narrow and tall and domed like the arch of a cathedral. +Not a bird twitted, not a leaf rustled, and, far as the eye could reach, +the wet brown pine-needles lay thick and soft and padded like tan-bark, +as though all Nature waited hushed and expectant for some exquisitely +infinitesimal tragedy, like the travail of a squirrel. + +With brain and body all a-whisper and a-tiptoe, the Partridge Hunter and +I stole deeper and deeper into the Color and the Silence and the +Witchery, dazed at every step by the material proof of autumn warring +against the spiritual insistence of spring. It was the sort of day to +make one very tender toward the living just because they were living, +and very tender toward the dead just because they were dead. + +At the gurgling bowl of a half-hidden spring, we made our first +stopping-place. Out of his generous corduroy pockets the Partridge +Hunter tinkled two drinking-cups, dipped them deep in the icy water, and +handed me one with a little shuddering exclamation of cold. For an +instant his eyes searched mine, then he lifted his cup very high and +stared off into _Nothingness_. + +"To the--_All-Gone People_," he toasted. + +I began to cry. He seemed very glad to have me cry. "Cry for two," he +suggested blithely, "cry for two," and threw himself down on the twiggy +ground and began to snap metallically against the cup in his hand. + +"Nice little tin cup," he affirmed judicially. "The Blue Serge Man gave +it to me. It must have cost as much as fifteen cents. And it will last, +I suppose, till the moon is mud and the stars are dough. But the Blue +Serge Man himself is--quite _gone_. Funny idea!" The Partridge Hunter's +forehead began to knit into a fearful frown. "Of course it _isn't_ so," +he argued, "but it would certainly seem sometimes as though a man's +_things_ were the only really immortal, indestructible part of him, and +that Soul was nothing in the world but just a composite name for the +S-ouvenirs, O-rnaments, U-tensils, L-itter that each man's personality +accumulates in the few years' time allotted to him. The man himself, you +see, is wiped right off the earth like a chalk-mark, but you can't +escape or elude in a million years the wizened bronze elephant that he +brought home from India, or the showy red necktie that's down behind his +bureau, or the floating, wind-blown, ash-barrel bill for violets that +turns up a generation hence in a German prayer-book at a French +book-stall. + +"And isn't Death a teasing teacher? Holds up a personality suddenly like +a map--makes you learn by heart every possible, conceivable pleasant +detail concerning that personality, and then, when you are fairly +bursting with your happy knowledge, tears up the map in your face and +says, 'There's no such country any more, so what you've learned won't do +you the slightest good.' And there you'd only just that moment found out +that your friend's hair was a beautiful auburn instead of 'a horrid +red'; that his blessed old voice was hearty, not 'noisy'; that his table +manners were quaint, not 'queer'; that his morals were broad, not +'bad.'" + +The Partridge Hunter's mouth began to twist. "It's a horrid thing to +say," he stammered, "but there ought to be a sample shroud in every +home, so that when your husband is late to dinner, or your daughter +smokes a cigarette, or your son decides to marry the cook, you could get +out the shroud and try it on the offender, and make a few experiments +concerning--well, _values_. Why, I saw a man last week dragged by a +train--jerked in and out and over and under, with his head or his heels +or the hem of his coat just missing Death every second by the +hundred-millionth fraction of an inch. But when he was rescued at last +and went home to dinner--shaken as an aspen, sicker than pulp, +tongue-tied like a padlock--I suppose, very likely, his wife scolded him +for having forgotten the oysters." + +The Partridge Hunter's face flushed suddenly. + +"I didn't care much for Alrik's Wife," he attested abruptly. "I always +thought she was a trivial, foolish little crittur. But if I had known +that I was never going to see her again--while the sun blazed or the +stars blinked--I should like to have gone back from the buckboard that +last morning and stroked her brown hair just once away from her eyes. +Does that seem silly to you?" + +"Why, no," I said. "It doesn't seem silly at all. If I had guessed that +the Blue Serge Man was going off on such a long, long, never-stop +journey, I might even have kissed him good-by. But I certainly can't +imagine anything that would have provoked or astonished him more! People +can't go round petting one another just on the possible chance of never +meeting again. And goodness gracious! nobody wants to. It's only that +when a person actually _dies_, a sort of subtle, holy sense in you wakes +up and wishes that just once for all eternity it might have gotten a +signal through to that subtle, holy sense in the other person. And of +course when a youngster dies, you feel somehow that he or she must have +been different all along from other people, and you simply wish that you +might have guessed that fact sooner--before it was too late." + +The Partridge Hunter began to smile. "If you knew," he teased, "that I +was going to be massacred by an automobile or crumpled by an elevator +before next October--would you wish that you had petted me just a little +to-day?" + +"Yes," I acknowledged. + +The Partridge Hunter pretended he was deaf. "Say that once again," he +begged. + +"Y-e-s," I repeated. + +The Partridge Hunter put back his head and roared. "That's just about +like kissing through the telephone," he said. "It isn't particularly +satisfying, and yet it makes a desperately cunning sound." + +Then I put back my head and laughed, too, because it is so thoroughly +comfortable and pleasant to be friends for only one single week in all +the year. Independence is at best such a scant fabric, and every new +friendship you incur takes just one more tuck in that fabric, till +before you know it your freedom is quite too short to go out in. The +Partridge Hunter felt exactly the same way about it, and after each +little October playtime we ripped out the thread with never a scar to +show. + +Even now while we laughed, we thought we might as well laugh at +everything we could think of, and get just that much finished and out of +the way. + +"Perhaps," said the Partridge Hunter, "perhaps the Blue Serge Man was +_glad_ to see Amy, and perhaps he was rattled, no one can tell. But +I'll wager anything he was awfully mad to see Gruff. There were lots of +meteors last June, I remember. I understand now. It was the Blue Serge +Man raking down the stars to pelt at Gruff." + +"Gruff was a very--nice dog," I insisted. + +"He was a very growly dog," acceded the Partridge Hunter. + +"If you growl all the time, it's almost the same as a purr," I argued. + +The Partridge Hunter smiled a little, but not very generously. Something +was on his mind. "Poor little Amy," he said. "Any man-and-woman game is +playing with fire, but it's foolish to think that there are only two +kinds, just Hearth-Fire and Hell-Fire. Why, there's 'Student-lamp' and +'Cook-stove' and 'Footlights.' Amy and the Blue Serge Man were playing +with 'Footlights,' I guess. She needed an audience. And he was New York +to her, great, blessed, shiny, rackety New York. I believe she loved +Alrik. He must have been a pretty picturesque figure on that first and +only time when he blazed his trail down Broadway. But _happy_ with +him--H-E-R-E? Away from New York? Five years? In just green and brown +woods where the posies grow on the ground instead of on hats, and even +the Christmas trees are trimmed with nothing except real snow and live +squirrels? G-L-O-R-Y! Of course her chest caved in. There wasn't kinky +air enough in the whole state of Maine to keep her kind of lungs active. +Of course she starved to death. She needed her meat flavored with harp +and violin; her drink aerated with electric lights. We might have done +something for her if we'd liked her just a little bit better. But I +didn't even know her till I heard that she was dead." + +He jumped up suddenly and helped me to my feet. Something in my face +must have stricken him. "Would you like my warm hand to walk home with?" +he finished quite abruptly. + +Even as he offered it, one of those chill, quick autumn changes came +over the October woods. The sun grayed down behind huge, windy clouds. +The leaves began to shiver and shudder and chatter, and all the gorgeous +reds and greens dulled out of the world, leaving nothing as far as the +eye could reach but dingy squirrel-colors, tawny grays and dusty +yellows, with the far-off, panting sound of a frightened brook dodging +zigzag through some meadow in a last, desperate effort to escape winter. +As a draft from a tomb the cold, clammy, valley twilight was upon us. + +Like two bashful children scuttling through a pantomime, we hurried out +of the glowery, darkening woods, and then at the edge of the meadow +broke into a wild, mirthful race for Alrik's bright hearth-fire, which +glowed and beckoned from his windows like a little tame, domesticated +sunset. The Partridge Hunter cleared the porch steps at a single bound, +but I fell flat on the bruising doormat. + +Nothing really mattered, however, except the hearth-fire itself. + +Alrik and the Pretty Lady were already there before us, kneeling down +with giggly, scorching faces before a huge corn-popper foaming white +with little muffled, ecstatic notes of heat and harvest. + +The Pretty Lady turned a crimson cheek to us, and Alrik's tanned skin +glowed like a freshly shellacked Indian. Even the Old Mother's asthmatic +breath purred from the jogging rocker like a specially contented +pussy-cat. + +Nothing in all the room, I remember, looked pallid or fretted except the +great, ghastly white face of the clock. I despise a clock that looks +worried. It wasn't late, anyway. It was scarcely quarter-past four. + +Indeed, it was only half-past four when the company came. We were making +such a racket among ourselves that our very first warning was the +sudden, blunt, rubbery _m-o-o_ of an automobile directly outside. Mud +was the first thing I thought of. + +Then the door flew open peremptorily, and there on the threshold stood +the Blue Serge Man--not dank and wet with slime and seaweed, but fat and +ruddy and warm in a huge gray 'possum coat. Only the fearful, stilted +immovability of him gave the lie to his reality. + +_It was a miracle!_ I had always wondered a great deal about miracles. I +had always longed, craved, prayed to experience a miracle. I had always +supposed that a miracle was the supreme sensation of existence, the +ultimate rapture of the soul. But it seems I was mistaken. A miracle +doesn't do anything to your soul for days and days and days. Your heart, +of course, may jump, and your blood foam, but first of all it simply +makes you very, very sick in the pit of your stomach. It made a man like +Alrik clutch at his belt and jump up and down and "holler" like a +lunatic. It smote the Partridge Hunter somewhere between a cramp and a +sob. It ripped the Old Mother close at her waist-line, and raveled her +out on the floor like a fluff of gray yarn. + +But the Pretty Lady just stood up with her hands full of pop-corn, and +stared and stared and stared and STARED. From her shining blond head to +her jet-black slippers she was like an exploded pulse. + +The Blue Serge Man stepped forward into the room and faltered. In that +instant's faltering, Alrik jumped for him like a great, glad, loving +dog, and ripped the coat right off his shoulders. + +The Blue Serge Man's lips were all a-grin, but a scar across his +forehead gave a certain tense, stricken dignity to his eyes. Very +casually, very indolently, he began to tug at his gloves, staring all +the while with malevolent joy on the fearful crayon portrait of the +ancient grandame. + +"That's the very last face I thought of when I was drowning," he +drawled, "and there wasn't room enough in all heaven for the two of us. +Bully old face, I'm glad I'm here. I've been in Cuba," he continued +quite abruptly, "and I meant to play dead forever and ever. But there +was an autumn leaf--a red autumn leaf in a lady's hat--and it made me +homesick." His voice broke suddenly, and he turned to his wife with +quick, desperate, pleading intensity. "I'm not--much--good," he gasped. +"But I've--_come back_!" + +I saw the flaky white pop-corn go trickling through the Pretty Lady's +fingers, but she just stood there and shook and writhed like a tightly +wrung newspaper smoldering with fire. Then her face flamed suddenly with +a light I had never, never seen since my world was made. + +"I don't care whether you're any good or not," she cried. "You're alive! +You're alive! You're alive! You're _alive_! You're--ALIVE!" + +I thought she would never stop saying it, on and on and on and on. +"You're alive, you're alive, you're alive." Like a defective phonograph +disk her shattered sense caught on that one supreme phrase, "You're +alive! You're alive! You're alive! You're alive!" + +Then the blood that had blazed in her face spread suddenly to her +nerveless hands, and she began to pluck at the crape ruffles on her +gown. Stitch by stitch I heard the rip-rip-rip like the buzz of a +fishing-reel. But louder than all came that maddening, monotonous cry, +"You're alive! You're alive! You're alive!" I thought her brain was +broken. + +Then the Blue Serge Man sprang toward her, and I shut my eyes. But I +caught the blessed, clumsy sound of a lover's boot tripping on a +ruffle--the crushing out of a breath--the smother of a half-lipped word. + +I don't know what became of Alrik. I don't know what became of Alrik's +Old Mother. But the Partridge Hunter, with his arm across his eyes, came +groping for me through the red, red room. + +"Let's get out of this," he whispered. "Let's get out of this." + +So once again, amateurs both in sorrow and in gladness, the Partridge +Hunter and I fled fast before the Incomprehensible. Out we ran through +Amy's frost-blighted rose-garden, _where no gay, shrill young voice +challenged our desecration_, out through the senile old apple orchard, +_where no suspicious dog came bristling forth to question our innocent +intrusion_, up through the green-ribbon roadway, up through the +stumbling wood-path, to the safe, sound, tangible, moss-covered +pasture-bars, where the warm, brown-fur bossies, sweet-breathed and +steaming, came lolling gently down through the gauzy dusk to barter +their pleasant milk for a snug night's lodging and a troughful of yellow +mush. + +A dozen mysterious wood-folk crackled close within reach, as though all +the little day-animals were laying aside their starched clothes for the +night; and the whole earth teemed with the exquisite, sleepy, +nestling-down sound of fur and feathers and tired leaves. Out in the +forest depths somewhere a belated partridge drummed out his excuses. +Across on the nearest stone wall a tawny marauder went hunching his way +along. It might have been a fox, it might have been Amy's thrown-away +coon-cat. Short and sharp from the house behind us came the fast, +furious crash of Alrik's frenzied young energies, chopping wood enough +to warm a dozen houses for a dozen winters for a dozen new brides. But +high above even the racket of his ax rang the sweet, wild, triumphant +resonance of some French Canadian _chanson_. His heart and his lungs +seemed fairly to have exploded in relief. + +And over the little house, and the dark woods, and the mellow pasture, +and the brown-fur bossies, broke a little, wee, tiny prick-point of a +star, as though some Celestial Being were peeping down whimsically to +see just what the Partridge Hunter and I thought of it all. + + + + +THE AMATEUR LOVER + + +WITH every night piercing her like a new wound, and every morning +stinging her like salt in that wound, Ruth Dudley's broken engagement +had dragged itself out for four long, hideous months. There's so much +fever in a woman's sorrow. + +At first, to be sure, there had been no special outward and visible sign +of heartbreak except the thunderstorm shadows under the girl's blue +eyes. Then, gradually, very gradually, those same plucky eyes had dulled +and sickened as though every individual thought in her brain was +festering. Later, an occasional loosened finger ring had clattered off +into her untouched plate or her reeking strong cup of coffee. At the end +of the fourth month the family doctor was quite busy attesting that she +had no tubercular trouble of any sort. There never yet was any +stethoscope invented that could successfully locate consumption of the +affections. + +It was about this time that Ruth's Big Brother, strolling smokily into +her room one evening, jumped back in tragic dismay at the astonishing +sight that met his eyes. There, like some fierce young sacrificial +priestess, with a very modern smutty nose and scorched cheeks, Ruth +knelt on the hearth-rug, slamming every conceivable object that she +could reach into the blazing fire. The soft green walls of the room were +utterly stripped and ravished. The floor in every direction lay +cluttered deep with books and pictures and clothes and innumerable small +bits of bric-a-brac. Already the brimming fireplace leaked forth across +the carpet in little gray, gusty flakes of ash and cinder. + +The Big Brother hooted right out loud. "Why, Ruthy Dudley," he gasped. +"What _are_ you doing? You look like the devil!" + +Blissfully unconscious of smoke or smut, the girl pushed back the +straggling blond hair from her eyes and grinned, with her white teeth +shot like a bolt through her under lip to keep the grin in place. + +"I'm not a 'devil,'" she explained. "I'm a god! And what am I doing? I'm +creating a new heaven and a new earth." + +"You won't have much left to create it with," scoffed the Big Brother, +kicking the tortured wreck of a straw hat farther back into the flames. + +The girl reached up impatiently and smutted her other hand across her +eyes. "Nothing left to create it with?" she mocked. "Why, if I had +anything left to create it with, I'd be only a--mechanic!" + +Then, blackened like a coal-heaver and tousled like a Skye terrier, she +picked up the scarlet bellows and commenced to pump a savage yellow +flame into a writhing, half-charred bundle of letters. + +Through all the sweet, calm hours of that warm June night the sacrifice +progressed with amazing rapacity. By midnight she had just finished +stirring the fire-tongs through the ghostly, lacelike ashes of her +wedding gown. At two o'clock her violin went groaning into the flames. +At three her Big Brother, yawning sleepily back in his nightclothes, +picked her up bodily and dumped her into her bed. He was very angry. +"Little Sister," he scolded, "there's no man living worth the fuss +you're making over Aleck Reese!" And the little sister sat up and rubbed +her smutty, scorched cheek against his cool, blue-shaven face as she +tilted the drifting ashes from the bedspread. "I'm not making any +'fuss,'" she protested. "I'm only just--burning my bridges." It was the +first direct allusion that she had ever made to her trouble. + +Twice after that--between three o'clock and breakfast time--the Big +Brother woke from his sleep with a horrid sense that the house was on +fire. Twice between three o'clock and breakfast time he met the +Housekeeper scuttling along the halls on the same sniffy errand. Once +with a flickering candle-light Ruth herself crept out to the doorway and +laughed at them. "The house isn't on fire, you sillies," she cried. +"Don't you know a burnt bridge when you smell it?" But the doctor had +said quite distinctly: "You must watch that little girl. Sorrow in the +tongue will talk itself cured, if you give it a chance; but sorrow in +the eyes has a wicked, wicked way now and then of leaking into the +brain." + +It was the Housekeeper, though, whose eyes looked worried and tortured +at breakfast time. It was the Big Brother's face that showed a bit sharp +on the cheek-bones. Ruth herself, for the first time in a listless, +uncollared, unbelted, unstarched month, came frisking down to the table +as white and fresh and crisp as linen and starch and curls could make +her. + +"I'm going to town this morning," she announced nonchalantly to her +relieved and delighted hearers. The eyes that turned to her brother's +were almost mischievous. "Couldn't you meet me at twelve o'clock," she +suggested, "and take me off to the shore somewhere for lunch? I'll be +shopping on Main Street about that time, so suppose I meet you at Andrew +Bernard's office." + +Half an hour later she was stealing out of the creaky back door into +the garden, along the gray, pebbly gravel walk between the tall tufts of +crimson and purple phlox, to the little gay-faced plot of heart's-ease +where the family doctor, symbolist and literalist, had bade her dig and +delve every day in the good, hot, wholesome, freckly sunshine. Close by +in the greensward an absurd pet lamb was tugging and bouncing at the end +of its stingy tether. In a moment's time the girl had transferred the +clumsy iron tether-stake to the midst of her posy bed. Then she started +for the gate. + +Pausing for just one repentant second with her hand on the gate latch, +she turned and looked back to the ruthlessly trodden spot where the +bland-eyed lamb stood eyeing her quizzically with his soft, woolly mouth +fairly dripping with the tender, precious blossoms. "Heart's-ease. +B-a-a!" mocked the girl, with a flicker of real amusement. +"Heart's-ease. B-a-a-a!" scoffed the lamb, just because his stomach and +his tongue happened to be made like that. Then with a quick dodge across +the lane she ran to meet the electric car and started off triumphantly +for the city, shutting her faint eyes resolutely away from all the +roadside pools and ponds and gleams of river whose molten, ultimate +peace possibilities had lured her sick mind so incessantly for the past +dozen weeks. + +Two hours later, with a hectic spurt of energy, she was racing up three +winding, dizzy flights of stairs in a ponderous, old-fashioned office +building. + +Before a door marked "Andrew Bernard, Attorney at Law," she stopped and +waited a frightened moment for breath and courage. As though the +pounding of her heart had really sounded as loud as it felt, the door +handle turned abruptly, and a very tall, broad-shouldered, grave-faced +young man greeted her with attractive astonishment. + +"Good morning, Drew," she began politely. "Why, I haven't seen you for a +year." Then, with alarming vehemence, she finished: "Are you all alone? +I want to talk with you." + +Her breathlessness, her embarrassment, her fragile intensity sobered the +young man instantly as he led her into his private office and stood for +a moment staring inquiringly into her white face. Her mouth was just as +he had last seen it a year ago, fresh and whimsical and virginal as a +child's; but her eyes were scorched and dazed like the eyes of a +shipwreck survivor or any other person who has been forced unexpectedly +to stare upon life's big emotions with the naked eye. + +"I hear you've been ill this spring," he began gently. "If you wanted to +talk with me, Ruthy, why didn't you let me come out to the house and see +you? Wouldn't it have been easier?" + +She shook her head. "No," she protested, "I wanted to come here. What +I've got to talk about is very awkward, and if things get too +awkward--why, an embarrassed guest has so much better chance to escape +than an embarrassed host." She struggled desperately to smile, but her +lips twittered instead into a frightened quiver. With narrowing eyes the +young man drew out his big leather chair for her. Then he perched +himself on the corner of his desk and waited for her to speak. + +"Ruthy dear," he smiled, "what's the trouble? Come, tell your old chum +all about it." + +The girl scrunched her eyes up tight, like a person who starts to jump +and doesn't care where he lands. Twice her lips opened and shut without +a sound. Then suddenly she braced herself with an intense effort. + +"Drew," she blurted out, "do you remember--three years ago--you asked me +to--marry--you?" + +"Do I remember it?" gasped Drew. The edgy sharpness of his tone made the +girl open her eyes and stare at him. "Yes," he acknowledged, "I remember +it." + +The girl began to smooth her white skirts with excessive precision +across her knees. "What made you--ask me?" she whispered. + +"What made me ask you?" cried the man. + +"What made me ask you? Why, I asked you because I love you." + +The girl bent forward anxiously as though she were deaf. "You asked me +because--_what_?" she quizzed him. + +"Because I love you," he repeated. + +She jumped up suddenly and ran across the room to him. "Because +you--love me?" she reiterated. "'Love?' Not 'loved'? Not past tense? Not +all over and done with?" + +There was no mistaking her meaning. But the man's face did not kindle, +except with pain. Almost roughly he put his hands on her shoulders and +searched down deep into her eyes. "Ruth," he probed, "what are you +trying to do to me? Open an old wound? You know I--love you." + +The girl's mouth smiled, but her eyes blurred wet with fright and tears. + +"Would you care anything--about--marrying me--now?" she faltered. + +Drew's face blanched utterly, and the change gave him such a horridly +foreign, alien look that the girl drew away from his hands and scuttled +back to the big chair, and began all over again to smooth and smooth the +garish white skirt across her knees. "Oh, Drew, Drew," she pleaded, +"please look like--_you_. Please--please--don't look like anybody +else." + +But Drew did not smile at her. He just stood there and stared in a +puzzled, tortured sort of way. + +"What about Aleck Reese?" he began with fierce abruptness. + +The girl met the question with unwonted flippancy. "I've broken my +engagement to Aleck Reese," she said coolly. "Broken it all to smash." + +But the latent tremor in her voice did not satisfy the man. "Why did you +break it?" he insisted. "Isn't Aleck Reese the man you want?" + +Her eyes wavered and fell, and then rallied suddenly to Drew's utmost +question. + +"Yes, Drew," she answered ingenuously, "Aleck Reese _is_ the man I want, +_but he's not the kind of man I want_!" As the telltale sentence left +her lips, every atom of strength wilted out of her, and she sank back +into her chair all sick and faint and shuddery. + +The impulsive, bitter laugh died dumb on Drew's lips. Instantly he was +at her side, gentle, patient, compassionate, the man whom she knew so +well. "Do you mean," he stammered in a startled sort of way, "do you +mean that--love or no love--I, I am the kind of man that you do want?" + +Her hand stole shyly into his and she nodded her head. But her eyes were +turned away from him. + +For the fraction of a second he wondered just what the future would hold +for him and her if he should snatch the situation into his arms and +crush her sorrow out against his breast. Then in that second's hesitancy +she shook her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him like a sick, +wistful child. + +"Oh, Drew," she pleaded, "you've never, never failed me yet--all my hard +lessons, all my Fourth-of-July accidents, all my broken sleds and lost +skates. Couldn't you help me now we're grown up? I'm so unhappy." + +The grimness came back to Drew's face. + +"Has Aleck Reese been mean to you?" he asked. + +Her eyebrows lifted in denial. "Oh, no--not specially," she finished a +trifle wearily. "I simply made up my mind at last that I didn't want to +marry him." + +Drew's frown relaxed. "Then what's the trouble?" he suggested. + +Her eyebrows arched again. "What's the trouble?" she queried. "Why, I +happen to love him. That's all." + +She took her hand away from Drew and began to smooth her skirt once +more. + +"Yes," she repeated slowly, "as long ago as last winter I made up my +mind that I didn't want to marry him--but I didn't make up my courage +until Spring. My courage, I think, is just about six months slower than +my mind. And then, too, my 'love-margin' wasn't quite used up, I +suppose. A woman usually has a 'love-margin,' you know, and, besides, +there's always so much more impetus in a woman's love. Even though she's +hurt, even though she's heartbroken, even though, worst of all, she's a +tiny bit bored, all her little, natural love courtesies go on just the +same of their own momentum, for a day or a week, or a month, or half a +lifetime, till the love-flame kindles again--or else goes out +altogether. Love has to be like that. But if I were a man, Drew, I'd be +awfully careful that that love-margin didn't ever get utterly exhausted. +Aleck, though, doesn't understand about such things. I smoothed his +headaches just as well, and listened to his music just as well, so he +shiftlessly took it for granted that I loved him just as well. What +nonsense! 'Love?'" Her voice rose almost shrilly. "'Love?' Bah! What's +love, anyway, but a wicked sort of hypnotism in the way that a mouth +slants, or a cheek curves, or a lock of hair colors? Listen to me. If +Aleck Reese were a woman and I were a man, I certainly wouldn't choose +his type for a sweetheart--irritable, undomestic, wild for excitement. +How's that for a test? And if Aleck Reese and I were both women, I +certainly shouldn't want him for my friend. Oughtn't that to decide it? +Not a vital taste in common, not a vital interest, not a vital ideal!" + +She began to laugh hysterically. "And I can't sleep at night for +remembering the droll little way that his hair curls over his forehead, +or the hurt, surprised look in his eyes when he ever really did get +sorry about anything. My God! Drew, look at me!" she cried, and rolled +up her sleeves to her elbow. The flesh was gone from her as though a +fever had wasted her. + +The muscles in Drew's throat began to twitch unpleasantly. "Was Aleck +Reese mean to you?" he persisted doggedly. + +A little faint, defiant smile flickered across her lips. "Never mind, +Drew," she said, "whether Aleck Reese was mean to me or not. It really +doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter at all just exactly what a man +does or doesn't do to a woman as long as, by one route or another, +before her wedding day, he brings her to the place where she can +honestly say in her heart, 'This man that I want is not the kind of man +that I want.' Honor, loyalty, strength, gentleness--why, Drew, the man I +marry has _got_ to be the kind of man I want. + +"I've tried to be fair to Aleck," she mused almost tenderly. "I've tried +to remember always that men are different from women, and that Aleck +perhaps is different from most men. I've tried to remember always that +he is a musician--a real, real musician with all the ghastly, agonizing +extremes of temperament. I've tried to remember always that he didn't +grow up here with us in our little town with all our fierce, little-town +standards, but that he was educated abroad, that his whole moral, +mental, and social ideals are different, that the admiration and +adulation of--new--women is like the breath of life to him--that he +simply couldn't live without it any more than I could live without the +love of animals, or the friendship of children, or the wonderfulness of +outdoors, all of which bore _him_ to distraction. + +"Oh, I've reasoned it all out, night after night after night, fought it +out, _torn_ it out, that he probably really and truly did love me quite +a good deal--in his own way--when there wasn't anything else to do. But +how can it possibly content a woman to have a man love her as well as +_he_ knows how--if it isn't as well as _she_ knows how? We won't talk +about--Aleck Reese's morals," she finished abruptly. "Fickleness, +selfishness, neglect, even infidelity itself, are such purely minor, +incidental data of the one big, incurably rotten and distasteful fact +that--such and such a man is _stupid in the affections_." + +With growing weakness she sank back in her chair and closed her eyes. + +For an anxious moment Drew sat and watched her. "Is that all?" he asked +at last. + +She opened her eyes in surprise. "Why, yes," she said, "that's all--that +is, it's all if you understand. I'm not complaining because Aleck Reese +didn't love me, but because, loving me, he wasn't _intelligent_ enough +to be true to me. You do understand, don't you? You understand that it +wasn't because he didn't pay his love bills, but because he didn't know +enough to pay them. He took my loyalty without paying for it with his; +he took my devotion, my tenderness, my patience, without ever, ever +making any adequate return. Any girl ought to be able to tell in six +months whether her lover is using her affection rightly, whether he is +taking her affection and investing it with his toward their mutual +happiness and home. Aleck invested nothing. He just took all my love +that he could grab and squandered it on himself--always and forever on +himself. A girl, I say, ought to be able to tell in six months. But I am +very stupid. It has taken me three years." + +"Well, what do you want _me_ to do?" Drew asked a bit quizzically. + +"I want you to advise me," she said. + +"Advise you--_what_?" persisted Drew. + +The first real flicker of comedy flamed in the girl's face. Her white +cheeks pinked and dimpled. "Why, advise me to--marry _you_!" she +announced. "WELL, WHY NOT?" She fairly hurled the three-word bridge +across the sudden, awful chasm of silence that yawned before her. + +Drew's addled mind caught the phrase dully and turned it over and over +without attempting to cross on it. "Well, why not? Well, why not?" he +kept repeating. His discomfiture filled the girl with hysterical +delight, and she came and perched herself opposite him on the farther +end of his desk and smiled at him. + +"It seems to me perfectly simple," she argued. "Without any doubt or +question you certainly are the kind of man whom I should like to marry. +You are true and loyal and generous and rugged about things. And you +like the things that I like. And I like the people that you like. And, +most of anything in the world, you are _clever in the affections_. You +are heart-wise as well as head-wise. Why, even in the very littlest, +silliest thing that could possibly matter, you wouldn't--for +instance--remember George Washington's birthday and forget mine. And you +wouldn't go away on a lark and leave me if I was sick, any more than +you'd blow out the gas. And you wouldn't--hurt me about--other +women--any more than you'd eat with your knife." Impulsively she reached +over and patted his hand with the tips of her fingers. "As far as I can +see," she teased, "there's absolutely no fault in you that matters to me +except that I don't happen to love you." + +Quick as her laugh the tears came scalding back to her eyes. + +"Why, Drew," she hurried on desperately, "people seem to think it's a +dreadful thing to marry a man whom you don't love; but nobody questions +your marrying _any_ kind of a man if you do love him. As far as I can +make out, then, it's the love that matters, not the man. Then why not +love the right man?" She began to smile again. "So here and now, sir, I +deliberately choose to love _you_." + +But Drew's fingers did not even tighten over hers. + +"I want to be a happy woman," she pleaded. "Why, I'm only twenty-two. I +can't let my life be ruined now. There's _got_ to be some way out. And +I'm going to find that way out if I have to crawl on my hands and knees +for a hundred years. I'm luckier than some girls. I've got such a +shining light to aim for." + +Almost roughly Drew pulled his hand away, the color surging angrily into +his cheeks. "I'm no shining light," he protested hotly, "and you shall +never, never come crawling on your hands and knees to me." + +"Yes, I shall," whispered the girl. "I shall come creeping very humbly, +if you want me. And you do want me, don't you? Oh, please advise me. Oh, +please play you are my Father or my Big Brother and advise me to--marry +_you_." + +Drew laughed in spite of himself. "Play I was your Father or your Big +Brother?" Mimicry was his one talent. "Play I was your Father or your +Big Brother and advise you to marry me?" + +Instantly his fine, straight brows came beetling down across his eyes in +a fierce paternal scrutiny. Then, quick as a wink, he had rumpled his +hair and stuck out his chest in a really startling imitation of Big +Brother's precious, pompous importance. But before Ruth could clap her +hands his face flashed back again into its usual keen, sad gravity, and +he shook his head. "Yes," he deliberated, "perhaps if I truly were your +Father or your Brother, I really should advise you to marry--me--not +because I amount to anything and am worth it, but because I honestly +believe that I should be good to you--and I know that Aleck Reese +wouldn't be. But if I'm to advise you in my own personal capacity--no, +Ruthy, I don't want to marry you!" + +"What? What?" Staggering from the desk, she turned and faced him, white +as her dress, blanched to her quivering lips. + +But Drew's big shoulders blocked her frenzied effort to escape. + +"Don't go away like that, Little Girl," he said. "You don't understand. +It isn't a question of caring. You know I care. But don't you, don't you +understand that a man doesn't like to marry a woman who doesn't love +him?" + +Her face brightened piteously. "But I _will_ love you?" she protested. +"I _will_ love you. I promise. I promise you faithfully--I will love +you--if you'll only give me just a little time." The old flicker of +mischief came back to her eyes, and she began to count on her fingers. +"Let me see," she said. "It's June now--June, July, August, September, +October, November--six months. I promise you that I will love you by +November." + +"I don't believe it." Drew fairly slashed the words into the air. + +Instantly the hurt, frightened look came back to her eyes. "Why, Drew," +she whispered, "if it were money that I wanted, if I were starving, or +sick, or any all-alone anything, you wouldn't refuse to help me just +because you couldn't possibly see ahead just how I was ever going to pay +you. Drew, I'm very unhappy and frightened and lost-feeling. I just want +to borrow your love. I promise you I will pay it back to you. You won't +be sorry. You won't. You won't!" + +Drew's hand reached up and smothered the words on her lips. "You can't +borrow my love," he said sternly. "It's yours, always, every bit of it. +But I won't marry you unless you love me. I tell you it isn't fair to +you." + +Impulsively she took his hand and led him back to the big chair and +pushed him gently into it, and perched herself like a little child on a +pile of bulky law books at his feet. The eyes that looked up to his were +very hopeful. + +"Don't you think, Drew," she argued, "that just being willing to marry +you is love enough?" + +He scanned her face anxiously for some inner, hidden meaning to her +words, some precious, latent confession; but her eyes were only blue, +and just a little bit shy. + +She stooped forward suddenly, and took Drew's hand and brushed it across +her cheek to the edge of her lips. "I feel so safe with you, Drew," she +whispered, "so safe, and comforted always. Oh, I'm sure I can teach you +how to make me love you--and you're the only man in the world that I'm +willing to teach." Her chin stiffened suddenly with renewed +stubbornness. "_You_ are the Harbor that was meant for me, and Aleck +Reese is nothing but a--Storm. If you know it, and I know it, what's the +use of dallying?" + +Drew's solemn eyes brightened. "Do you truly think," he said, "that +Aleck Reese is only an accident that happened to you on your way to me?" + +She nodded her head. Weakness and tears were only too evidently +overtaking her brave little theories. + +"And there's something else, too," she confided tremulously. "My head +isn't right. I have such hideous dreams when I do get to sleep. I dream +of drowning myself, and it feels good; and I dream of jumping off high +buildings, and it feels good; and I dream of throwing myself under +railroad trains, and it feels good. And I see the garish announcement in +the morning papers, and I picture how Uncle Terry would look when he got +the news, and I cry and cry and cry, and it feels good. Oh, Drew, I'm so +bored with life! It isn't right to be so bored with life. But I can't +seem to help it. Nothing in all the world has any meaning any more. +Flowers, sunshine, moonlight--everything I loved has gone stale. There's +no taste left to anything; there's no fragrance, there's no rhyme. Drew, +I could stand the sorrow part of it, but I simply can't stand the +emptiness. I tell you I _can't_ stand it. I wish I were dead; and, Drew, +there are so many, many easy ways all the time to make oneself dead. I'm +not safe. Oh, please take me and make me safe. Oh, please take me and +make me want to live!" + +Driven almost distracted by this final appeal to all the chivalrous love +in his nature, Drew jumped up and paced the floor. Perplexity, +combativeness, and ultimate defeat flared already in his haggard face. + +The girl sensed instantly the advantage that she had gained. "Of +course," she persisted, "of course I see now, all of a sudden, that I'm +not offering you very much in offering you a wife who doesn't love you. +You are quite right; of course I shouldn't make you a very good wife at +first--maybe not for quite a long, long time. Probably it would all be +too hard and miserable for you--" + +Drew interrupted her fiercely. "Great heavens!" he cried out, "my part +would be easy, comfortable, serene, interesting, compared to yours. +Don't you know it's nothing except _sad_ to be shut up in the same +house, in the same life, with a person you love who doesn't love you? +Nothing but sad, I tell you; and there's no special nervous strain about +being sad. But to be shut up day and night--as long as life lasts--with +a person who takes the impudent liberty of loving you against your wish +to be loved--oh, the spiritual distastefulness of it, and the physical +enmity, and the ghastly, ghastly ennui! That's your part of it. Flower +or book or jewel or caress, no agonizing, heart-breaking, utterly +wholesome effort to please, but just one hideously chronic, mawkishly +conscientious effort to _be_ pleased, to act pleased--though it blast +your eyes and sear your lips--to _look_ pleased. I tell you I won't have +it!" + +"I understand all that," said Ruth gravely. "I understand it quite +perfectly. But underneath it all--I would rather--you had taken me in +your arms--as though I were a little, little hurt girl--and comforted +me--" + +But before Drew's choking throat-cry had reached his lips she had sprung +from her seat and was facing him defiantly. Across her face flared +suddenly for the first time the full, dark flush of one of Life's big +tides, and the fear in her hands reached up and clutched at Drew's +shoulders. The gesture tipped her head back like a fagged swimmer's +struggling in the water. + +"I am pleading for my life, Drew," she gasped, "for my body, for my +soul, for my health, for my happiness, for home, for safety!" + +He snatched her suddenly into his arms. "My God! Ruth," he cried, "what +do you want me to do?" + +Triumph came like a holiday laugh to her haggard face. + +"What do I want you to do?" she dimpled. "Why, I want you to come with +me now and get a license. I want to be married right away this +afternoon." + +"What!" Drew hurled the word at her like a bomb, but it did not seem to +explode. + +Laughingly, flushingly, almost delightedly, she stood and watched the +anger rekindle in his face. + +"Do you think I am going to take advantage of you like this?" he asked +hotly. "You would probably change your mind to-morrow and be very, very +sorry--" + +She tossed her head. It was a familiar little gesture. "I fully and +confidently expect to be sorry to-morrow," she affirmed cheerfully. +"That's why I want to be married to-day, this afternoon, this minute, if +possible, before I have had any chance to change my mind." + +Then, with unexpected abruptness, she shook her recklessness aside and +walked back to him childishly, pulling a long, loose wisp of hair across +her face. "See," she said. "Smell the smoke in my hair. It's the smoke +from my burned bridges. I sat up nearly all night and burned everything +I owned, everything that could remind me of Aleck Reese, all my dresses, +all my books, all my keepsakes, all my doll houses that ever grew up +into dreams. So if you decide to marry me I shall be very expensive. +You'll have to take me just as I am--quite a little bit crumpled, not an +extra collar, not an extra hairpin, not anything. Aleck Reese either +loved or hated everything I owned. I haven't left a single bridge on +which one of my thoughts could even crawl back to him again--" + +Half quizzically, half caressingly, Drew stooped down and brushed his +lips across the lock of hair. Fragrant as violets, soft as the ghost of +a kiss, the little curl wafted its dearness into his senses. But ranker +than violets, harsher than kisses, lurked the blunt, unmistakable odor +of ashes. + +He laughed. And the laugh was bitter as gall. "Burning your bridges," he +mused. "It's a good theory. But if I take your life into my bungling +hands and sweat my heart out trying to make you love me, and come home +every night to find you crying with fear and heartbreak, will you still +protest that the sting in your eyes is nothing in the world except the +_smudge_ from those burnt bridges? Will you promise?" + +With desperate literalness she clutched at the phrase. Everything else +in the room began to whirl round and round like prickly stars. "I +promise, I promise," she gasped. Then sight--not air, but just +sight--seemed to be smothered right out of her, and her brain reeled, +and she wilted down unconscious on the floor. + +Cursing himself for a brute, Drew snatched her up in a little, white, +crumpled heap and started for the window. Halfway there, the office +door opened abruptly and Ruth's Big Brother stood on the threshold. +Surprise, anxiety, ultimate relief chased flashingly across the +newcomer's face, and in an instant both men were working together over +the limp little body. + +"Well, old man," said the Big Brother, "I'm glad she was here safe with +you when she fainted." His spare arm clapped down affectionately across +Drew's shoulders and jarred Drew's fingers brownly against the +death-like pallor of the girl's throat. The Big Brother gave an ugly +gasp. "Damn Aleck Reese," he said. + +Drew's eyes shut perfectly tight as though he was smitten by some +unbearable agony. Then suddenly, without an instant's warning, he pulled +himself together and burst out laughing uproariously like a schoolboy. + +"Oh, what's the use of damning Aleck Reese?" he cried. "Aleck Reese is +as stale an issue as yesterday morning's paper. If you've no particular +objection to me as a brother-in-law as well as a tennis chum, Ruth and I +were planning to marry each other this afternoon. Maybe I was just a +little bit too vehement about it." + + * * * * * + +Three hours later, in a dusty, musty, mid-week church vestry, an +extraordinarily white and extraordinarily vivacious girl was quite busy +assuring a credulous minister and a credulous sexton and a credulous Big +Brother that she would love till death hushed her the perfectly +incredulous bridegroom who stood staring down upon her like a very tall +man in a very short dream. + +And then, because neither groom nor bride could think of anything +specially married to say to each other, they kidnapped Big Brother and +bore him away in an automobile to a nervous, rollicking, wonderfully +entertaining "shore dinner," where they sat at an open window round a +green-tiled table in a marvelously glowering, ice-cool, artificial +grotto, and ate bright scarlet lobsters while the great, hot, blowzy +yellow moon came wallowing up out of the night-shadowed sea, and the +thrilly, thumpy brass band played "I Love You So"; and the only, only +light in the whole vague, noisy room seemed to be Big Brother's beaming, +ecstatic face gleaming like some glad phosphorescent thing through the +clouds of murky tobacco smoke. + +Not till the wines and dines and roses and posies and chatter and +clatter were all over, and the automobile had carried Big Brother off to +his railroad station and whisked the bride and groom back to the wobbly +city pavements, did Drew begin to realize that the frolicking, jesting, +crisp-tongued figure beside him had wilted down into a piteous little +hunch of fear. Stooping to push her slippery new suit case closer under +her feet, he caught the sharp, shuddering tremor of her knees, and as +the automobile swayed finally into the street that led to his apartment, +her lungs seemed to crumple up in a paroxysm of coughing. Under the +garish lights that marked his apartment-house doorway her slight figure +drooped like a tired flower, and the footsteps that tinkled behind him +along the stone corridor rang in his ears with a dear, shy, girlish +reluctance. The elevator had stopped running. One flight, two flights, +three, four, five they toiled up the harsh, cool, metallic stairway. +Four times Ruth stopped to get her breath, and twice to tie her shoe. +Drew laughed to himself at the delicious subterfuge of it. + +Then at the very top of the strange, gloomy, midnight building, when +Drew's nervous fingers fumbled a second with his door-lock, without the +slightest possible warning she reached out suddenly with one mad, +frenzied impulse and struck the key from his hand. To his startled eyes +she turned a face more wild, more agonized than any terror he had ever +dreamed in his most hideous, sweating nightmare. Instantly her hands +went clutching out to him. + +"Oh, Drew, for God's sake take me home!" she gasped. "What have I done? +What have I done? What have I done? Oh, ALECK!" + +Wrenching himself free from her hands, Drew dropped down on the floor +and began to hunt around for the key. The blood surged into his head +like a hot tide, and he felt all gritty-lunged and smothered, as though +he were crawling under water. After a minute he stumbled to his feet and +slipped the recreant key smoothly into the lock, and swung his door wide +open, and turned back to Ruth. She stood facing him defiantly, her eyes +blazing, her poor hands twisting. + +Drew nodded toward the door, and shoved the suit case with his foot +across the threshold. His face was very stern and set. + +"You want me to take you 'home'?" he said. "_This_ is home. What do you +mean? Take you back to your Brother's house? You can't go back to your +Brother's house on your wedding day. It wouldn't be fair to me. And I +won't help you do an unfair thing _even_ to me. You've _got_ to give me +a chance!" + +He nodded again toward the open door, but the girl did not budge. His +face brightened suddenly, and he stepped back to where she was standing, +and lifted her up in his arms and swung her to his shoulder and stumbled +through the pitch-black doorway. "Do you remember," he cried, "the day +at your grammar-school picnic when I carried you over the railroad +trestle because the locomotive that was swooping down upon us round the +curve had scared all the starch out of your legs? Look out for your head +now, honey, and I'll give you a very good imitation of a cave man +bringing home his bride." + +In another moment he had switched a blaze of electric light into his +diminutive library, and deposited his sobbing burden none too formally +in the big easy chair that blocked almost all the open space between his +desk and his bookcases. "What! Aren't you laughing, too?" he cried in +mock alarm. But the crumpled little figure in the big chair did not +answer to his raillery. + +Until it seemed as though he would totter from his wavering foothold, +Drew stood and watched her dumbly. Then a voice that sounded strange +even to himself spoke out of his lips. + +"Ruth--come here," he said. + +She raised her rumpled head in astonishment, gaged for a throbbing +instant the new authoritative glint in his eyes, and then slipped +cautiously out of her chair and came to him, reeking with despair. For a +second they just stood and stared at each other, white face to white +face, a map of anger confronting a map of fear. + +"You understand," said Drew, "that to-day, by every moral, legal, +religious right and rite, you have delivered your life over utterly into +my hands?" His voice was like ice. + +"Yes, I understand," she answered feebly, with the fresh tears gushing +suddenly into her eyes. + +Drew's mouth relaxed. "You understand?" he repeated. "Well--forget it! +And never, never, never, as long as you and I are together, never, I +say, understand anything but this: you can cry about Aleck Reese all you +want to, but you sha'n't cry about me. You can count on that anyway." He +started to smile, but his mouth twitched instead with a wince of pain. +"And I thought I could really bring you heart's-ease," he scoffed. +"Heart's-ease? Bah!" + +"Heart's-ease. Bah!" The familiar phrase exploded Ruth's inflammable +nerves into hysterical laughter. "Why, that's what the lamb said," she +cried, "when I fed him on my pansy posies. 'Heart's-ease. B-a-h!'" And +her sudden burst of even unnatural delight cleared her face for the +moment of all its haggard tragedy, and left her once more just a very +fragile, very plaintive, very helpless, tear-stained child. "You _b-a-a_ +exactly like the lamb," she suggested with timid, snuffling pleasantry; +and at the very first suspicion of a reluctant twinkle at the corner of +Drew's eyes she reached up her trembling little hands to his shoulders +and held him like a vise with a touch so light, so faint, so timorous +that it could hardly have detained the shadow of a humming-bird. + +For a moment she stared exploringly round the unfamiliar, bright little +room crowded so horribly, cruelly close with herself, her mistake, and +the life-long friend loomed so suddenly and undesirably into a man. Then +with a quick, shuddery blink her eyes came flashing back wetly and +wistfully to the unsolved, inscrutable face before her. Her fingers dug +themselves frantically into his cheviot shoulders. + +"Oh, Drew, Drew," she blurted out, "I am so +very--very--very--frightened! Won't you please take me and play you are +my--Mother?" + +"Play I am your Mother? _Play I am your Mother!_" The phrase ripped out +of Drew's lips like an oath, and twitched itself just in time into +explosive, husky mirth. "Play I am your Mother?" The teeniest grimace +over his left shoulder outlined the soft silken swish and tug of a +lady's train. A most casual tap at his belt seemed to achieve instantly +the fashionable hour-glass outline of feminine curves. "Play I am your +Mother!" He smiled and, stooping down, took Ruth's scared white face +between his hands, and his smile was as bright--and just about as +pleasant--as a zigzag of lightning from a storm-black sky. + +"Ruthy dear," he said, "I don't feel very much like your Mother. Now if +it was a cannibal that you wanted, or a pirate, or a kidnapper, or a +body-snatcher, or a general all-round robber of widows and orphans, +why, here I am, all dressed and trained and labeled for the part. But a +_Mother_--" The smile went zigzagging again across his face just as a +big, wet, scalding tear came trickling down the girl's cheek into his +fingers. The feeling of that tear made his heart cramp unpleasantly. +"Oh, hang it all," he finished abruptly, "what does a Mother do, +anyway?" + +The little white face in his hands flooded instantly with a great +desolation. "I don't know," she moaned wearily. "I _never_ knew." + +For some inexplainable reason Aleck Reese's devilish, insolent beauty +flaunted itself suddenly before Drew's vision, and he gave a bitter +gasp, and turned away fiercely, and brushed his arm potently across his +forehead as though Sex, after all, were nothing but a trivial mask that +fastened loosely to the ears. + +When he turned round again, his conquered face had that strange, soft, +shining, translucent wonder-look in it which no woman all her life long +may reap twice from a man's face. Tenderly, serenely, uncaressingly, +without passion and without playfulness, he picked up his sad little +bride and carried her back to the big, roomy, restful chair, and +snuggled her down in his long arms, with her smoke-scented hair across +his cheek, and told her funny, giggly little stories, and crooned her +funny, sleepy little songs, till her shuddering sobs soothed +themselves--oh, so slowly--into lazy, languid, bashful little smiles, +and the lazy, languid, bashful little smiles droned off at last into +nestling, contented little sighs, and the nestling, contented little +sighs blossomed all of a sudden into merciful, peaceful slumber. + +Then, when the warm, gray June dawn was just beginning to flush across +the roofs of the city, he put her softly down and slipped away, and took +his smallest military brushes, and his smallest dressing-gown, and his +smallest slippers, and carried them out to his diminutive guest-room. +"It isn't a very big little guest-room," he mused disconsolately, "but +then, she isn't a very big little guest. It will hold her, I guess, as +long as she's willing to stay." + +"As long as she's willing to stay." The phrase puckered his lips. Again +Aleck Reese's face flashed before him in all its amazing beauty and +magical pathos, a face this time staring across a tiny, ornate cafe +table into the jaded, world-wise eyes of some gorgeous woman of the +theatrical demi-monde. At the vision Drew's shoulders squared suddenly +as though for a fair fight to the finish, and then wilted down with +equal abruptness as his eyes met accidentally in the mirror his own +plain, matter-of-fact reflection. The sight fairly mocked him. There was +no beauty there. No magic. No brilliance. No talent. No compelling +moodiness. No possible promise of "Love and Fame and Far Lands." +Nothing. Just eyes and nose and mouth and hair and an ugly baseball scar +on his left cheek. Merciful heavens! What had he to fight Aleck Reese +with, except the only two virtues that a man may not brag of--a decently +clean life and an unstaled love! + +Grinning to rekindle his courage, he started tiptoeing back along the +hall to his bedroom and his kitchen, and rolled up his sleeves and began +to clean house most furiously; for even if you are quite desperately in +love, and a fairly good man besides, it is just a little bit +crowded-feeling and disconcerting to have the lady walk unannounced +right into your life and your neckties and your pictures, to say nothing +of your last week's unwashed cream-jars. + +Frantically struggling with his coffee-pot at seven o'clock, he had +almost forgotten his minor troubles when a little short, gaspy breath +sound made him look up. Huddling her tired-out dress into the ample +folds of his dressing-gown, Ruth stood watching him bashfully. + +"Hello!" he said. "Who are you?" + +"I'm--Mrs.--Andrew Bernard, attorney at law," she announced with +stuttering nonchalance, and started off exploringly for the cupboard to +find Drew's best green Canton china to deck the kitchen breakfast +table. All through the tortuous little meal she sat in absolute +tongue-tied gravity, carving her omelet into a hundred infinitesimal +pieces and sipping like a professional coffee-taster at Drew's over-rank +concoction. Only once did her solemn face lighten with an inspirational +flash that made Drew's heart jump. Then, "Oh, Drew," she exclaimed, "do +you think you could go out to the house to-day and see if they fed the +lamb?" + +"No, I don't," said Drew bluntly, and poured himself out his fifth cup +of coffee. + +After breakfast, all the time that he was shaving, she came and sat on +the edge of a table and watched him with the same maddening gravity, and +when he finally started off for his office she followed him down the +whole length of his little hallway. "I like my cave!" she volunteered +with sudden sociability, and then with a great, pink-flushing wave of +consciousness she lifted up her face to him and stammered, "Do I kiss +you good-by?" + +Drew shook his head and laughed. "No," he said, "you don't even have to +do that; I'm not much of a kisser," and turned abruptly and grabbed at +the handle of the door. + +But before he had crossed the threshold she reached out and pulled him +back for a moment, and he had to stoop down very far to hear what she +wanted to tell him. "It's nothing much, Drew," she whispered. "It's +nothing much at all. I just wanted to say that--considering how strong +they are, and how--wild--and strange--I think men are--very--_gentle_ +creatures. Thank you." And in another instant she had gone back alone to +face by crass daylight the tragedy that she had brought into three +people's lives. + +Certainly in all the days and weeks that followed, Drew never failed to +qualify as a "gentle creature." Not a day passed at his office that he +did not telephone home with the most casual-sounding pleasantry, "Is +everything all right? Any burnt-bridge smoke in the air?" Usually, clear +as his own voice, and sometimes even with a little giggle tucked on at +the end, the answer came, "Yes, everything's all right." But now and +then over that telephone wire a minor note flashed with unmistakably +tremulous vibration: "N-o, Drew. Oh, could you come right home--and take +me somewhere?" + +Drew's brown cheeks hollowed a bit, perhaps, as time went on, but always +smilingly, always frankly and jocosely, he met the occasionally +recurrent emergencies of his love-life. Underneath his smile and +underneath his frankness his original purpose never flinched and never +wavered. With growing mental intimacy and absolute emotional aloofness +he forced day by day the image and the consciousness of his personality +upon the girl's plastic mind: his picture, for instance, as a matter of +course for her locket; his favorite, rather odd, colors for her clothes; +his sturdy, adventuresome, fleet-footed opinions to run ahead and break +in all her strange new thought-grounds for her. More than this, in every +possible way that showed to the world he stamped her definitely as the +most carefully cherished wife among all her young married mates. + +At first the very novelty of the situation had fed his eyes with rapture +and fired the girl's face with a feverish excitement almost as pink as +happiness. The surprise and congratulations of their friends, the speech +of the janitor, the floral offering of the elevator boy, the long +procession of silver spoons and cut-glass dishes, had filled their days +with interest and laughter. Trig in her light muslin house gowns or her +big gingham aprons, Ruth fluttered blissfully around her house like a +new, brainy sort of butterfly. By some fine, instinctive delicacy, +shrewder than many women's love, she divined and forestalled Drew's +domestic tastes and preferences, and lined his simplest, homespun needs +with all the quiver and sheen of silk. Resting his weariness, spurring +his laziness; equally quick to divine the need of a sofa pillow or a +joke; equally interested in his food and his politics; always ready to +talk, always ready to keep still; cramping her free suburban ways into +his hampered accommodations; missing her garden and her pets and her +piazzas without ever acknowledging it--she tried in every plausible way +except loving to compensate Drew for the wrong she had done him. + +Only once did Drew's smoldering self-control slip the short leash he had +set for himself. Just once, round the glowing coziness of a rainy-night +open fire, he had dropped his book slammingly on the floor and reached +out his hand to her soft hair that brightened like bronze in the +lamplight. "Are you happy?" he had probed before he could fairly bite +the words back; and she had jumped up, and tossed her hair out of her +eyes, and laughed as she started for the kitchen. "No, I'm not exactly +happy," she had said. "But I'm awfully--interested." + +So June budded into July, and July bloomed into August, and August +wilted into September, and September brittled and crisped and flamed at +last into October. Tennis and boating and picnics and horseback riding +filled up the edges of the days. Little by little the bright, wholesome +red came back to live in Ruth's rounding cheeks. Little by little the +good steady gleam of normal interests supplanted the wild +will-o'-the-wisp lights in her eyes. Little by little her accumulating +possessions began to steel shyly out from her tiny room and make +themselves boldly at home in the places where hitherto they had ventured +only as guests. Her workbasket crowded Drew's tobacco-jar deliberately +from the table to the top of the bookcase. Her daring hands nonchalantly +replaced a brutally clever cartoon with a soft-toned sketch of a little +child. Once, indeed, an ostentatiously freshly laundered dress, all lace +and posies and ruffles, went and hung itself brazenly in Drew's roomy +closet right next to his fishing clothes. + +And then, just as Drew thought that at last he saw Happiness stop and +turn and look at him a bit whimsically, Aleck Reese came back to +town--Aleck Reese, not as Fate should have had him, drunken with +flattery, riotous with revelry, chasing madly some new infatuation, but +Aleck Reese sobered, dazed, temporarily purified by the shock of his +loss, if not by the loss itself. + +For a week, blissfully unconscious of any cause, Drew had watched with +growing perplexity and anxiety the sudden, abrupt flag in the girl's +health and spirits and general friendliness. Flowers, fruit, candy, +books, excursion plans had all successively, one by one, failed to rouse +either her interest or her ordinary civility. And then one night, +dragging home extra late from a worried, wearisome day at the office, +faint for his dinner, sick for his sleep, he found the apartment +perfectly dark and cheerless, the fire unlighted, the table unset, and +Ruth herself lying in a paroxysm of grief on the floor under his +stumbling feet. With his dizzy head reeling blindly, and his hands +shaking like an aspen, he picked her up and tried to carry her to the +couch; but she wrenched herself away from him, and walked over to the +window and halfway back again before she spoke. + +"Aleck Reese has come home," she announced dully, and reached up +unthinkingly and turned a blast of electric light full on her ghastly +face. + +Drew clutched at the back of the nearest chair. "Have you seen him?" he +almost whispered. + +The girl nodded. "Yes. He's been here a week. I've seen him twice. +Once--all day at the tennis club--and this afternoon I met him on the +street, and he came home with me to get--a book." + +"Why didn't you tell me before that he was here?" + +She shrugged her shoulders wearily. "I thought his coming wasn't going +to matter," she faltered, "but--" + +"But what?" said Drew. + +Her arms fell limply down to her sides and her chin began to quiver. + +"He kissed me this afternoon," she stammered, "and I--kissed him. And, +worse than that, we were both--glad." + +Trying to brush the fog away from his eyes, Drew almost sprang across +the room at her, and she gave a queer little cry and fled, not away +from him, but right into his arms, as though _there_ was her only haven. +"Would you be apt to hurt me?" she gasped with a funny-sad sort of +inquisitiveness. Then she backed away and held out her hand like a man's +to Drew's shaking fingers. "I'm very much ashamed," she said, "about +this afternoon. Oh, very, very, very much ashamed. I haven't ever been a +really good wife to you, you know, but I never have cheated before until +to-day. I promise you faithfully that it sha'n't happen again. But, +Drew"--her face flushed utterly crimson--"but, Drew--I honestly think +that it _had_ to happen to-day." + +Drew's tortured eyes watched her keenly for a second and then his look +softened. "Will you please tell Aleck," he suggested, "that you told me +all about it and that I--laughed?" + +It was not till some time in December, however, after a nervous, +evasive, speechless sort of week, that Ruth appeared abruptly one day at +Drew's office, looking for all the world like the frightened child who +had sought him out there the June before. + +"Drew, you're five years older than I am, aren't you?" she began +disconnectedly. "And you've always been older than I am, and stronger +than I am, and wiser than I am. And you've always gone ahead in school +and play and everything, and learned what you wanted to and then come +back--and gotten me. And it always made everything--oh, so much easier +for me--and I thought it was a magic scheme that simply couldn't fail to +work. But I'm afraid I'm not quite as smart as I used to be--I can't +seem to catch up with you this time." + +"What do you mean?" said Drew. + +She began to fidget with her gloves. "Do you know what month it is?" she +asked abruptly. + +"Why, yes," said Drew, just a bit drearily. "It's December. What of it?" + +Her eyes blurred, but she kept them fixed steadily on her husband. "Why, +don't you remember," she gasped, "that when we were married I promised +you faithfully that I would love you within six months? The six months +were up in November--but I find I'm not quite ready--yet. You'll have to +give me a little more time," she pleaded. "You'll have to renew my +love-loan. Will you?" + +Drew slammed down his law books and forced his mouth into a grin. "I'd +forgotten all about that arrangement," he said. "Of course I'll renew +what you call your 'love-loan.' Really and truly I didn't expect you to +love me before a full year was up. Heart-wounds don't ever even begin to +heal until their first anniversaries are passed--all the Christmases and +birthdays and Easters. And, really, I'd quite as soon anyway that you +didn't love me till Spring," he added casually. "I'm so hideously busy +and worried just now with business things." + +She gave him an odd little look that barely grazed his face and settled +flutteringly on the book in his hand. It was a ponderous-looking +treatise on "The Annulment of Marriage." Her heart began to pound +furiously. "Drew!" she blurted out, "I simply can't stand things any +longer. I shall go mad. I've tried and tried and tried to be good, and +it's no use. I must be stupid. I must be a fool. BUT I WANT TO GO HOME!" + +"All right," said Drew very quietly, "you--can--go--home." + +In another instant, without good-by or regret, she had flashed out of +the office and was racing down the stairs. Halfway to the street she +missed her handkerchief, and started reluctantly back to get it. The +office door was locked, but she tiptoed round to a private side entrance +and opened the door very cautiously and peeped in. + +Prostrate across his great, cluttered desk, Drew, the serene, the +laughing, the self-sufficient, lay sobbing like a woman. + +Startled as though she had seen a ghost, the girl backed undetected out +of the door, and closed it very softly behind her, nor did she stop +tiptoeing until she had reached the street floor. Then, dropping down +weak-kneed upon the last step, she sat staring out into the dingy patch +of snow that flared now and then through the swinging doorway. Somewhere +out in that vista Aleck Reese was waiting and watching for her. Two or +three of her husband's business acquaintances paused and accosted her. +"Anything the matter?" they probed. + +"Oh, no," she answered brightly. "I'm just thinking." + +After a while she jumped up abruptly and stole back through a +box-cluttered hall to the rear door of the building, and slid out +unnoticed into a side street, gathering her great fur coat--Drew's +latest gift--closer and closer around her shivering body. The day was +gray and bleak and scarily incomplete, like the work of some amateur +creator who had slipped up on the one essential secret of how to make +the sun shine. The jingliest sound of sleigh-bells, the reddest flare of +holiday shop windows, could not cheer her thoughts away from the +stinging, shuddering memory of Drew's crumpled shoulders, the gasping +catch of his breath, the strange new flicker of gray at his temples. +Over and over to herself she kept repeating dully: "I've hurt Drew just +the way that Aleck hurt me. It mustn't be. It mustn't be--it mustn't! +There's got to be some way out!" + +Then most unexpectedly, at the first street corner she was gathered up +joyously by a crowd of her young married chums who were starting off in +an automobile for their sewing-club in Ruth's own old-home suburb +fifteen miles away. It was a long time since she had played very freely +with women, and the old associations caught her interest with a novel +charm. Showered with candy, gay with questions, happy with laughter, the +party whizzed up at last to the end of its journey, and tumbled out rosy +with frost and mischief to join the women who had already arrived. From +every individual corner of the warm, lazy sewing-room some one seemed to +jump up and greet Ruth's return. "Oh, you pampered young bride!" they +teased, and "Will you look at the wonderful fur coat and hat that have +happened to Ruth!" Even the sad-faced, widowed little dressmaker who +always officiated professionally at the club wriggled out of her seat +and brought her small boy 'way across the room to stroke the girl's +sumptuous mink-brown softness. + +"Why, am I so very wonderful?" stammered Ruth, staring down with her +hands in her pockets at the great fur length and breadth of her. + +"Well, if I had a coat like that," scoffed a shrill voice from the sofa, +"I should think that it was the most wonderful thing in life that could +happen to me." + +Standing there scorching herself in the fire-glow, Ruth looked up +suddenly with a fierce sort of intentness. "You wise old married +people," she cried, "tell me truly what really is the most wonderful +thing in life that can happen to a woman?" + +"Goodness, is it a new riddle?" shouted her hostess, and instantly a +dozen noisy answers came rollicking into the contest. "Money!" cried the +extravagant one. "A husband who goes to the club every night!" screamed +the flirt. "Health!" "Curls!" "Dresden china!" "Single blessedness!" the +suggestions came piling in. Only the dressmaker's haggard face whitened +comprehendingly to the hunger underneath Ruth's laughing eyes. Staring +scornfully at the heaping luxuries all around her, the shabby, +widow-marked woman snatched up her child and cuddled it to her breast. +"The most wonderful thing in life that can happen to a woman?" she +quoted passionately. "I'll tell you what it is. It's being able to hope +that your son will be _exactly_ like his father." + +"Exactly like his father?" The shrewd sting and lash of the words ripped +through Ruth's senses like the scorch of a red-hot fuse. Strength, +tenderness, patience, love, loyalty flamed up before her with such +dazzling brilliance that she could scarcely fathom the features behind +them, and the room whirled dizzily with sudden excessive heat. "Exactly +like his father." A dozen feminine voices caught up the phrase and +dropped it blisteringly. The wife of the town's _bon vivant_ winced a +trifle. The most radiant bride of the year jabbed her fingers +accidentally with her scissors. Some one started to sigh and laughed +instead. A satirical voice suggested, "Well, but of course there's got +to be some improvement in every generation." + +Smothering for air, Ruth reached up bunglingly and fastened her big fur +collar and started for the door. "Oh, no," she protested to every one's +detaining hands, "honestly I didn't intend to stay. I've got to hurry +over to the house and get some things before dark," and, pleading +several equally legitimate excuses, she bolted out into the snowy fields +to take the quickest possible short cut to her Big Brother's house. + +Every plowing step drove her heart pounding like an engine, and every +lagging footfall started her scared thoughts throbbing louder than her +heart. Hurry as fast as she could, stumbling over drift-hidden rocks or +floundering headlong into some hollow, she could not seem to outdistance +the startling, tumultuous memory of the little dressmaker's +passion-glorified eyes staring scornfully down on the slowly sobering +faces of the women around her. The vision stung itself home to the girl +like sleet in her eyes. + +"O-h!" she groaned. "What a wicked thing Life is--wasting a man like +Drew on a girl--like me. 'To be able to hope that your son will be +exactly like his father!'" Her heart jumped. Merciful heavens! If +Happiness were really--only as simple a thing as that--just to look in +your husband's eyes and find them good. Years and years hence, perhaps, +she herself might have a son--with all his father's blessed, winsome +virtues. Her eyes flooded suddenly with angry tears. "Oh, could Fate +possibly, possibly be so tricky as to make a woman love her son because +he _was_ like his father, and yet all, all the long years make that +woman just miss loving the father himself?" + +With a little frightened gasp she began to run. "If I only can get to +the house," she reasoned, "then everything will be all right. And I'll +never leave it again." + +Half an hour later, panting and flushing, she twisted her latch-key +through the familiar home door. No one was there to greet her. From +attic to cellar the whole house was deserted. At first the emptiness and +roominess seemed to ease and rest her, but after a little while she +began to get lonesome, and started out to explore familiar corners, and +found them unfamiliar. "What an ugly new wall-paper!" she fretted; "and +what a silly way to set the table!" Her old room smote upon her with +strange surprise--not cunningly, like one's funny little baby clothes, +but distastefully, like a last year's outgrown coat. In the large, light +pantry a fresh disappointment greeted her. "What an insipid salad!" she +mourned. "It isn't half as nice as the salad Drew makes." Cookies, +cakes, doughnuts failed her successively. "And I used to think they were +the best I ever tasted," she puzzled. In the newly upholstered parlor a +queer unrest sickened her. "Why, the house doesn't seem quite to--fit me +any more," she acknowledged, and bundled herself into her coat again, +and stuffed her pockets with apples, and started off more gladly for the +barn. + +As she pushed back the heavy sliding doors a horse whinnied, possibly +for welcome, but probably for oats. Teased by the uncertainty, the girl +threw back her head and laughed. "Hello, all you animals," she cried; "I +have come home. Isn't it fine?" + +Up from the floor of his pen the lamb rose clatteringly like a +mechanical toy, and met the glad news with a peculiarly disdainful +"B-a-a-a!" Back to the sheltering wood-pile her old friends the +kittens--little cats now--fled from her with precipitous fear. The +white-nosed cow reared back with staring eyes. The pet horse snapped at +her fingers instead of the apple. The collie dog, to be sure, came +jumping boisterously, but the jumpiness was unmistakably because he was +"Carlo," and not because she was "Ruth." And yet only six months before +every animal on the place had looked like her with that strange, absurd +mimicry of human expression that characterizes the faces of all +much-cherished birds or beasties. And now even the collie dog had +reverted to the plain, blank-featured canine street type--and the pet +horse looked like the hired man. + +[Illustration: "Hello, all you animals," she cried] + +The girl's forehead puckered up into a bewildered sort of frown. "I +don't quite seem to belong anywhere," she concluded. The thought was +unpleasant. Worst of all, the increasing, utterly unexplainable sob in +her throat made her feel very reluctant to go back into the house and +wait for her Brother and the Housekeeper and the inevitable questions. +Dallying there on the edge of the wheelbarrow, munching her red-cheeked +apples, it was almost eight o'clock before her mind quickened to a +solution of her immediate difficulties. She would hide in the hay all +night, there in the sweetness and softness of last summer's beautiful +grass, and think out her problems and decide what to do. + +Deep in the hay she burrowed out a nest, and lined it with the biggest +buffalo robe and the thickest carriage rug. Then one by one she carried +up the astonished kittens, and the heavy, fat lamb, and the +scrambling collie dog to keep her company, and snuggled herself down, +warm and content, to drowse and dream amidst the musty cobwebs, and the +short, sharp snap of straws, and the soothing sighs of the sleepy cow, +and the stamp, stamp of the horse, and all the extra, indefinite, scary, +lonesome night noises that keep your nerves exploding intermittently +like torpedoes and start your common sense scouring like a silver polish +at all the tarnished values of your everyday life. + +Midnight found her lying wide awake and starry-eyed, with her red lips +twisted into an oddly inscrutable smile. Close in her left hand the +collie dog nestled his grizzly nose. Under her right arm the woolly lamb +slumbered. Over her quiet feet the little cats purred with fire-gleaming +faces. + +Attracted by the barking of his new bulldog, Big Brother came out in the +early morning and discovered her in the hay. + +"Well, for heaven's sake!" he began. "Where did you come from? Where +does Drew think you are? He's been telephoning here all night trying to +find you. I guess he's scared to death. Great Scott! what's the matter? +What are you hiding out here for? Have you had any trouble with Drew?" + +She slid down out of her nest with the jolliest sort of a laugh. "Of +course I haven't had any trouble with Drew. I just wanted to come home. +That's all. Drew buys me everything else," she dimpled, "but he simply +won't buy me any hay--and I'm such a donkey." + +Big Brother shrugged his shoulders. "You're just as foolish as ever," he +began, and then finished abruptly with "What a perfectly absurd way to +do your hair! It looks like fury." + +An angry flush rose to her cheeks, and she reached up her hands +defensively. "It suits Drew all right," she retorted. + +Big Brother laughed. "Well, come along in the house and get your +breakfast and telephone Drew." + +The funniest sort of an impulse smote suddenly upon Ruth's mind. "I +don't want any breakfast," she protested, "and I don't want any +telephone. I'm going home this minute to surprise Drew. We were going +to have broiled chicken, and a new dining-room table, and a pot of +primroses as big as your head. Shall I have time to wash my face before +the car comes?" + +Ten minutes after that she was running like mad to the main street. An +hour later the big, whizzing electric car that was speeding her back to +the city crashed headlong at a curve into another brittling, splintering +mass of screams and blood and broken glass and shivering woodwork. + +When she came to her senses she was lying in her blood-stained furs on +some one's piazza floor, and the horrid news of the accident must have +traveled very quickly, for a great crowd of people was trampling round +over the snowy lawn, and Big Brother and Aleck Reese and the old family +doctor seemed to have dropped down right out of the snow-whirling sky. +Just as she opened her eyes, Aleck Reese, haggard with fear and +dissipation, was kneeling down trying to slip his arms under her. + +With the mightiest possible effort she lifted her forefinger warningly. + +"Don't you dare touch me," she threatened. "I promised Drew--" + +The doctor looked up astonished into her wide-open eyes. "Now, Ruth," he +begged, "don't you make any fuss. We've got to get you into a carriage. +We'll try not to hurt you any more than is absolutely necessary." + +Her shattered nerves failed her utterly. "What nonsense!" she sobbed. +"You don't have to hurt me at all. My own man never hurts me at all. I +tell you I want my own man." + +"But we can't find Drew," protested the doctor. + +Then the blood came gushing back into her eyes and some wicked brute +took her bruised knees, and her wrenched back, and her broken collar +bone, and her smashed head, and jarred them all up together like a bag +of junk, and she gave one awful, blood-curdling yell--and a horse +whinnied--and everything in the world stopped happening like a run-down +clock. + +When Time began to tick normally again, she found herself lying with an +almost solid cotton face in a pleasant, puffy bed that seemed to rock, +and roll, and tug against her straining arm that clutched its fingers +like an anchor into somebody's perfectly firm, kind hand. As far away as +a voice on a shore, tired, hoarse, desperately incessant, some one was +signaling reassurance to her: "You're all right, honey, You're all +right, honey." + +After a long time her fingers twittered in the warm grasp. "Who are +you?" she stammered perplexedly. + +"Just your 'own man,'" whispered Drew. + +The lips struggling out from the edge of the bandage quivered a little. +"My 'own man'?" she repeated with surprise. "Who was the tattletale that +told you?" She began to shiver suddenly in mental or physical agony. +"Oh, I remember it all now," she gasped. "Was the little boy killed who +sat in the corner seat?" + +"Why, I don't know," said Drew, and his voice rasped unexpectedly with +the sickening strain of the past few hours. + +At the sound she gave a panic-stricken sob. "I believe I'm dead myself, +Drew," she cried, "and you're trying to keep it from me. Where am I? +Tell me instantly where I am." + +Drew's laugh rang out before he could control it. "You're here in your +own little room," he assured her. + +"Prove it," she whimpered hysterically. "Tell me what's on my bureau." + +He jumped up and walked across the room to make sure. "Why, there's a +silver-backed mirror, and a box of violet powder, and a package of +safety pins." + +"Pshaw!" she said. "Those might be on any angel's bureau. What else do +you see?" + +He fumbled a minute among the glass and silver and gave a quick sigh of +surprise. "Here's your wedding ring." + +"Bring it to me," she pleaded, and took the tiny golden circlet blindly +from his hand and slipped it experimentally once or twice up and down +her finger. "Yes, that's it," she assented, and handed it back to him. +"Hurry--quick--before anybody comes." + +"What do you want?" faltered Drew. + +She reached up wilfully and yanked the bandage away from the corner of +one eye. + +"Why, put the ring back on my finger where it belongs!" she said. +"We're going to begin all over again. Play that I am your wife!" she +demanded tremulously. + +Drew winced like raw flesh. "You are my wife," he cried. "You are! You +are! You are!" + +With all the strength that was left to her she groped out and drew his +face down to her lips. + +"Oh, I've invented a lots better game than that," she whispered. "If +we're going to play any game at all--let's--play--that--I--love--you!" + + + + +HEART OF THE CITY + + +THE dining-room was green, as green could be. Under the orange-colored +candle-light, the walls, rugs, ceiling, draperies, ferns, glowed +verdant, mysterious, intense, like night woods arching round a camp +fire. Into this fervid, pastoral verdure the round white table, +sparkling with silver, limpid with wine-lights, seemed to roll forth +resplendent and incongruous as a huge, tinseled snowball. + +Outside, like fire engines running on velvet wheels, the automobiles +went humming along the pavement. Inside, the soft, narrow, ribbony voice +of a violin came whimpering through the rose-scented air. + +It was the midst of dinner-party time. In the oak-paneled hallway a +shadowy, tall clock swallowed gutturally on the verge of striking nine. + +The moment was distinctly nervous. The _entree_ course was late, and the +Hostess, gesticulating tragically to her husband, had slipped one +chalky white shoulder just a fraction of an inch too far out of its +jeweled strap. The Host, conversing every second with exaggerated +blandness about the squirrels in Central Park, was striving frantically +all the while with a desperately surreptitious, itchy gesture to signal +to his mate. Worse than this, a prominent Sociologist was audibly +discussing the American penal system with a worried-looking lady whose +brother was even then under indictment for some banking fraud. Some one, +trying to kick the Sociologist's ankle bone, had snagged his own foot +gashingly through the Woodland Girl's skirt ruffle, and the Woodland +Girl, blush-blown yet with country breezes, clear-eyed as a trout pool, +sweet-breathed as balsam, was staring panic-stricken around the table, +trying to locate the particular man's face that could possibly connect +boot-wise with such a horridly profane accident. The sudden, grotesque +alertness of her expression attracted the laggard interest of the young +Journalist at her left. + +"What brought you to New York?" the Journalist asked abruptly. "You're +the last victim in from the country, so you must give an account of +yourself. Come 'fess up! What brought you to New York?" + +The Journalist's smile was at least as conscientious as the smile of +daylight down a city airshaft, and the Woodland Girl quickened to the +brightening with almost melodramatic delight, for all previous +conversational overtures from this neighbor had been about actors that +she had never heard of, or operas that she could not even pronounce, and +before the man's scrutinizing, puzzled amazement she had felt convicted +not alone of mere rural ignorance, but of freckles on her nose. + +"What brought me to New York?" she repeated with vehement new courage. +"Do you really want to know? It's quite a speech. What brought me to New +York? Why, I wanted to see the 'heart of the city.' I'm twenty years +old, and I've never in all my life been away from home before. Always +and always I've lived in a log bungalow, in a wild garden, in a pine +forest, on a green island, in a blue lake. My father is an invalid, you +know, one of those people who are a little bit short of lungs but +inordinately long of brains. And I know Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and +Hindoo History and Sunrises and Sunsets and Mountains and Moose, and +such things. But I wanted to know People. I wanted to know Romance. I +wanted to see for myself all this 'heart of the city' that you hear so +much about--the great, blood-red, eager, gasping heart of the city. So I +came down here last week to visit my uncle and aunt." + +[Illustration: "The lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist"] + +Her mouth tightened suddenly, and she lowered her voice with ominous +intensity. "But there _isn't_ any heart to, your city--no!--there is no +heart at all at the center of things--just a silly, pretty, very much +decorated heart-shaped box filled with candy. If you shake it hard +enough, it may rattle, but it won't throb. And I hate--hate--hate your +old city. It's utterly, hopelessly, irremediably jejune, and I'm going +home to-morrow!" As she leaned toward the Journalist, the gold locket on +her prim, high-necked gown swung precipitously forth like a wall picture +in a furious little earthquake. + +The Journalist started to laugh, then changed his mind and narrowed his +eyes speculatively toward something across the room. "No heart?" he +queried. "No Romance?" + +The Woodland Girl followed his exploring gaze. Between the plushy green +_portieres_ a dull, cool, rose-colored vista opened forth refreshingly, +with a fragment of bookcase, the edge of a stained glass window, the +polished gleam of a grand piano, and then--lithe, sinuous, willowy, in +the shaded lamplight--the lone, accentuated figure of a boy violinist. +In the amazing mellow glow that smote upon his face, the Woodland Girl +noted with a crumple at her heart the tragic droop of the boy's dark +head, the sluggish, velvet passion of his eyes, the tortured mouth, +the small chin fairly worn and burrowed away against his vibrant +instrument. And the music that burst suddenly forth was like scalding +water poured on ice--seething with anguish, shuddering with ecstasy, +flame at your heart, frost at your spine. + +The Girl began to shiver. "Oh, yes, I know," she whispered. "He plays, +of course, as though he knew all sorrows by their first names, but +that's Genius, isn't it, not Romance? He's such a little lad. He can +hardly have experienced much really truly emotion as yet beyond +a--stomach ache--or the loss of a Henty book." + +"A stomach ache! A Henty book!" cried the Journalist, with a bitter, +convulsive sort of mirth. "Well, I'm ready to admit that the boy is +scarcely eighteen. But he happens to have lost a wife and a son within +the past two months! While some of us country-born fellows of +twenty-eight or thirty were asking our patient girls at home to wait +even another year, while we came over to New York and tried our +fortunes, this little youngster of scarcely eighteen is already a +husband, a father, and a widower. + +"He's a Russian Jew--you can see that--and one of our big music people +picked him up over there a few months ago and brought him jabberingly to +America. But the invitation didn't seem to include the wife and +baby--genius and family life aren't exactly guaranteed to develop very +successfully together--and right there on the dock at the very last +sailing moment the little chap had to choose between a small, wailing +family and a great big, clapping New York--just temporarily, you +understand, a mere matter of immediate expediency; and families are +supposed to keep indefinitely, you know, and keep sweet, too, while +everybody knows that New York can go sour in a single night, even in the +coldest weather. And just as the youngster was trying to decide, +wavering first one way and then the other, and calling on high every +moment to the God of all the Russias, the old steamer whistle began to +blow, and they rustled him on board, and his wife and the kid pegged +back alone to the province where the girl's father lived, and they got +snarled up on the way with a band of Cossack soldiers, and the little +chap hasn't got any one now even as far off as Russia to hamper his +musical career.... So he's playing jig-tunes to people like us that are +trying to forget our own troubles, such as how much we owe our tailors +or our milliners. But sometimes they say he screams in the night, and +twice he has fainted in the midst of a concert. + +"No heart in the city? No Romance? Why, my dear child, this whole +city fairly teems with Romance. The automobiles throb with it. The +great, roaring elevated trains go hustling full of it. There's +Romance--Romance--Romance from dawn to dark, and from dark to dawn +again. The sweetness of the day-blooming sunshine, the madness of the +night-blooming electric lights, the crowds, the colors, the music, the +perfume--why, the city is _Romance-mad_! If you stop anywhere for even +half an instant to get your breath, Romance will run right over you. +It's whizzing past you in the air. It's whizzing past you in the street. +It's whizzing past you in the sensuous, ornate theaters, in the jaded +department stores, in the calm, gray churches. Romance?--Love? + +"The only trouble about New York Romance lies just in the fact that it +is so whizzingly premature. You've simply got to grab Love the minute +before you've made up your mind--because the minute after you've made +up your mind, it won't be there. Grab it--or lose it. Grab it--or +lose it. That's the whole Heart-Motto of New York. Sinner or +Saint--RUSH--RUSH--RUSH--like Hell!" + +"Grab it--or lose it. Grab it, or--l-o-s-e it." Like the impish raillery +of a tortured devil, the violin's passionate, wheedling tremolo seemed +to catch up the phrase, and mouth it and mock it, and tear it and tease +it, and kiss it and curse it--and SMASH it at last into a great, +screeching crescendo that rent your eardrums like the crash of steel +rails. + +With strangely parched lips, the Woodland Girl stretched out her small +brown hand to the fragile, flower-stemmed glass, and tasted for the +first time in her life the sweety-sad, molten-gold magic of champagne. +"Why, what is it?" she asked, with the wonder still wet on her lips. +"Why, what is it?" + +The Journalist raised his own glass with staler fingers, and stared for +a second through narrowing eyes into the shimmering vintage. "What is +it?" he repeated softly. "This particular brand? The Italians call it +'_Lacrymae Christi_.' So even in our furies and our follies, in our cafes +and carousals, in our love and all our laughter--we drink--you +see--the--'Tears of Christ.'" He reached out suddenly and covered the +Girl's half-drained glass with a quivering hand. "Excuse me," he +stammered. "Maybe--our thirst is partly of the soul; but '_Lacrymae +Christi_' was never meant for little girls like you. _Go back to your +woods!_" + +Scuttle as it might, the precipitate, naked passion in his voice did not +quite have time to cover itself with word-clothes. A little gasping +breath escaped. And though the Girl's young life was as shiningly empty +as an unfinished house, her brain-cells were packed like an attic with +all the inherent experiences of her mother's mother's mother, and she +flinched instinctively with a great lurch of her heart. + +"Oh, let's talk about something--dressy," she begged. "Let's talk about +Central Park. Let's talk about the shops. Let's talk about the subway." +Her startled face broke desperately into a smile. "Oh, don't you think +the subway is perfectly dreadful," she insisted. "There's so much +underbrush in it!" Even as she spoke, her shoulders hunched up the +merest trifle, and her head pushed forward, after the manner of people +who walk much in the deep woods. The perplexity in her eyes spread +instantly to her hands. Among the confusing array of knives and forks +and spoons at her plate, her fingers began to snarl nervously like a +city man's feet through a tangle of blackberry vines. + +With a good-natured shrug of his shoulders, the Journalist turned to his +more sophisticated neighbor, and left her quite piteously alone once +more. An enamored-looking man and woman at her right were talking +transmigration of souls, but whenever she tried to annex herself to +their conversation they trailed their voices away from her in a sacred, +aloof sort of whisper. Across the table the people were discussing city +politics in a most clandestine sort of an undertone. Altogether it was +almost half an hour before the Journalist remembered to smile at her +again. The very first flicker of his lips started her red mouth mumbling +inarticulately. + +"Were you going to say something?" he asked. + +She shook her head drearily. "No," she stammered. "I've tried and tried, +but I can't think of anything at all to say. I guess I don't know any +secrets." + +The Journalist's keen eyes traveled shrewdly for a second round the +cautious, worldly-wise table, and then came narrowing back rather +quizzically to the Woodland Girl's flushing, pink and white face. + +"Oh, I don't know," he smiled. "You look to me like a little girl who +might have a good many secrets." + +She shook her head. "No," she insisted, "in all the whole wide world I +don't know one single thing that has to be whispered." + +"No scandals?" teased the Journalist. + +"No!" + +"No love affairs?" + +"No!" + +The Journalist laughed. "Why, what do you think about all day long up in +your woods?" he quizzed. + +"Anglo-Saxon and Chemistry and Hindoo History and Sunsets and Mountains +and Moose," she repeated glibly. + +"Now you're teasing me," said the Journalist. + +She nodded her head delightedly. "I'm trying to!" she smiled. + +The Journalist turned part way round in his chair, and proffered her a +perfectly huge olive as though it had been a crown jewel. When he spoke +again, his voice was almost as low as the voice of the man who was +talking transmigration of souls. But his smile was a great deal kinder. +"Don't you find any Romance at all in your woods?" he asked a bit +drawlingly. + +"No," said the Girl; "that's the trouble. Of course, when I was small it +didn't make any difference; indeed, I think that I rather preferred it +lonesome then. But this last year, somehow, and this last autumn +especially--oh, I know you'll think I'm silly--but two or three times +in the woods--I've hoped and hoped and hoped--at the turn of a trail, or +the edge of a brook, or the scent of a camp fire--that I might run right +into a real, live Hunter or Fisherman. And--one night I really prayed +about it--and the next morning I got up early and put on my very best +little hunting suit--all coats and leggings and things just like yours, +you know--and I stayed out all day long--tramping--tramping--tramping, +and I never saw _any one_. But I did get a fox. Yes!--and then--" + +"And then what?" whispered the Journalist very helpfully. + +The Girl began to smile, but her lips were quite as red as a blush. +"Well--and--then," she continued softly, "it occurred to me all of a +sudden that the probable reason why the Man-Who-Was-Meant-for-Me didn't +come was because he--_didn't know I was there_!" She began to laugh, +toying all the while a little bit nervously with her ice-cream fork. "So +I thought that perhaps--if I came down to New York this winter--and then +went home again, that maybe--not probably you know, but just +possibly--some time in the spring or summer--I might look up suddenly +through the trees and he _would_ be there! But I've been ten days in New +York and I haven't seen one single man whom I'd exactly like to meet in +the woods--in my little hunting suit." + +"Wouldn't you be willing to meet me?" pried the Journalist +injudiciously. + +The Girl looked up and faltered. "Why, of course," she hurried, "I +should be very glad to see you--but I had always sort of hoped that the +man whom I met in the woods wouldn't be bald." + +The Journalist choked noisily over his salted almonds. His heightened +color made him look very angry. + +"Oh, I trust I wasn't rude," begged the Woodland Girl. Then as the +Journalist's galloping laughter slowed down into the gentlest sort of a +single-foot smile, her eyes grew abruptly big and dark with horror. +"Why, I never thought of it," she stammered, "but I suppose that what I +have just said about the man in the woods and my coming to New York +is--'husband hunting.'" + +The Journalist considered the matter very carefully. "N--o," he answered +at last, "I don't think I should call it 'husband hunting' nor yet, +exactly, 'the search for the Holy Grail'; but, really now, I think on +the whole I should call it more of a sacrament than a sport." + +"O--h," whispered the Girl with a little sigh of relief. + +It must have been fully fifteen minutes before the Journalist spoke to +her again. Then, in the midst of his salad course, he put down his fork +and asked quite inquisitively: "Aren't there any men at all up in your +own special Maine woods?" + +"Oh, yes," the Girl acknowledged with a little crinkle of her nose, +"there's Peter." + +"Who's Peter?" he insisted. + +"Why, Peter," she explained, "is the Philadelphia boy who tutors with +my father in the summers." + +Her youthfulness was almost as frank as fever, and, though taking +advantage of this frankness seemed quite as reprehensible as taking +advantage of any other kind of babbling delirium, the Journalist felt +somehow obliged to pursue his investigations. + +"Nice boy?" he suggested tactfully. + +The Girl's nose crinkled just a little bit tighter. + +The Journalist frowned. "I'll wager you two dozen squirrels out of +Central Park," he said, "that Peter is head over heels in love with +you!" + +The Girl's mouth twisted a trifle, but her eyes were absolutely solemn. +"I suppose that he is," she answered gravely, "but he's never taken the +trouble to tell me so, and he's been with us three summers. I suppose +lots of men are made like that. You read about it in books. They want to +sew just as long--long--long a seam as they possibly can without tying +any knot in the thread. Peter, I know, wants to make perfectly +Philadelphia-sure that he won't meet any girl in the winters whom he +likes better." + +"I think that sort of thing is mighty mean," interposed the Journalist +sympathetically. + +"Mean?" cried the Girl. "Mean?" Her tousley yellow hair seemed fairly +electrified with astonishment, and her big blue eyes brimmed suddenly +with uproarious delight. "Oh, of course," she added contritely, "it may +be mean for the person who sews the seam, but it's heaps of fun for the +cloth, because after awhile, you know, Pompous Peter will discover that +there isn't any winter girl whom he likes better, and in the general +excitement of the discovery he'll remember only the long, long +seam--three happy summers--and forget altogether that he never tied any +knot. And then! And then!" her cheeks began to dimple. "And then--just +as he begins triumphantly to gather me in--all my yards and yards and +yards of beautiful freedom fretted into one short, puckery, worried +ruffle--then--Hooray--swish--slip--slide--_out comes the thread_--and +Mr. Peter falls right over bump-backward with surprise. Won't it be +fun?" + +"Fun?" snapped the Journalist. "What a horrid, heartless little cynic +you are!" + +The Girl's eyebrows fairly tiptoed to reach his meaning. "Cynic?" she +questioned. "You surely don't mean that I am a cynic? Why, I think men +are perfectly splendid in every possible way that--doesn't matter to a +woman. They can build bridges and wage wars, and spell the hardest, +homeliest words. But Peter makes life so puzzling," she added wryly. +"Everybody wants me to marry Peter; everybody says 'slow but sure,' +'slow but sure.' But it's a lie!" she cried out hotly. "Slow is _not_ +sure. It is not! It is not! The man who isn't excited enough to _run_ to +his goal is hardly interested enough to walk. And yet"--her forehead +crinkled all up with worry--"and yet--you tell me that 'quick' isn't +sure, either. _What is sure?_" + +"Nothing!" said the Journalist. + +She tossed her head. "All the same," she retorted, "I'd rather have a +man propose to me three years before, rather than three years after, I'd +made up my mind whether to accept him or not." + +"Don't--marry--Peter," laughed the Journalist. + +"Why not?" she asked--so very bluntly that the Journalist twisted a bit +uneasily. + +"Oh--I--don't--know," he answered cautiously. Then suddenly his face +brightened. "Any trout fishing up in your brooks about the first of +May?" he asked covertly. + +Again the knowledge of her mother's mother's mother blazed red-hot in +the Girl's cheeks. "Y--e--s," she faltered reluctantly, "the +trout-fishing is very generous in May." + +"Will Peter be there?" persisted the Journalist. + +Her eyes began to shine again with amusement. "Oh, no," she said. "Peter +never comes until July." With mock dignity she straightened herself up +till her shoulder almost reached the Journalist's. "I was very foolish," +she attested, "even to mention Peter, or mankind--at all. Of course, I'm +commencing to realize that my ideas about men are exceedingly +countrified--'disgustingly countrified,' my aunt tells me. Why, just +this last week at my aunt's sewing club I learned that the only two real +qualifications for marriage are that a man should earn not less than a +hundred dollars a week, and be a perfectly kind hooker." + +"A perfectly kind hooker?" queried the Journalist. + +"Why, yes," she said. "Don't you know--now--that all our dresses fasten +in the back?" Her little tinkling, giggling laugh rang out with +startling incongruity through the formal room, and her uncle glanced at +her and frowned with the slightest perceptible flicker of irritation. +She leaned her face a wee bit closer to the Journalist. "Now, uncle, for +instance," she confided, "is not a particularly kind hooker. He's +accurate, you understand, but not exactly kind." + +The Journalist started to smile, but instantly her tip-most finger ends +brushed across his sleeve. "Oh, please, don't smile any more," she +pleaded, "because every time you smile you look so pleasant that some +lady sticks out a remark like a hand and grabs you into her own +conversation." But the warning came too late. In another moment the +Journalist was most horridly involved with the people on his left in a +prosy discussion regarding Japanese servants. + +For another interminable length of time the Woodland Girl sat in +absolute isolation. Some of the funerals at home were vastly more +social, she thought--people at least inquired after the health of the +survivors. But now, even after she had shredded all her lettuce into a +hundred pieces and bitten each piece twice, she was still quite alone. +Even after she had surreptitiously nibbled up all the cracker crumbs +around her own plate and the Journalist's plate, she was still quite +alone. Finally, in complete despair, she folded her little, brown, +ringless hands and sat and stared frankly about her. + +Across the sparkly, rose-reeking table a man as polished as poison ivy +was talking devotedly to a white-faced Beauty in a most exciting gown +that looked for all the world like the Garden of Eden struck by +lightning--black and billowing as a thunder cloud, zigzagged with +silver, ravished with rose-petals, rain-dropped with pearls. Out of the +gorgeous, mysterious confusion of it the Beauty's bare shoulders leaped +away like Eve herself fleeing before the storm. But beyond the +extravagant sweep of gown and shoulder the primitive likeness ended +abruptly in one of those utterly well-bred, worldly-wise, perfected +young faces, with that subtle, indescribable sex-consciousness of +expression which makes the type that men go mad over, and the type that +older women tersely designate as looking just a little bit "too kissed." + +But the Woodland Girl did not know the crumpled-rose-leaf stamp of face +which characterizes the coquette. Utterly fascinated, tremulous with +excitement, heartsick with envy, she reached out very softly and knocked +with her finger on the Journalist's plate to beg readmission to his +mind. + +"Oh, who is that beautiful creature?" she whispered. + +"Adele Reitzen," said the Journalist, "your uncle's ward." + +"My own uncle's ward?" The Woodland Girl gave a little gasp. "But why +does she worry so in her eyes every now and then?" she asked abruptly. + +Even as she asked, Adele Reitzen began to cough. The trouble started +with a trivial clearing of her throat, caught up a disjointed swallow or +two, and ended with a rack that seemed to rip like a brutal knife right +across her silver-spangled lungs. Somebody patted her on the back. +Somebody offered her a glass of water. But in the midst of the choking +paroxysm she asked to be excused for a moment and slipped away to the +dressing-room. The very devoted man seemed rather piteously worried by +the incident, and the Hostess looked straight into his eyes and shook +her head ominously. + +"I hope you are planning a southern wedding trip next week," she said. +"I don't like that cough of Adele's. I've sat at three dinner parties +with her this week, and each individual night she has had an attack like +this and been obliged to leave the table." + +In the moment's lull, the butler presented a yellow telegram on a shiny, +Sheffield tray, and the Hostess slipped her pink fingers rustlingly +through the envelope and brightened instantly. "Oh, here's a surprise +for you, Chloe," she called to the Woodland Girl. "Peter is coming over +to-night to see you." Like a puckering electric tingle the simple +announcement seemed to run through the room, and a little wise, +mischievous smile spread from face to face among the guests. In another +instant everybody turned and peeped at the Woodland Girl, and the +Woodland Girl felt her good cool, red blood turn suddenly to bubbling, +boiling water, and steam in horrid, clammy wetness across her forehead +and along the prickling palms of her hands, and the Journalist laughed +right out loud, and the whole green, definite room swam dizzily like +the flaunting scarlet messiness of a tropical jungle. + +Every nook and corner of the house, indeed, was luxuriously heated, but +when Adele Reitzen came sauntering back to her seat, pungent around her, +telltale as an alien perfume, lurked the chill, fresh aroma of the +wintry, blustering street. Only the country girl's smothering lungs +noted the astonishing fact. Like a little caged animal scenting the +blessed outdoors, her nostrils began to crinkle, and she straightened up +with such abrupt alertness that she loomed to Adele Reitzen's startled +senses like the only visible person at the table, and for just the +fraction of a heart-beat the two girls fathomed down deep and +understandingly into each other's eyes, before Adele Reitzen fluttered +her white lids with a little piteous gesture of appeal. + +Breathlessly the Woodland Girl turned to the Journalist, and touched his +arm. "New York _is_ interesting, isn't it!" she stammered. "I've decided +just this minute to stay another week." + +"Oh, ho," said the Journalist. "So you love it better than you did an +hour ago?" + +"No!" cried the Woodland Girl. "I love it worse. I love it worse every +moment like a--ghost story, but I'm going to stick it out a week longer +and see how it ends. And I've learned one clue to New York's plot this +very night. I've learned that most every face is a 'haunted house.' The +mouths slam back and forth all the time like pleasant doors, and the +jolliest kind of speeches come prancing out, and all that--but in the +eyes ghosts are peering out the windows every minute." + +"Cheerful thought," said the Journalist, taking off his glasses. "Who's +the ghost in my eyes?" + +The Woodland Girl stared at him wonderingly. "The ghost in your eyes?" +she blundered. "Why--I guess--it's 'the patient girl at home' whom you +asked to wait 'even another year.'" + +Like two fever spots the red flared angrily on the Journalist's cheek +bones. + +Not even the Journalist spoke to her again. + +Finally, lonesome as a naughty child, she followed the dozen dinner +guests back into the huge drawing-room, and wandered aimlessly around +through the incomprehensible mysteries of Chinese idols and teakwood +tabourets and soft, mushy Asiatic rugs. Then at last, behind a dark, +jutting bookcase, in a corner most blissfully safe and secret like a +cave, she stumbled suddenly upon a great, mottled leopard skin with its +big, humpy head, and its sad glass eyes yearning out to her +reproachfully. As though it had been a tiny, lost kitten, she gave a wee +gasp of joy, and dropped down on the floor and tried to cuddle the huge, +felt-lined, fur bulk into her lap. Just as the clumsy face flopped +across her knees, she heard the quick swish of silk, and looked up to +see Adele Reitzen bending over her. + +The older girl's eyes were tortured with worry, and her white fingers +teased perpetually at the jeweled watch on her breast. "Chloe Curtis," +she whispered abruptly, "will you do something for me? Would you be +afraid? You are visiting here in the house, so no one would question +your disappearance. Will you go up to the dressing-room--quick--and get +my black evening coat--the one with the gold embroidery and the big +hood--and go out to the street corner where the cars stop--and tell the +man who is waiting there--that I couldn't--simply couldn't--get out +again? Would you be afraid?" + +The Woodland Girl jumped to her feet. At that particular instant the +lump in her throat seemed the only really insurmountable obstacle in the +whole wide world. "Would I be afraid?" she scoffed. "Afraid of what? Of +New York? Of the electric lights? Of the automobiles? Of the cross +policemen? Afraid of nothing!" Her voice lowered suddenly. "Is +it--Love?" she whispered. + +The older girl's face was piteous to see. "Y--e--s," she stammered. "It +is Love." + +The Woodland Girl's eyes grew big with wonder. "But the other man?" she +gasped. "You are going to be married next week!" + +Adele Reitzen's eyes blurred. "Yes," she repeated, "I am going to be +married next week." A little shiver went flickering across her +shoulders. + +The Woodland Girl's heart began to plunge and race. "What's the matter +with the man out on the street corner?" she asked nervously. + +Adele Reitzen caught her breath. "He's a civil engineer," she said. "His +name is Brian Baird. He's just back from Central America. I met him on +the steamer once. He was traveling second cabin. My--family--won't--let +--me--have--him." + +The Woodland Girl threw back her head and laughed, and smothered her +laugh contritely with her hand. "Your family won't let you have him?" +she mumbled. "What a funny idea! What has your family got to do about +it?" Her breath began to quicken, and she reached out suddenly and +clutched Adele Reitzen's shoulder. "Do you know where my uncle's musty +old law library is?" she hurried. "It's downstairs, you know, close to +the store room--nobody ever uses it. You go down there just as fast as +you possibly can, and wait there, and I'll be back in five minutes with +the--Love Man." + +Before Adele Reitzen's feebler courage could protest, the Woodland Girl +was scurrying up the short flight to the dressing-room and pawing like a +prankish terrier through the neatly folded evening coats that snuggled +across the bed. Tingling with excitement, she arrayed herself finally in +the luxuriantly muffling black and gold splendor, and started cautiously +down the long, creaky front stairs. + +Like the inimitable, familiar thrill of little wild, phosphorescent eyes +looming suddenly out of the black night-woods at home, the adventure +challenged her impetuous curiosity. Bored puzzlingly by the big city's +utter inability to reproduce the identical, simple lake-and-forest +emotionalism that was the breath of life to her, she quickened now +precipitately to the possible luring mystery in human eyes. Through the +dark mahogany stripes of the balustrade, the drawing-room candles flared +and sputtered like little finger-pinches of fluid flame, and the +violin's shuddering voice chased after her, taunting, "Hurry! Hurry! Or +it won't be there!" Beyond the lights and music, and the friendly +creaking stairs, the strange black night opened forth like the scariest +sort of a bottomless pit; but as yet, in all the girl's twenty coltish +years nothing except headache and heart-beat had ever made her feel +perfectly throbbing-positive that she was alive. She could spare the +headache, but she could not spare the heart-beat. Paddling with +muscle-strained shoulder and heaving breast across a November-tortured +lake, or huddling under forbidden pine trees in a rackety August +thunder storm, or floundering on broken snowshoes into the antlered +presence of an astounded moose--Fun and Fear were synonymous to her. + +Once on the street, like water to thirst, the cold night air freshened +and vivified her. Over her head the electric lights twinkled giddily +like real stars. On either side of her the huge, hulking houses reared +up like pleasant imitation mountains. Her trailing cloak slipped now and +then from her clutching fingers, but she trudged along toward the corner +with just one simple, supreme sense of pleasurable excitement--somewhere +out of the unfathomed shadows a real, live Adventure was going to rise +up and scare her. + +But the man, when he came, did not scare her one hundredth part as much +as she scared him, though he jumped at her from the snuggling fur robe +of a stranded automobile, and snatched at her arm with an almost +bruising intensity. + +"Oh, Adele," he cried huskily, "I thought you had failed me again." + +The Woodland Girl threw back her somber hood and stood there all blonde +and tousle-haired and astonishing under the electric light. "I'm not +your Adele," she explained breathlessly. "I'm just Chloe Curtis. Adele +sent me out to tell you that she absolutely couldn't--couldn't come. +You yourself would have seen that it was horridly impossible. But you +are to go back to the house now with me--to my uncle's old unused +library and see Adele yourself for as much as fifteen minutes. No +one--oh, I'm sure that no one--could persuade a woman to be brave--on a +street corner; but I think that perhaps if you had a chance to see Adele +all alone, she would be very--extraordinarily brave." + +Anger, resentment, confusion, dismay flared like successive explosions +in the man's face, and faded again, leaving his flesh utter ash gray. + +"It was plucky of you to come," he muttered grimly, "but I haven't quite +reached the point yet--thank you--where I go sneaking round people's +unused rooms to meet any one!" + +"Is it so very different from sneaking round street corners?" said the +Woodland Girl. + +The man's head lifted proudly. "I don't go 'sneaking' round street +corners," he answered simply. "All Outdoors _belongs_ to me! But I won't +go secretly to any house that doesn't welcome me." + +The Woodland Girl began to stamp her foot. "But the house does welcome +you," she insisted. "It's my visity-house, and you are to come there as +my friend." + +In her ardor she turned and faced him squarely under the light, and +winced to see how well worth facing he was--for the husband of a +coward. There was no sleek New York about him, certainly, but rather the +merge of all cities and many countries, a little breath of unusualness, +a touch of mystery, a trifling suggestion, perhaps, of more dusty roads +than smug pavements, twenty-eight or thirty years, surely, of +adventurous youth. Impulsively she put out her hand to him. "Oh, please +come," she faltered. "I--think you are so nice." + +With a little laugh that had no amusement in it, nor pleasure, nor +expectation, nor any emotion that the Woodland Girl had ever +experienced, he stood and stared at her with some sudden impulse. "Does +Adele really want me to come?" he asked trenchantly. + +"Why yes," insisted the Woodland Girl. "It's life or death for you and +Adele." + +Ten minutes later, standing on guard at the edge of the library door, +the Woodland Girl heard, for the first time in her life, the strange, +low, vibrant, mysterious mate-tone of a human voice. If she had burrowed +her head in a dozen pillows, she could not have failed to sense the +amazing wonder of the sound, though the clearer-worded detail of hurried +plans and eager argument and radiant acquiescence passed by her +unobserved. "But I must be perfectly sure that you love me," persisted +the man's voice. + +"You and--you only," echoed the woman's passion. + +Then suddenly, like a practical joke sprung by a half-witted Fate, the +store room door opened with casual, exploring pleasantness, and the +Journalist and Adele Reitzen's promised husband and big Peter himself +stepped out into the hallway. + +Before the surprised greeting in two men's faces the Woodland Girl +retreated step by step, until at last with a quick turn she whirled back +into the dingy, gas-lit library--her chalky face, her staring eyes +proclaiming only too plainly the calamity which she had no time to stuff +into words. + +Close behind her followed the three smiling, unsuspicious intruders. +Even then the incident might have passed without gross awkwardness if +the Woodland Girl's uncle and aunt had not suddenly joined the company. +From the angry, outraged flush on the two older faces it was perfectly +evident that these two, at least, had been waylaid by kitchen gossip. + +Brian Baird laughed. Like a manly lover goaded and hectored and cajoled +too long into unworthy secrecy, his pulses fairly jumped to meet the +frank, forced issue. But with a quick, desperate appeal Adele Reitzen +silenced the triumphant speech on his lips. "Let me manage it!" she +whispered, so vehemently that the man yielded to her, and stepped back +against the fireplace, and spread his arms with studied, indolent ease +along the mantel, like a rustic cross tortured out of a supple willow +withe. One of his hands played teasingly with a stale spray of Christmas +greens. Nothing but the straining, white-knuckled grip of his other hand +modified the absolute, wilful insolence of his pose. + +As for Adele, her face was ghastly. + +With crude, uncontrolled venom the Woodland Girl's aunt plunged into the +emergency. "Adele," she cried shrilly, "I think you owe your _fiance_ an +explanation! You promised us faithfully last year that you would never, +never see Mr. Baird again--and now to-night our chauffeur saw you steal +out to the street corner to meet him--like a common shop-girl. And you +dare to bring him back--to my house! What have you to say for yourself?" + +For the fraction of a moment Adele Reitzen's superb beauty straightened +up to its full majestic height, and all the love-pride that was in her +white, white flesh flamed gloriously in her face. Then her sleek, +prosperous, arrogant city lover stepped suddenly forward where the +yellow light struck bleakly across his shrewd, small eyes and his thin, +relentless mouth. + +"I should be very glad, indeed, to hear what you have to say," he +announced, and his voice was like a nicked knife blade. + +Flush by flush by flush the red glory fled from Adele Reitzen's face. +Her throat began to flutter. Her knees crumpled under her. Fear went +over her like a gray fog. + +With one despairing hand she reached back to the Woodland Girl. "Oh, +tell them it was you," she whispered hotly. "Oh, tell them it was you." +Her scared face brightened viciously. "It _was_ you--you know! Tell +them--oh, tell them anything--only save me!" + +The Woodland Girl's eyes were big with horror. She started to speak, she +started to protest, but before the jumbled words could leave her lips +Adele Reitzen turned to the others and blurted out hysterically: + +"Surely I can't be expected to keep even a love-secret under +these--distressing circumstances. _It was Chloe who went out to the +street corner to-night--like a common shop-girl--to meet Brian Baird. +She wore my cloak on purpose to disguise her._" + +Like the blaring scream of a discordant trumpet, the treacherous, +flatted truth crashed into the Woodland Girl's startled senses, and the +man in the shape of a sagging willow cross started up and cried out, "My +God!" + +For a second the Woodland Girl stood staring into his dreadful, chaotic +face, then she squared her shoulders and turned to meet the wrathful, +contemptuous surprise in her uncle's and aunt's features. + +"So it was you," sneered the uncle, "embroiling our decent household in +a common, vulgar intrigue?" + +"So it was you," flamed her aunt, "you who have been posing all these +days as an Innocent?" + +Frantic with perplexity, muddled with fear, torn by conflicting +chivalries, the Woodland Girl stared back and forth from Adele Reitzen's +agonized plea to the grim, inscrutable gleam in Brian Baird's eyes. As +though every living, moving verb had been ripped out of that night's +story, and all the inflexible nouns were printing themselves slam-bang +one on top of another--Roses, Wine, Music, Silver, Diamonds, Fir-Balsam +telescoped each other in her senses. + +"Your father sent you down here," persisted her aunt brutally, "on the +private plea to me that he was planning to be married again--but I can +readily see that perhaps no one would exactly want you." + +The Woodland Girl's heart began to pound. + +"We--are--waiting," prodded her uncle's icy voice. + +Suddenly the Girl's memory quickened. Once, long ago, her father had +said to her: "Little Daughter, if you are ever in fear and danger by sea +or land--or city, which is neither sea nor land--turn always to that +man, and to that man only, whom you would trust in the deep woods. Put +your imagination to work, not your reason. You have no reason!" + +Desperately she turned to Peter. His face, robbed utterly of its +affection, was all a-shock with outraged social proprieties, merging the +merest bit unpleasantly into the racy appreciation of a unique +adventure. Panic-stricken, she turned to the Journalist. Already across +the Journalist's wine-flushed face the pleasant, friendly smile was +souring into worldly skepticism and mocking disillusionment. + +She shut her eyes. "O Big Woods, help me!" she prayed. "O Cross Storm, +warn me! O Rough Trail, guide me!" + +Behind her tightly scrunched lids her worried brain darkened like a +jumbled midnight forest. Jaded, bedraggled, aching with storm and +terror, she saw herself stumbling into the sudden dazzling splurge of a +stranger's camp fire. Was it a man like Peter? Was it the Journalist? +She began to shiver. Then her heart gave a queer, queer jump, and she +opened her eyes stark wide and searched deep into Brian Baird's livid +face. One of his hands still strained at the wooden mantel. The other +still bruised the pungent balsam tip between its restive fingers. His +young hair was too gray about his temples. His shoulders were too tired +with life's pack burdens. His eyes had probably grown more bitter that +night than any woman's lips could ever sweeten again. And yet-- + +Down from the far-away music room floated the quavering, passionate +violin wail of the boy who had dared to temporize with Fate. Up from the +close-nudging street crashed the confusing slap of hoofs and the mad +whir of wheels racing not so much for the Joy of the Destination as for +the Thrill of the Journey. She gave a little gasping sob, and Brian +Baird stooped forward incredulously, as though from the yellow glare of +his camp fire he had only just that instant sensed the faltering +footfall of a wayfarer in acute distress, and could scarcely distinguish +even yet through the darkness the detailed features of the apparition. + +For a second, startled eyes defied startled eyes, and then suddenly, out +of his own meager ration of faith or fortune or immediate goodness, the +man straightened up, and _smiled_--the simple, honest, unquestioning +camp-fire smile--the smile of food and blanket, the smile of welcome, +the smile of shelter, the signal of the gladly-shared crust--and the +Woodland Girl gave a low, wild cry of joy, and ran across the room to +him, and wheeled back against him, close, tight, with her tousled hair +grazing his haggard cheek and her brown hands clutching hard at the +sweep of his arms along the mantel. + +"Adele Reitzen is right," she cried out triumphantly. "This is +my--man!" + + + + +THE PINK SASH + + +NO man could have asked the question more simply. The whole gaunt, +gigantic Rocky Mountain landscape seemed indeed most peculiarly +conducive to simple emotions. + +Yet Donas Guthrie's original remark had been purely whimsical and +distinctly apropos of nothing at all. The careless knocking of his pipe +against the piazza's primitive railing had certainly not prepared the +way for any particularly vital statement. + +"Up--to--the--time--he's--thirty," drawled the pleasant, deep, +distinctly masculine voice, "up--to--the--time--he's--thirty, no man has +done the things that he's really wanted to do--but only the things that +happened to come his way. He's forced into business to please his +father, and cajoled into the Episcopal Church to gratify his mother, and +bullied into red neckties to pacify his sister Isabel. But once having +reached the grown-up, level-headed, utterly independent age of thirty, a +man's a fool, I tell you, who doesn't sit down deliberately, and roll +up his sleeves, and square his jaw, and list out, one by one, the things +that _he_ wants in the presumable measure of lifetime that's left +him--and go ahead and get them!" + +"Why, surely," said the young woman, without the slightest trace of +surprise. Something in her matter-of-fact acquiescence made Donas +Guthrie smile a trifle shrewdly. + +"Oh! So you've got your own list all made out?" he quizzed. Around the +rather tired-looking corners of Esther Davidson's mouth the tiniest +possible flicker of amusement began to show. + +"No, not all made out," she answered frankly. "You see, I wasn't +thirty--until yesterday." + +Stooping with cheerful unconcern to blow a little fluff of tobacco ash +from his own khaki-colored knees to hers, Guthrie eyed her delightedly +from under his heavy brows. + +"Oh, this is working out very neatly and pleasantly," he mused, all +agrin. "Ever since you joined our camping party at Laramie, jumping off +the train as white-faced and out of breath as though you'd been running +to catch up with us all the way from Boston--indeed, ever since you +first wrote me at Morristown, asking full particulars about the whole +expedition and begging us to go to the Sierra Nevadas instead and +blotted 'Sierra' twice and crossed it out once--and then in final +petulance spelled it with three 'r's,' I've been utterly consumed with +curiosity to know just how old you are." + +"Thirty years--and one morning," said the young woman--absent-mindedly. + +"W-h-e-w!" gasped Guthrie. "But that's a ripe old age! Surely, you've no +time to lose!" + +Rummaging through his pockets with mock intensity he thrust into her +hands, at last, a small pad of paper and a pencil. + +"Now quick!" he insisted. "Make out your list before it's too late to +profit by it!" + +The woman was evidently perfectly willing to comply with every playful +aspect of his mood, but it was equally evident that she did not intend +to be hurried about it. Quite perversely she began to dally with the +pencil. + +"But, you see, I don't know exactly just what kind of a list you mean," +she protested. + +"Oh, shucks!" laughed the man. "Here, give me the paper! Now--head it +like this: 'I, Esther Davidson, spinster, _aet._ thirty years and a few +minutes over, do hereby promise and attest that no matter how unwilling +to die I may be when my time comes, I shall, at least, not feel that +life has defrauded me if I have succeeded in achieving and possessing +the following brief list of experiences and substances.' There!" he +finished triumphantly. "Now do you see how easy and business-like it +all is? Just the plainest possible rating of the things you'd like to +have before you're willing to die." + +Cautiously Esther Davidson took the paper from his hand and scanned it +with slow-smiling eyes. + +"The--things--I'd--like to have--before I'm--willing--to--die," she +mused indolently. Then suddenly into her placid face blazed an +astonishing flame of passion that vanished again as quickly as it came. +"My God!" she said. "The things I've _got_ to have before I'm willing to +die!" + +Stretching the little paper taut across her knees, she began to scribble +hasty, impulsive words and phrases, crossing and recrossing, making and +erasing, now frowning fiercely down on the unoffending page, now staring +off narrow-eyed and smilingly speculative into the blue-green spruce +tops. + +It was almost ten minutes before she spoke again. Then: "How do you +spell amethyst?" she asked meditatively. + +The man gave a groan of palpable disgust. "Oh, I say," he reproached +her. "You're not playing fair! This was to be a really _bona fide_ +statement you know." + +Without looking up the young woman lifted her hand and gesticulated +across the left side of her mannish, khaki-colored flannel shirt. + +"Cross my heart!" she affirmed solemnly. "This is a perfectly +'honest-injun' list!" + +Then she tore up everything she had written and began all over again, +astonishingly slowly, astonishingly neatly, on a fresh sheet of paper. + +"Of course, at first," she explained painstakingly, "you think there are +just about ten thousand things that you've simply got to have, but when +you really stop to sort them out, and pick and choose a bit, and narrow +them all down to actual essentials; narrow them all down to just the +'Passions of the Soul,' as it were, why, then, there really aren't so +many after all! Only one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," +she counted on her fingers. "At first, for instance," she persisted +frankly, "it seemed to me that I could never, never die happy until I +had possessed a very large--oh, I mean an inordinately large amethyst +brooch that simply wallowed in pearls, but honestly now as a real +treasure-trove, I can see that I'd infinitely rather be able to remember +that once upon a time I'd--stroked a lion's face; just one, long, slow, +soft-furred, yellow stroke from the browny-pink tip of his nose to the +extremest shaggy end of his mane--and he hadn't bitten me!" + +"My Heavens!" gasped the man. "Are you crazy? What kind of a list have +you been making out anyway?" + +A little acridly she thrust both her list and her hands into the side +pockets of her riding skirt. + +"What kind of a list did you think I would make out?" she asked sharply. +"Something all about machinery? And getting a contract for city paving +stones? Or publicly protesting the new football rules? Goodness! Does it +have to be a 'wise' list? Does it have to be a worthy list? Something +that would really look commendable in a church magazine? This was all +your idea, you know! You asked me, didn't you, to write out, just for +fun, the things I'd got to have before I'd be willing to die?" + +"Oh, come now," laughed the man. "Please don't get stuffy about it. You +surprised me so about stroking the lion's face that I simply had to +chaff you a little. Truly, I care a great deal about seeing that list. +When you got off the train that day it rattled me a confounded lot to +see that your camping togs were cut out of exactly the same piece of +cloth that mine were. Professor Ellis and his wife and Doctor Andrews +jollied me a good bit about it in fact, but--hang it all--it's beginning +to dawn on me rather cozily, though I admit still embarrassingly, that +maybe your mind and mine are cut out of the same piece of cloth, too. +Please let me see what you've written!" + +With a grimace that was half reluctance, half defiance, the young woman +pulled the paper from her pocket, smoothed it out on her knees for an +instant and handed it to him. + +"Oh, very well, then," she said. "Help yourself to the only authentic +list of my 'Heart's Desires.'" Then suddenly her whole face brightened +with amusement and she shook a sun-browned finger threateningly at him. +"Now remember," she warned him, "I don't have to justify this list, no +matter how trivial it sounds, no matter how foolish even; it is excuse +enough for it--it is dignity enough for it, that it happens to be so." + +"Yes, surely," acknowledged the man. + +Either consciously or unconsciously--then--he took off his battered +slouch hat and placed it softly on the seat beside him. The act gave the +very faintest possible suggestion of reverence to the joke. Then, rather +slowly and hesitatingly, after the manner of a man who is not specially +accustomed to reading aloud, he began: + +[Illustration: "Is--a--pink--sash--exactly a--a--passion?"] + +"Things That I, Esther Davidson, Am Really Obliged to Have Before I'm +Willing to Die: No. 1. A solid summer of horseback riding on a rusty +brown pony among really scary mountains. No. 2. A year's work at Oxford +in Social Economics. No. 3. One single, solitary sunset view of the Bay +of Naples. No. 4. A very, very large oil-painting portrait of a cloud--a +great white, warm, cotton-batting looking, summer Sunday afternoon sort +of a cloud--I mean; the kind that you used to see as a child when all +'chock full' of chicken and ice cream and serene thoughts about Heaven, +you lay stretched out flat on the cool green grass and stared right up +into the face of God, and never even guessed what made you blink so. No. +5. The ability to buy one life-saving surgical operation for some one +who probably wouldn't otherwise have afforded it. No. 6. A perfectly +good dinner. No. 7. A completely happy Christmas. No. 8. A pink sash. +That's all." + +With really terrifying gravity, the man put down the finished page and +lifted his searching eyes to the woman's flushing, self-conscious face. + +"Is--a--pink--sash--exactly a--a--passion?" he probed in much +perplexity. + +"Oh, yes!" nodded the young woman briskly. "Oh, yes, indeed! It's an +obsession in my life. It's a groove in my brain. In the middle of the +night I wake and find myself sitting bolt upright in bed saying it. The +only time I ever took ether I prattled persistently concerning it. When +a Spring sunshine is so marvelous that it makes me feel faint, when the +Vox Humana stop in a church-organ snarls my heart-strings like an actual +hand, when the great galloping, tearing fire-engine horses come +clanging like mad around the street corner, it's the one definite +idea that explodes in my consciousness. It began way back when I was a +tiny six-year-old child at a Maine woods 'camp meeting.' Did you ever +see a really primitive 'camp meeting'? All fir-balsam trees and little +rustic benches and pink calicoes and Grand Army suits and high +cheek-bones and low insteps and--lots of noise? Rather inspiring too, +sometimes, or at least soul excitative. It might do a good deal to any +high-strung six-year-old kiddie. Anyway, I saw the old village drunkard +jump up and wave his arms and wail ingenuously: 'I want to be a +Christian!' And a palsied crone beside me moaned and sobbed 'I want to +be baptized!' And even my timid, gentle mother leaped impetuously to her +feet and announced quite publicly to every one 'I want to be washed in +the Blood of the Lamb!' And all about me I saw frenzied neighbors and +strangers dashing about making these uncontrollable, confidential +proclamations. And suddenly, to my meager, indefinite baby-brain, there +rushed such an exultancy of positive personal conviction that my poor +little face must have been literally transfigured with it, for my father +lifted me high to his tight-coated shoulders and cried out ecstatically: +'A little child shall lead them! Hear! Hear!' And with an emphasis on +the personal pronoun which I hate to remember even at this remote date, +I screamed forth at the top of my lungs: 'I want--a pink sash!'" + +"And didn't you get it?" said Donas Guthrie. + +The young woman crooked one eyebrow rather comically. "N-o," she said, +"I never got it!" + +"But you could get it any time now," argued the man. + +Helplessly she threw out the palms of her hands and the unexpected +gesture displayed an amazing slimness and whiteness of wrist. + +"Stupid!" she laughed. "What would I do with a pink sash now?" +Ruthlessly her quick eyes traveled down the full length of her scant, +rough skirt to the stubbed toes of her battered brown riding boots. +"Dust on the highway and chalk in the classroom and 'grown-up-ness' +everywhere!" she persisted dully. "That's the real tragedy of growing +up--not that we outgrow our original desires, but that retaining those +desires, we outgrow the ability to find satisfaction in them. People +ought to think of that, you know, when they thwart a child's ten-cent +passion for a tin trumpet. Fifty years later, when that child is a bank +president, it may drive him almost crazy to have a toy-shop with a whole +window-full of tin trumpets come and cuddle right next door to his +bank--and nothing that the man can do with them!" + +Like a little gray veil the tired look fell again over her face. The man +saw it and shuddered. + +"Psychology is my subject at Varndon College, you know," she continued +listlessly, "and so I suppose I'm rather specially interested in +freakish mental things. Anyway--pink sashes or Noah's arks or enough +sugar in your cocoa--I have a theory that no child ever does outgrow its +ungratified legitimate desires; though subsequent maturity may bring him +to the point where his original desire has reached such astounding +proportions that the original object can no longer possibly appease it." + +Reminiscently, her narrowing eyes turned back their inner vision to the +far-away grotesque incident of the camp meeting. "It isn't as though a +child asked for a thing the very first time that he thought of it," she +protested a trifle pathetically. "An idea has been sown and has grown +and germinated in his mind a pretty long time before he gets up his +courage to speak to anybody about it. Oh, I tell you, sir, the time to +grant anybody a favor is the day the favor is asked, for that day is the +one psychological moment of the world when supply and demand are keyed +exactly to each other's limits, and can be mated beatifically to grow +old, or die young, together. But after that day--! + +"Why, even with grown people," she added hastily. "Did you ever know a +marriage to turn out to be specially successful where the man had +courted a reluctant woman for years and years before she finally yielded +to him? It's perfectly astonishing how soon a wife like that is forced +to mourn: 'Why did he court me so long and so furiously if he really +cared as little as this? I'm just exactly the same person that I was in +the beginning!'--Yes, that's precisely the trouble. In the long time +that she has kept her man waiting, she has remained just exactly the +same small object that she was in the beginning, but the man's hunger +for her has materialized and spiritualized and idealized a thousandfold +beyond her paltry capacity to satisfy it." + +"That's a funny way to look at it," mused Donas Guthrie. + +"Is it?" said the young woman, a trifle petulantly. "It doesn't seem +funny to me!" + +Then to Guthrie's infinite astonishment and embarrassment the tears +welled up suddenly into her eyes and she turned her head abruptly away +and began to beat a nervous tattoo with one hand on the flimsy piazza +railing. + +In the moment's awkward silence that ensued, the little inn's clattery +kitchen wafted up its pleasant, odorous, noon-day suggestion of coffee +and bacon. + +"W-h-e-w!" gloated Guthrie desperately, "but that smells good!" + +"It doesn't smell good to me," said the young woman tartly. + +With a definite thud the tilting leg of Guthrie's chair came whacking +down on the piazza floor. + +"Why, you inconsistent little gourmand!" he exclaimed. "Then why did you +give 'one perfectly good dinner' a place on your list of necessities?" + +"I don't know," whispered the young woman, a trifle tremulously. Then +abruptly she burst out laughing, and the face that she turned to Guthrie +again was all deliciously mussed up like a child's, with tears and +smiles and breeze-blown wisps of hair. + +"That dinner item was just another silly thing," she explained half +bashfully, half defiantly. "It's only that although I practically never +eat much of anything on ordinary occasions, whenever I get into any kind +of danger, whenever the train runs off the track, or the steamer +threatens to sink, or my car gets stuck in the subway, I'm seized with +the most terrific gnawing hunger--as though--as though--" Furiously the +red flushed into her face again. "Well--eternity sounds so l-long," she +stammered, "and I have a perfect horror, somehow--of going to Heaven--on +an empty stomach." + +In mutual appreciation of a suddenly relaxed tension, the man's laughter +and the woman's rang out together throughout the dooryard and startled +a grazing pony into a whimpering whinny of sympathy. + +"I knew you'd think my list was funny," protested the young woman. "I +knew perfectly well that every single individual item on it would +astonish you." + +Meditatively Donas Guthrie refilled his pipe and evidently illuminated +both the tobacco and the situation with the same match. + +"It isn't the things that are on your list that astonish me," he +remarked puffingly. "It's the things that aren't on it that have given +me the bit of a jolt." + +"Such as what?" frowned the young woman, sliding jerkily out to the edge +of her chair. + +"Why, I'd always supposed that women were inherently domestic," growled +Guthrie. "I'd always somehow supposed that Love and Home would figure +pretty largely on any woman's 'List of Necessities.' But you! For +Heaven's sake, haven't you ever even thought of man in any specific +relation to your own life?" + +"No, except in so far as he might retard my accomplishment of the things +on my list," she answered frankly. Out of the gray film of pipe-smoke, +her small face loomed utterly serene, utterly honest, utterly devoid of +coquetry or self-consciousness. + +"Any man would be apt to 'retard' your desire to stroke a lion's face," +said Guthrie grimly. "But then," with a flicker of humor, "but then I +see you've omitted that item from your revised list. Your only thought +about man then," he continued slowly, "is his probable tendency to +interfere with your getting the things out of life that you most want." + +"Yes." + +"Oh, this is quite a novel idea to me," said Guthrie, all a-smile again. +"You mean then--if I judge your premises correctly--you mean then that +if on the contrary you found a man who would really facilitate the +accomplishment of your 'heart's desires,' you'd be willing to think a +good deal about him?" + +"Oh, yes!" said the young woman. + +"You mean then," persisted Guthrie, "you mean then, just for the sake of +the argument, that if I, for instance, could guarantee for you every +single little item on this list, you'd be willing to marry even me?" + +"Yes." + +Altogether unexpectedly Guthrie burst out laughing. + +Instantly a little alarmed look quickened in the young woman's sleepy +eyes. "Does it seem cold-blooded to you?" she asked anxiously. + +"No, not exactly 'cold' blooded, but certainly a little cooler blooded +than any man would have dared to hope for," smiled Guthrie. + +The frowning perplexity deepened in the young woman's face. "You surely +don't misunderstand me?" she pleaded. "You don't think I'm mercenary or +anything horrid like that? Suppose I do make a man's aptitude for +gratifying my eight particular whims the supreme test of his marital +attractiveness for me--it's not, you must understand, by the sign of his +material ability in the matter that I should recognize the Man Who Was +Made for Me--but by the sign of his spiritual willingness." + +"O--h!" said Guthrie very leisurely. Then, with a trifle more vigor, he +picked up the small list again and scanned it carefully. + +"It--wouldn't--be--such--a hard--list to--fulfil!" he resumed presently. +"'A summer in the mountains?' You're having that now. 'Oxford?' 'Glimpse +of Naples?' 'Cloud Picture?' 'Surgical Operation?' 'Pink Sash?' 'Good +Dinner?' 'Christmas?' Why there's really nothing here that I couldn't +provide for you, myself, if you'd only give me time." + +With mischievous unconcern he smiled at the young woman. With equally +mischievous unconcern the young woman smiled back at him. + +"What an extraordinary conversation we've had this morning," she said. +As though quite exhausted by the uniqueness of it, she slid a little +further down into her seat and turned her cheek against the firm support +of the chair-back. + +"What an extraordinary understanding it has brought us to!" exclaimed +the man, scanning her closely. + +"I don't see anything particularly--understandy about it," denied the +young woman wearily. + +It was then that Donas Guthrie asked his simple question, boring his +khaki-colored elbows into his khaki-colored knees. + +"Little Psychology Teacher," he said very gently, "Little Psychology +Teacher, Dr. Andrews says that you've got typhoid fever. He's feared it +now for some time, and you know it's against his orders--your being up +to-day. So as long as I've proved myself here and now, by your own test, +the Man-Whom-You-Were-Looking-For, I suggest that you and I be--married +this afternoon--before that itinerant shiny-shouldered preacher out in +the corral escapes us altogether--and then we'll send the rest of the +party on about their business, and you and Dr. Andrews and Hanlon's Mary +and I will camp right down here where we are--and scrap the old typhoid +fever to its finish. Will you, Little Psychology Teacher?" + +Lifting her white hands to her throbbing temples the young woman turned +her astonished face jerkily toward him. + +"What--did--you--say?" she gasped. + +"I said: 'Will you marry me this afternoon?'" repeated Guthrie. + +Bruskly she pushed that part of the phrase aside. "What did you really +say?" she insisted. "What did Dr. Andrews say?" + +"Dr. Andrews says that you've got typhoid fever," repeated Guthrie. + +Inertly she blinked her big brown eyes for an instant. Then suddenly her +hands went groping out to the arms of her chair. Her face was +horror-stricken. "Why didn't he tell me, himself?" + +"Because I asked him to let me tell you," said Guthrie quietly. + +"When did he tell you?" she persisted. + +"Just before I came up on the piazza," said Guthrie. + +"How did he tell you?" she demanded. + +"How did he tell me?" mused Guthrie wretchedly. After all, underneath +his occasional whimsicality he was distinctly literal-minded. "How did +he tell me? Why I saw them all powwowing together in the corral, and +Andrews looked up sort of queer and said: 'Say, Guthrie, that little +Psychology friend of yours has got typhoid fever. What in thunder are we +going to do?" + +The strained lines around Esther Davidson's mouth relaxed for a second. + +"Well, what in thunder am I going to do?" she joked heroically. But the +effort at flippancy was evidently quite too much for her. In another +instant her head pitched forward against the piazza railing and her +voice, when she spoke again, was almost indistinguishable. + +"And you knew all this an hour ago!" she accused him incoherently. "Knew +my predicament--knew my inevitable weakness and fear and +mortification--knew me a stranger among strangers. And yet you came up +here to jolly me inconsequently--about a million foolish things!" + +"It was because at the end of the hour I hoped to be something to you +that would quite prevent your feeling a 'stranger among strangers,'" +said Guthrie very quietly. "I have asked you to marry me this afternoon, +you must remember." + +The young woman's lip curled tremulously. "You astonish me!" she +scoffed. "I had always understood that men did not marry very easily. +Quick to love, slow to marry, is supposed to be your most striking +characteristic--and here are you asking marriage of me, and you haven't +even loved me yet!" + +"You women do not seem to marry any too easily," smiled Guthrie gazing +nervously from his open watch to the furthest corner of the corral, +where the preacher's raw-boned pony, nose in air, was stubbornly +refusing to take his bit. + +"Indeed we do marry--perfectly easily--when we once love," retorted the +woman contentiously! "It's the love part of it that we are reluctant +about!" + +"But I haven't asked you to love me," protested the man with much +patience. "I merely asked you to marry me." + +The woman's jaw dropped. "Out of sympathy for my emergency, out of +mistaken chivalry, you're asking me to marry you, and not even +pretending that you love me?" she asked in astonishment. + +"I haven't had time to love you yet. I've only known you such a little +while," said the man quite simply. Almost sternly he rose and began to +pace up and down the narrow confines of the little piazza. "All I know +is," he asserted, "that the very first moment you stepped off the train +at Laramie, I knew you were the woman whom I was--going to +love--sometime." + +Very softly he slid back into the rustic seat he had just vacated, and +taking the woman's small clenched hands in his began to smooth out her +fingers like poor crumpled ribbons. + +"Now, Little Psychology Teacher," he said, "I want you to listen very, +very carefully to everything I say. Do you like me all right?" + +"Y--e--s." + +"Better than you like Andrews or Ellis or even the old Judge?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +"Ever since we all started out together on the Trail you've just sort of +naturally fallen to my lot, haven't you? Whenever you needed your pony's +girth tightened, or whenever you wanted a drink of water, or whenever +the big canyons scared you, or whenever the camp fire smoked you, you've +just sort of naturally turned to me, haven't you? And it would be fair +enough, wouldn't it, to say that at least I've never made any situation +worse for you? So that if anything ugly or awkward were going to +happen--perhaps you really would rather have me around than any one +else?" + +"Yes--surely." + +"Maybe even, when we've been watching Ellis and his Missis riding ahead, +all hand in hand and smile in smile, you've wondered a bit, woman-like, +how it would seem, for instance, to be riding along hand in hand and +smile in smile with me?" + +"P-o-s-s-i-b-l-y." + +"Never had any special curiosity about how it would seem to go hand and +hand with--Andrews?" + +"Foolish!" + +"Hooray!" cried Guthrie. "That's all that I really needed to know! Oh, +don't feel bashful about it. It surely is an absolutely impersonal +compliment on your part. It isn't even you that I'm under obligations to +for the kindness, but Nature with a great big capital 'N.' Somehow I +always have had an idea that you women instinctively do divide all +mankind into three classes: first, Those Whom You Couldn't Possibly +Love; second, Those Whom You Could Possibly Love, and third, the One Man +of the World Whom You Actually Do Love. And unless this mysterious +Nature with a capital 'N' has already qualified a man for the second +class, God himself can't promote that man into the third class. So it +seems to me that every fellow could save himself an awful lot of +misunderstanding and wasted time if he'd do just what I've done--make a +distinctly preliminary proposal to his lady; not 'Do you love me?' which +might take her fifteen years to decide, but: 'Could you love me?' which +any woman can tell the first time she sees you. And if she can't +possibly love you, that settles everything neatly then and there, but if +she can possibly, why, with Nature once on his side, a man's a craven +who can't put up a mighty good scrap for his coveted prize. Doesn't this +all make sense to you?" + +Cannily the young woman lifted her eyes to his and fathomed him mutely +for an instant. Then: + +"Perfectly good 'sense' but no feeling," she answered dully. + +"It's only 'sense' that I'm trying to make," acknowledged Guthrie. "Now +look here, you Little Teacher Person, I'm going to talk to you just as +bluntly as I would to another fellow. You are in a hole--the deuce of a +hole! You have got typhoid fever, and it may run ten days and it may run +ten weeks! And you are two thousand miles from home--among strangers! +And no matter how glad I personally may be that you did push on and join +us, sick or well, from every practical standpoint, of course, it surely +was heedless and ill-considered of you to start off in poor health on a +trip like this and run the risk of forcing perfectly unconcerned +strangers to pay for it all. Personally, you seem so much to belong to +me already that it gives me goose-flesh to think of your having to put +yourself under obligations to any purely conscientious person. Mrs. +Ellis, of course, will insist, out of common humanity, upon giving up +her trip and staying behind with you, but Mrs. Ellis, Little Teacher, is +on her honeymoon, and Ellis couldn't stay behind--it's his party--he'd +have to go on with his people--and you'd never be able to compensate +anybody for a broken honeymoon, and the Judge's youngster couldn't nurse +a sick kitten, and the two women teachers from New York have been +planning seven years for this trip, they told me, and we couldn't +decently take it away from them. But you and I, Little Psychology Lady, +are not strangers to each other. Hanlon's Mary here at the ranch house, +rough as she is, has at least the serving hands of a woman, and Andrews +belongs naturally to the tribe which is consecrated to inconveniences, +and both can be compensated accordingly. And I would have married you, +anyway, before another year was out! Yes, I would!" + +Apparently ignoring everything that he had said, she turned her face +scowlingly toward the sound of hammering that issued suddenly through +the piazza door. + +"Oh, Glory!" she complained. "Are they making my coffin already?" + +With a little laugh, Guthrie relinquished her limp fingers, and jumping +up, took another swift turn along the piazza, stopping only to bang the +door shut again. When he faced her once more the twinkle was all gone +from his eyes. + +"You're quite right, what you said about men," he resumed with desperate +seriousness. "We are a heap sight quicker in our susceptibilities than +in our mentalities! Therefore, no sane man ever does marry till his +brain has caught up with his emotions! But sometimes, you know, +something happens that hustles a man's brain along a bit, and this time +my brain seems fairly to have jumped to its destination and clean-beaten +even the emotions in the race. In cool, positive judgment I tell you I +want to marry you this afternoon." + +"You've confessed yourself, haven't you, that you've no severer ideal +for marriage than that a man should be generous enough to give your +personality, no matter how capricious, a chance to breathe? Haven't I +qualified sufficiently as that amiable man? More than that, I'm free to +love you; I'm certainly keen to serve you; I'm reasonably well able to +provide for you, and you naturally have a right to know that I've led a +decent life. It's ten good years now since I was thirty and first found +nerve enough to break away from the stifling business life I hated and +get out into the open, where there's surely less money but infinitely +more air. And in ten years I've certainly found considerable chance to +fulfil a few of the items in my own little 'List of Necessities.' I've +seen Asia and I've seen Africa, and I've written the book I've always +wanted to write on North American mountain structures. + +"But there's a lot more that I crave to do. Maybe I've got a bit of a +'capricious personality' myself! Maybe I also have been hunting for the +mate who would give my personality a chance to breathe. Certainly I've +never wanted any home yet, except when the right time came, the arms of +the right woman. And I guess you must be she, because you're the first +woman I've ever seen whom I'd trust to help me just as hard to play my +chosen games as I'd help her to play hers! I tell you--I want--very +much--to marry you this afternoon." + +"Why do you dally with me so? Isn't it your own argument that there's +only just one day in the love-life of a man and woman when the question +and the answer mate exactly, and the books are balanced perfectly even +for the new start together? Demand and supply, debit and credit, hunger +and food? You, wild for help, and I wild to help you! What difference +does it make what you call it? Isn't this our day?" + +"For a man who's usually as silent as you are, don't you think you're +talking a good deal, considering how sick you said I was?" asked the +young woman, not unmirthfully. + +Guthrie's square jaws snapped together like a trap. "I was merely trying +to detain you," he mumbled, "until Hanlon had finished knocking the +windows out of your room. We're going to give you all the air you can +breathe, anyway." + +A little sullenly he started for the stairs. Then just at the door he +turned unexpectedly and his face was all smiles again. + +"Little Psychology Teacher," he said, "I have made you a formal, +definite offer of marriage. And in just about ten minutes from now I am +coming back for my answer." + +When he did return a trifle sooner than he had intended, he met her in +the narrow upper hallway, with hands outstretched, groping her way +unsteadily toward her room. As though her equilibrium was altogether +disturbed by his sudden advent, she reeled back against the wall. + +"Mr. Donas Guthrie," she said, "I'm feeling pretty wobbly! Mr. Donas +Guthrie," she said, "I guess I'm pretty sick." + +"It's a cruel long way down the hall," suggested Guthrie. "Wouldn't you +like me to carry you?" + +"Yes--I--would," sighed the Little Psychology Teacher. + +Even to Guthrie's apprehensive mind, her weight proved most +astonishingly light. The small head drooping limply back from the +slender neck seemed actually the only heavy thing about her, yet there +were apparently only two ideas in that head. + +"I'm afraid of Hanlon's Mary, and I don't like Dr. +Andrews--very--specially--much," she kept repeating aimlessly. Then +halfway to her room her body stiffened suddenly. + +"Mr. Donas Guthrie," she asked. "Do you think I'm probably going to +die?" + +"N-a-w!" said Guthrie, his nose fairly crinkling with positiveness. + +"But they don't give you much of anything to eat in typhoid, do they?" +she persisted hectically. + +"I suppose not," acknowledged Guthrie. + +With disconcerting unexpectedness she began to cry--a soft, low, +whimpery cry like a sleepy child's. + +"If any day should come when--they think--that I am going to die," she +moaned, "who will there be to see that I do get--something awfully good +to eat?" + +"I'll see to it," said Guthrie, "if you'll only put me in authority." + +As though altogether indifferent to anything that he might say, her +tension relaxed again and without further parleying she let Guthrie +carry her across the threshold of her room and set her down cautiously +in the creaky rocking chair. The eyes that lifted to his were as vague +and turbid as brown velvet. + +"There's one good thing about typhoid," she moaned. "It doesn't seem to +hurt any, does it? In fact, I think I rather like it. It feels as warm +and snug and don't-care as a hot lemonade at bed time. But what?" +brightening suddenly, "but what was it you asked me to think about? I +feel sort of confused--but it was something, I remember, that I was +going to argue with you about." + +"It was what I said about marrying me," prompted Guthrie. + +"Oh, y-e-s," smiled the Little Psychology Teacher. Hazily for a moment +she continued staring at him with her fingers prodded deep into her +temples. Then suddenly, like a flower blasted with heat, she wilted down +into her chair, groping blindly out with one hand toward the sleeve of +his coat. + +"Whatever you think best to do about it," she faltered, "I guess you'd +better arrange pretty quickly--'cause I think--I'm--going--out." + +This is how it happened that Mr. and Mrs. Donas Guthrie and Dr. Andrews +stayed behind at the ranch house with Hanlon and Hanlon's Mary, and a +piebald pony or two, and a herd of Angora goats, and a pink geranium +plant, and the strange intermittent smell of a New England farmhouse +which lurked in Hanlon's goods and chattels even after thirty years, and +three or four stale, tattered magazines--and typhoid fever. + +It was typhoid fever that proved essentially the most incalculable +companion of them all. Hanlon's austerity certainly never varied from +day to day, nor the inherent sullenness of Hanlon's Mary. + +The meager sick-room, stripped to its bare pine skin of every tawdry +colored print and fluttering cheese-cloth curtain, faced bluntly toward +the west--a vital little laboratory in which the unknown quantity of a +woman's endurance and the fallible skill of one man, the stubborn +bravery of another, and the quite inestimable will of God were to be +fused together in a desperate experiment to precipitate Life rather than +Death. + +So October waxed into November, and so waxed misgiving into +apprehension, and apprehension into actual fear. In any more cheerful +situation it would have been at least interesting to have watched the +infuriated expletives issue from Andrew's perennially smiling lips. + +"Oh, hang not having anything to work with!" he kept reiterating and +reiterating. "Hang being shut off like this on a ranch where there +aren't anything but sheep and goats and one old stingy cow that Hanlon's +Mary guards with her life 'cause the lady's only a school teacher, but a +baby is a baby.' Hang Hanlon's Mary! And hang not being altogether able +to blame her! And hang not knowing, anyway, just what nanny-goat's milk +would do for a typhoid patient! And hang--" + +But before the expletives, and through the expletives, and after the +expletives, Andrews was all hero, working, watching, experimenting, +retrenching, humanly comprehensive, more than humanly vigilant. + +So, with the brain of a doctor and the heart of a lover, the two men +worked and watched and waited through the tortuous autumn days and +nights, blind to the young dawn stealing out like a luminous mist from +the night-smothered mountains; deaf to the flutter of sun-dried leaves +in the radiant noon-time; dull to the fruit-scented fragrance of the +early twilight, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing nothing, except +the flicker of a pulse or the rise of a temperature. + +And then at last there came a harsh, wintry feeling day, when Andrews, +stepping out into the hall, called Guthrie softly to him and said, still +smiling: + +"Guthrie, old man, I don't think we're going to win this game!" + +"W-h-a-t?" gasped Guthrie. + +With his mouth still curling amiably around his words, Andrews repeated +the phrase. "I said, I don't think we're going to win this game. No, +nothing new's happened. She's simply burning out. Can't you understand? +I mean she's probably--going to die!" + +Out of the jumble of words that hurtled through Guthrie's mind only four +slipped his lips. + +"But--she's--my--wife!" he protested. + +"Other men's wives have died before this," said Andrews still smiling. + +"Man," cried Guthrie, "if you smile again, I'll break your head!" + +With his tears running down like rain into the broadening trough of his +smile, Andrews kept right on smiling. "You needn't be so cross about +it," he said. "You're not the only one who likes her! I wanted her +myself! You're nothing but a tramp on the face of the earth--and I could +have given her the snuggest home in Yonkers!" + +With their arms across each other's shoulders they went back into the +sick room. + +Rousing from her lethargy, the young woman opened her eyes upon them +with the first understanding that she had shown for some days. +Inquisitively she stared from Guthrie's somber eyes to Andrews' +distorted cheerfulness. + +Taking instant advantage of her unwonted rationality, Andrews blurted +out the question that was uppermost in his professional responsibility. + +"Don't you think, maybe, your people ought to know about your being +sick?" he said. "Now, if you could give us any addresses." + +For a second it really seemed as though the question would merely +safely ignite her common sense. + +"Why yes, of course," she acquiesced. "My brother." + +Then suddenly, without any warning, her most dangerous imagination +caught fire. + +"You mean," she faltered, "that--I--am--not--going to get well?" + +Before either man was quick enough to contradict her, the shock had done +its work. Piteously she turned her face to the pillow. + +"Never--never--to--go--to--Oxford?" she whispered in mournful +astonishment. "Never--even--to--see my--Bay of Naples?--Never to--have +a--a--perfectly happy Christmas?" A little petulantly then her brain +began to clog. "I think I--might at least have had--the pink sash!" she +complained. Then, equally suddenly her strength rallied for an instant +and the eyes that she lifted to Guthrie's were filled with a desperate +effort at raillery. "Bring on your--anchovies and caviar," she reminded +him, "and the stuffed green peppers--and remember I don't like my fillet +too well done--and--" + +Five minutes later in the hallway Andrews caught Guthrie just as he was +chasing downstairs after Hanlon. + +"What are you going to do?" he asked curiously. + +"I am going to send Hanlon out to the telegraph station," said Guthrie. +"I'm going to wire to Denver for a pink sash!" + +"What she was raving about?" quizzed Andrews. "Are you raving too?" + +"It's the only blamed thing in the whole world that she's asked for that +I can get her," said Guthrie. + +"It'll take five days," growled Andrews. + +"I know it!" + +"It won't do her any good." + +"I can't help that!" + +"She'll--be gone before it gets here." + +"You can't help that!" + +But she wasn't "gone," at all before it came. All her vitalities +charred, to be sure, like a fire-swept woodland, but still tenacious of +life, still fighting for reorganization, a little less feverish, a +little stronger-pulsed, she opened her eyes in a puzzled, sad sort of +little smile when Guthrie shook the great, broad, shimmering gauze-like +ribbon ticklingly down across her wasted hands, and then apparently +drowsed off to sleep again. But when both men came back to the room a +few moments later, almost half the pink sash was cuddled under her +cheek. And Hanlon's Mary came and peered through the doorway, with the +whining baby still in her arms, and reaching out and fretting a piece +of pink fringe between her hardy fingers, sniffed mightily. + +"And you sent my man all the way to the wire," she asked, "and grubbed +him three whole days waitin' round, just for that?" + +"Yes, sure," said Guthrie. + +"G-a-w-d!" said Hanlon's Mary. + +And, the next week the patient was even better, and the next week, +better still. Then, one morning after days and days of seemingly +interminable silence and stupor, she opened her eyes perfectly wide and +asked Guthrie abruptly: + +"Whom did I marry? You or Dr. Andrews?" + +And Guthrie in a sudden perversity of shock and embarrassment lied +grimly: + +"Dr. Andrews!" + +"I didn't either!--it was you!" came the immediate, not too strong, but +distinctly temperish response. + +Something in the new vitality of the tone made Guthrie stop whatever he +was doing and eye her suspiciously. + +"How long have you been conscious like this?" he queried in surprise. + +The faintest perceptible flicker of mischief crossed her haggard face. + +"Three--days," she acknowledged. + +"Then why--?" began Guthrie. + +"Because I--didn't know--just what to call you," she faltered. + +After that no power on earth apparently could induce any further speech +from her for another three days. Solemn and big-eyed and totally +unfathomable, she lay watching Guthrie's every gesture, every movement. +From the door to the chair, from the chair to the window, from the +window back to the chair, she lay estimating him altogether +disconcertingly. Across the hand that steadied her drinking glass, she +studied the poise of his lean, firm wrist. Out from the shadow-mystery +of her heavy lashes, she questioned the ultimate value of each frown or +smile. + +And then, suddenly--just as abruptly as the first time she had spoken: + +"What day is it?" she asked. + +"It's Christmas," said Guthrie softly. + +"O-h!--O-h!--O-h!" she exclaimed, very slowly. Then with increasing +interest and wonder, "Is there snow on the ground?" she whispered. + +"No," said Guthrie. + +"Is it full moon to-night?" she questioned. + +"No," said Guthrie. + +"Is there any small, freckle-faced, alto-voiced choir boy in the house, +trotting around humming funny little tail-ends of anthems and carols, +while he's buckling up his skates?" she stammered. + +"No," said Guthrie. + +"Are there any old, white-haired loving people cuddled in the chimney +corner?" she persisted. + +"No," said Guthrie. + +"Isn't there--any Christmas tree?" + +"No." + +"Aren't there even any presents?" + +"No." + +"Oh!" she smiled. "Isn't it funny!" + +"What's funny?" asked Guthrie perplexedly. + +The eyes that lifted to his were brimming full of a strange, wistful +sort of astonishment. "Why, it's funny," she faltered, "it's funny--that +without--any of these things--that I thought were so necessary to +it--I've found my 'perfectly happy Christmas.'" + +Then, almost bashfully, her wisp-like fingers went straying out toward +the soft silken folds of the precious pink sash which she kept always +close to her pillow. + +"If--you--don't--mind," she said, "I think I'll cut my sash in two and +give half of it to Hanlon's Mary to make a dress for her baby." + +The medicine spoon dropped rather clatteringly out of Guthrie's hand. + +"But I sent all the way to Denver for it," he protested. + +"Oh, yes, I know all about that," she acknowledged. "But--what--can--a +great big girl--like me--do with a--pink sash?" + +"But you said you wanted it!" cried Guthrie. "Why, it took a man and a +pony and a telegraph station five entire days to get it, and they had to +flag the express train specially for it--and--and--" + +A little wearily she closed her eyes and then opened them again +blinkingly. + +"I'm pretty tired, now," she said, "so I don't want to talk about +it--but don't you--understand? I've revised my whole list of +necessities. Out of the wide--wide--world--I find that I don't really +want anything--except--just--you!" + + + + +WOMAN'S ONLY BUSINESS + + +THE men at the club were horridly busy that night discussing the silly +English law about marrying your dead wife's sister. The talk was quite +rabid enough even before an English High-churchman infused his pious +venom into the subject-matter. When the argument was at its highest and +the drinks were at their lowest, Bertus Sagner, the biology man at the +university, jumped up from his seat with blazing eyes and said +"RATS!"--not anything long and Latin, not anything obscure and evasive, +not even "rodents," but just plain "RATS!" The look on his face was +inordinately disgusted, or indeed more than disgusted, unless disgust is +perhaps an emotion that may at times be served red-hot. As he broke away +from the gabbling crowd and began to hunt noisily round the room for his +papers, I gathered up my own chemistry notebook and started after him. I +was a new man in town and a comparative stranger. But Sagner and I had +been chums once long ago in Berlin. + +At the outside door he turned now and eyed me a bit shamefacedly. +"Barney, old man," he said, "are you going my way? Well, come along." +The broad-shouldered breadth of the two of us blocked out the light from +the shining chandelier and sent our clumsy feet fairly stumbling down +the harsh granite steps. The jarring lurch exploded Sagner's irritation +into a short, sharp, damny growl, and I saw at once that his nerves were +raw like a woman's. + +As we turned into the deep-shadowed, spooky-black college roadway, the +dormitories' yellow lights and laughter flared forth grotesquely like +the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge cut up for a Jack-o'-Lantern. At the +edge of the Lombardy poplars I heard Sagner swallowing a little bit +overhard. + +"I suspect that I made rather a fool of myself back there," he confided +abruptly, "but if there's anything under the day or night sky that makes +me mad, it's the idiotic babble, babble, babble, these past few weeks +about the 'dead wife's sister' law." + +"What's your grouch?" I asked. "You're not even a married man, let alone +a widower." + +He stopped suddenly with a spurting match and a big cigar and lighted up +unconsciously all the extraordinary frowning furrows of his face. The +match went out and he struck another, and that match went out and he +struck another--and another, and all the time it seemed to me as though +just the flame in his face was hot enough to kindle any ordinary cigar. +After each fruitless, breeze-snuffed effort he snapped his words out +like so many tiny, tempery torpedoes. "Of--all--the--rot!" he +ejaculated. "Of--all--the nonsense!" he puffed and mumbled. +"A--whole--great, grown-up empire fussing and brawling about a 'dead +wife's sister.' A dead wife! What does a dead wife care who marries her +sister? Great heavens! If they really want to make a good moral law that +will help somebody, why--don't--they--make--a--law--that will forbid a +man's flirting with his living wife's sister?" + +When I laughed I thought he would strike me, but after a husky second he +laughed, too, through a great blue puff of smoke and a blaze like the +headlight of an engine. In another instant he had vaulted the low fence +and was starting off across lots for his own rooms, but before I could +catch up with him he whirled abruptly in his tracks and came back to me. + +"Will you come over to the Lennarts' with me for a moment?" he asked. "I +was there at dinner with them to-night and I left my spectacles." + +Very willingly I acquiesced, and we plunged off single file into the +particular darkness that led to Professor Lennart's rose-garden. +Somewhere remotely in my mind hummed and halted a vague, evasive bit of +man-gossip about Lennart's amazingly pretty sister-in-law. Yet Sagner +did not look exactly to me like a man who was going courting. Even in +that murky darkness I could visualize perfectly from Sagner's pose and +gait the same strange, bleak, facial furnishings that had attracted me +so astoundingly in Berlin--the lean, flat cheeks cleaned close as the +floor of a laboratory; the ugly, short-cropped hair; the mouth, just for +work; the nose, just for work; the ears, just for work--not a single, +decorative, pleasant thing from crown to chin except those great, dark, +gorgeous, miraculously virgin eyes, with the huge, shaggy eyebrows +lowering down prudishly over them like two common doormats on which +every incoming vision must first stop and wipe its feet. Once in a cafe +in Berlin I saw a woman try to get into Sagner's eyes--without stopping. +Right in the middle of our dinner I jumped as though I had been shot. +"Why, what was _that_?" I cried. "What was _that_?" + +"What was what?" drawled Sagner. Try as I might the tiniest flicker of a +grin tickled my lips. "Oh, nothing," I mumbled apologetically. "I just +thought I heard a door slam-bang in a woman's face." + +"What door?" said Sagner stupidly. "What woman?" + +Old Sagner was deliciously stupid over many things, but he dissected the +darkness toward Professor Lennart's house as though it had been his +favorite kind of cadaver. Here, was the hardening turf, compact as +flesh. There, was the tough, tight tendon of the ripping ground pine. +Farther along under an exploring match a great vapid peony loomed like a +dead heart. Somewhere out in an orchard the May-blooms smelled +altogether too white. Almost at the edge of the Lennarts' piazza he +turned and stepped back to my pace and began talking messily about some +stale biological specimen that had just arrived from the Azores. + +College people, it seemed, did not ring bells for one another, and the +most casual flop of Sagner's knuckles against the door brought Mrs. +Lennart almost immediately to welcome us. "Almost immediately," I say, +because the slight, faltering delay in her footfall made me wonder even +then whether it was limb or life that had gone just a little bit lame. +But the instant the hall light struck her face my hand clutched down +involuntarily on Sagner's shoulder. It was the same, same face whose +brighter, keener, shinier pastelled likeness had been the only joyous +object in Sagner's homesick German room. With almost embarrassing +slowness now we followed her lagging steps back to the library. + +It was the first American home that I had seen for some years, and the +warmth of it, and the color, and the glow, and the luxurious, +deep-seated comfort, mothered me like the notes of an old, old song. +Between the hill-green walls the long room stretched like a peaceful +valley to the very edge of the huge, gray field-stone fireplace that +blocked the final vista like a furious breastwork raised against all the +invading tribes of history. Red books and gold frames and a +chocolate-colored bronze or two caught up the flickering glint from the +apple-wood fire, and out of some shadowy corner flanked by a grand piano +a young girl's contralto voice, sensuous as liquid plush, was lipping +its magic way up and down the whole wonderful, molten scale. + +The corner was rather small, but out of it loomed instantly the tall, +supple figure of Professor Lennart with his thousand-year-old brown eyes +and his young gray hair. We were all big fellows, but Lennart towered +easily three inches over anybody else's head. Professionally, too, he +had outstripped the rest of us. People came gadding from all over the +country to consult his historical criticisms and interpretations. And I +hardly know how to express the man's vivid, luminous, incandescent +personality. Surely no mother in a thousand would have chosen to have +her son look like me, and I hope that no mother in a million would +really have yearned to have a boy look like Sagner, but any mother, I +think, would gladly have compromised on Lennart. I suppose he was +handsome. Rising now, as he did, from the murkiest sort of a shadow, the +mental and physical radiance of him made me want to laugh right out loud +just for sheer pleasure. + +Following closely behind his towering bulk, the girl with the contralto +voice stepped out into the lamplight, and I made my most solemn and +profound German bow over her proffered hand before the flaming mischief +in her finger tips sent my eyes staring up into her astonishing face. + +I have never thought that American women are extraordinarily beautiful, +but rather that they wear their beauty like a thinnish sort of veil +across the adorable, insistent expressiveness of their features. But +this girl's face was so thick with beauty that you could not tell in one +glance, or even two glances, or perhaps three, whether she had any +expression at all. Kindness or meanness, brightness or dullness, pluck +or timidity, were absolutely undecipherable in that physically perfect +countenance. She was very small, and very dark, and very active, with +hair like the color of eight o'clock--daylight and darkness and +lamplight all snarled up together--and lips all crude scarlet, and eyes +as absurdly big and round as a child's good-by kiss. Yet never for one +instant could you have called her anything so impassive as "attractive." +"Attracting" is the only hasty, ready-made word that could possibly fit +her. Personally I do not like the type. The prettiest picture postal +that ever was printed could not lure me across the borders of any +unknown country. When I travel even into Friendship Land I want a good, +clear face-map to guide my explorations. + +There was a boy, too, in the room--the Lennarts' son--a brown-faced lad +of thirteen whose algebraic seance with his beloved mother we had most +brutally interrupted. + +Professor Lennart's fad, as I have said, was history. Mrs. Lennart's fad +was presumably housekeeping. The sister-in-law's fad was unmistakably +men. Like an electric signboard her fascinating, spectacular sex-vanity +flamed and flared from her coyly drooped eyes to her showy little feet. +Every individual gesture signaled distinctly, "I am an extraordinarily +beautiful little woman." Now it was her caressing hand on Lennart's +shoulder; now it was her maddening, dazzling smile hurled like a +bombshell into Sagner's perfectly prosy remark about the weather, now +it was her teasing lips against the boy's tousled hair; now it was her +tip-toeing, swaying, sweet-breathed exploration of a cobweb that the +linden trees had left across my shoulder. + +Lennart was evidently utterly subjugated. Like a bright moth and a very +dull flame the girl chased him unceasingly from one chair, or one word, +or one laugh to another. A dozen times their hands touched, or their +smiles met, or their thoughts mated in distinctly personal if not secret +understanding. Once when Mrs. Lennart stopped suddenly in the midst of +my best story and asked me to repeat what I had been saying, I glanced +up covertly and saw the girl kissing the tip of her finger a little bit +over-mockingly to her brother-in-law. Never in any country but America +could such a whole scene have been enacted in absolute moral innocence. +It made me half ashamed and half very proud of my country. In +continental Europe even the most trivial, innocent audacity assumes at +once such utterly preposterous proportions of evil. But here before my +very eyes was the most dangerous man-and-woman game in the world being +played as frankly and ingenuously and transiently as though it had been +croquet. + +Through it all, Sagner, frowning like ten devils, sat at the desk with +his chin in his hands, staring--staring at the girl. I suppose that she +thought he was fascinated. He was. He was fairly yearning to vivisect +her. I had seen that expression before in his face--reverence, +repulsion, attraction, distaste, indomitable purpose, blood-curdling +curiosity--SCIENCE. + +When I dragged him out of the room and down the steps half an hour later +my sides were cramped with laughter. "If we'd stayed ten minutes +longer," I chuckled, "she would have called you 'Bertie' and me 'Boy.'" + +But Sagner would not laugh. + +"She's a pretty girl all right," I ventured again. + +"Pretty as h--," whispered Sagner. + +As we rounded the corner of the house the long French window blazed +forth on us. Clear and bright in the lamplight stood Lennart with his +right arm cuddling the girl to his side. "Little sister," he was saying, +"let's go back to the piano and have some more music." Smiling her +kindly good night we saw Mrs. Lennart gather up her books and start off +limpingly across the hall, with the devoted boy following close behind +her. + +"Then she's really lame?" I asked Sagner as we swung into the noisy +gravel path. + +"Oh, yes," he said; "she got hurt in a runaway accident four years ago. +Lennart doesn't know how to drive a _goat_!" + +"Seems sort of too bad," I mused dully. + +Then Sagner laughed most astonishingly. "Yes, sort of too bad," he +mocked me. + +It was almost ten o'clock when we circled back to the college library. +Only a few grinds were there buzzing like June-bugs round the +low-swinging green lamps. Even the librarian was missing. But Madge +Hubert, the librarian's daughter, was keeping office hours in his stead +behind a sumptuous old mahogany desk. At the very first college party +that I had attended, Madge Hubert had been pointed out to me with a +certain distinction as being the girl that Bertus Sagner was _almost_ in +love with. Then, as now, I was startled by the surprising youthfulness +of her. Surely she was not more than three years ahead of the young girl +whom we had left at Professor Lennart's house. With unmistakable +friendly gladness she welcomed Sagner to the seat nearest her, and +accorded me quite as much chair and quite as much smile as any new man +in a university town really deserved. In another moment she had closed +her book, pushed a full box of matches across the table to us, and +switched off the electric light that fairly threatened to scorch her +straight blond hair. + +One by one the grinds looked up and nodded and smiled, and puckered +their vision toward the clock, and "folded their tents like the Arabs +and silently stole away," leaving us two men there all alone with the +great silent room, and the long, rangy, echoing metal book-stacks, and +the duddy-looking portraits, and the dopy-acting busts, and the sleek +gray library cat--and the girl. Maybe Sagner came every Wednesday night +to help close the library. + +Certainly I liked the frank, almost boyish manner in which the two +friends included me in their friendship by seeming to ignore me +altogether. + +"What's the matter, Bertus?" the girl began quite abruptly. "You look +worried. What's the matter?" + +"Nothing is ever the matter," said Sagner. + +The girl laughed, and began to build a high, tottering paper tower out +of a learned-looking pack of catalogue cards. Just at the moment of +completion she gave a sharp little inadvertent sigh and the tower +fluttered down. + +"What's the matter with _you_?" quizzed Sagner. + +"Nothing is ever the matter with me, either," she mocked smilingly. + +Trying to butt into the silence that was awkward for me, if not for +them, I rummaged my brain for speech, and blurted out triumphantly, +"We've just come from Professor Lennart's." + +"Just come from Professor Lennart's?" she repeated slowly, lifting her +eyebrows as though the thought was a little bit heavy. + +"Yes," said Sagner bluntly. "I've been there twice this evening." + +With a rather playful twist of her lips the girl turned to me. "What did +you think of 'Little Sister'?" she asked. + +But before I could answer, Sagner had pushed me utterly aside once more +and was shaking his smoke-stained finger threateningly in Madge Hubert's +face. "Why--didn't--you--come--to the--Lennarts'--to--dinner--to-night +--as--you--were--invited?" he scolded. + +The girl put her chin in her hand and cuddled her fingers over her mouth +and her nose and part of her blue eyes. + +"I don't go to the Lennarts' any more--if I can help it," she mumbled. + +"Why not?" shouted Sagner. + +She considered the question very carefully, then "Go ask the other +girls," she answered a trifle hotly. "Go ask any one of them. We all +stay away for exactly the same reason." + +"WHAT IS THE REASON?" thundered Sagner in his most terrible laboratory +manner. + +When Sagner speaks like that to me, I always grab hold of my head with +both hands and answer just as fast as I possibly can, for I remember +only too distinctly all the shining assortment of different sized knives +and scalpels in his workshop and I have always found that a small, +narrow, quick question makes the smallest, narrowest, quickest, +soon-overest incision into my secret. + +But Madge Hubert only laughed at the laboratory manner. + +"Say 'Please,'" she whispered. + +"Please!" growled Sagner, with his very own blood flushing all over his +face and hands. + +"Now--what is it you want to know?" she asked, frittering her fingers +all the time over that inky-looking pack of catalogue cards. + +Somehow, strange as it may seem, I did not feel an atom in the way, but +rather that the presence of a third person, and that person myself, gave +them both a certain daring bravado of speech that they would scarcely +have risked alone with each other. + +"What do I want to know?" queried Sagner. "I want to know--in fact--I'm +utterly mad to know--just what your kind of woman thinks of 'Little +Sister's' kind of woman." + +With a startled gesture Madge Hubert looked back over her shoulder +toward a creak in the literature book-stack, and Sagner jumped up with a +great air of mock conspiracy, and went tip-toeing all around among the +metal corridors in search of possible eavesdroppers, and then came +flouncing back and stuffed tickly tissue paper into the gray cat's +ears. + +Then "Why don't you girls go to the Lennarts' any more?" he resumed with +quickly recurrent gravity. + +For a moment Madge Hubert dallied to shuffle one half of her pack of +cards into the other half. Then she looked up and smiled the blond way a +white-birch tree smiles in the sunshine. + +"Why--we don't go any more because we don't have a good time," she +confided. "After you've come home from a party once or twice and cried +yourself to sleep, it begins to dawn on you very gradually that you +didn't have a very good time. We don't like 'Little Sister.' She makes +us feel ashamed." + +"Oh!" said Sagner, rather brutally. "You are all jealous!" + +But if he had expected for a second to disconcert Madge Hubert he was +most ingloriously mistaken. + +"Yes," she answered perfectly simply. "We are all jealous." + +"Of her beauty?" scowled Sagner. + +"Oh, no," said Madge Hubert. "Of her innocence." + +Acid couldn't have eaten the fiber out of Madge Hubert's emotional +honesty. "Why, yes," she hurried on vehemently, "among all the +professors' daughters here in town there isn't one of us who is innocent +enough to do happily even once the things that 'Little Sister' does +every day of her life. You are quite right. We are all furiously +jealous." + +With sudden professional earnestness she ran her fingers through the +catalogue cards and picked out one and slapped it down in front of +Sagner. "There!" she said. "That's the book that explains all about it. +It says that jealousy is an emotion that is aroused only by business +competition, which accounts, of course, for the fact that, socially +speaking, you very rarely find any personal enmity between men. There +are so many, many different kinds of businesses for men, that interests +very seldom conflict--so that the broker resents _only_ the broker, and +the minister resents _only_ the minister, and the merchant resents +_only_ the merchant. Why, Bertus Sagner," she broke off abruptly, "you +fairly idolize your chemistry friend here, and Lennart for history, and +Dudley for mathematics, and all the others, and you glory in their +achievements, and pray for their successes. But if there were another +biology man here in town, you'd tear him and his methods tooth and nail, +day and night. Yes, you would!--though you'd cover your hate a foot deep +with superficial courtesies and 'professional etiquette.'" + +She began to laugh. "Oh, the book is very wise," she continued more +lightly. "It goes on to say that woman's only business in the whole +wide world is LOVE--that Love is really the one and only, the Universal +Profession for Women--so that every mortal feminine creature, from the +brownest gypsy to the whitest queen, is in brutal, acute competition +with her neighbor. It's funny, isn't it!" she finished brightly. + +"Very funny," growled Sagner. + +"So you see," she persisted, "that we girls are jealous of 'Little +Sister' in just about the same way in which an old-fashioned, rather +conservative department store would be jealous of the first ten-cent +store that came to town." A sudden rather fine white pride paled +suddenly in her cheeks. "It isn't, you understand," she said, "it isn't +because the ten-cent store's rhinestone comb, or tinsel ribbon, or +slightly handled collar really competes with the other store's plainer +but possibly honester values, but--because in the long run the public's +frittered taste and frittered small change is absolutely bound to affect +the general receipts of the more conservative store." + +"And it isn't," she added hastily, "it isn't, you know, because we're +not used to men. There isn't one of us--from the time we were sixteen +years old--who hasn't been quite accustomed to entertain anywhere from +three to a dozen men every evening of her life. But we can't entertain +them the way 'Little Sister' does." A hot, red wave of mortification +flooded her face. "We tried it once," she confessed, "and it didn't +work. Just before the last winter party seven of us girls got together +and deliberately made up our minds to beat 'Little Sister' at her own +game. Wasn't it disgusting of us to start out actually and deliberately +with the intention of being just a little wee bit free and easy with +men?" + +"How did it work?" persisted Sagner, half agrin. + +The color flushed redder and redder into Madge Hubert's cheeks. + +"I went to the party with the new psychology substitute," she continued +bravely, "and as I stepped into the carriage I called him 'Fred'--and he +looked as though he thought I was demented. But fifteen minutes +afterward I heard 'Little Sister' call him 'Psyche'--and he laughed." +She began to laugh herself. + +"But how did the party come out?" probed Sagner, going deeper and +deeper. + +The girl sobered instantly. "There were seven of us," she said, "and we +all were to meet at the house of one of the girls at twelve o'clock and +compare experiences. Three of us came home at ten o'clock--crying. And +four of us didn't turn up till half-past one--laughing. But the ones +who came home crying were the only ones who really had any fun out of +it. The game was altogether too easy--that was the trouble with it. But +the four who came home laughing had been bored to death with their +_un_-successes." + +"Which lot were you in?" cried Sagner. + +She shook her head. "I won't tell you," she whispered. + +With almost startling pluck she jumped up suddenly and switched the +electric light full blast into her tense young face and across her +resolute shoulders. + +"Look at me!" she cried. "Look at me! As long as men are men--what have +I that can possibly, possibly compete with a girl like 'Little Sister'? +Can I climb up into a man's face every time I want to speak to him? Can +I pat a man's shoulder every time he passes me in a room? Can I hold out +my quivering white hand and act perfectly helpless in a man's presence +every time that I want to step into a carriage, or out of a chair? Can I +cry and grieve and mope into a man's arms at a dance just because I +happen to cut my finger on the sharp edge of my dance-order? Bah! If a +new man came to town and made not one single man-friend but called all +of us girls by our first names the second time he saw us, and rolled his +eyes at us, and fluttered his hands, you people would call him the +biggest fool in Christendom--but you flock by the dozens and the +hundreds and the millions every evening to see 'Little Sister.' And +great, grown-up, middle-aged boys like _you_, Bertus Sagner, flock +_twice_ in the same evening!" + +With astounding irrelevance Sagner burst out laughing. "Why, Madge," he +cried, "you're perfectly superb when you're mad. Keep it up. Keep it up. +I didn't know you had it in you! Why, you dear, gorgeous girl--WHY +AREN'T YOU MARRIED?" + +Like a scarlet lightning-bolt spiked with two-edged knives the red wrath +of the girl descended then and there on Sagner's ugly head. With her +heaving young shoulders braced like a frenzied creature at bay, against +a great, silly, towering tier of "Latest Novels," she hurled her +flaming, irrevocable answer crash-bang into Sagner's astonished, +impertinent face. + +"You want to know why I'm not married?" she cried. "You want to know why +I'm not married? Well, I'll tell you--why--I'm--not married, Bertus +Sagner, and I'll use yourself for an illustration--for when I do come to +marry, it is written in the stars that I must of necessity marry your +kind, a mature, cool, calculating, emotionally-tamed man, a man of brain +as well as brawn, a man of fame if not of fortune, a man bred +intellectually, morally, socially, into the same wonderfully keen, +thinky corner of the world where I was born--nothing but a woman. + +"For four years, Bertus Sagner, ever since I was nineteen years old, +people have come stumbling over each other at college receptions to +stare at me because I am 'the girl that Bertus Sagner, the big +biologist, is _almost_ in love with.' And you _are_ 'almost' in love +with me, Bertus Sagner. You can't deny it! And what is more, you will +stay 'almost' in love with me till our pulses run down like clocks, and +our eyes burn out like lamps, and the Real Night comes. If I remain here +in this town, even when I am middle-aged--people will come and stare at +me--because of you. And when I am old, and you are gone--altogether, +people will still be talking about it. 'Almost in love' with me. Yes, +Bertus Sagner, but if next time you came to see me, I should even so +much as dally for a second on the arm of your chair, and slip my hand +just a little bit tremulously into yours, and brush my lips like the +ghost of a butterfly's wing across your love-starved face, you would +probably find out then and there in one great, blinding, tingling, +crunching flash that you LOVE ME NOW! But I don't want _you_, Bertus +Sagner, nor any other man, at that price. The man who was made for me +will love me first and get his petting afterward. There! Do you +understand now?" + +As though Sagner's gasp for breath was no more than the flutter of a +book-leaf, she plunged on, "And as for Mrs. Lennart--" + +Sagner jumped to his feet. "We weren't talking about Mrs. Lennart," he +exclaimed hotly. + +It has always seemed to me that very few things in the world are as +quick as a woman's anger. But nothing in the world, I am perfectly +positive, is as quick as a woman's amusement. As though an anarchist's +bomb had exploded into confetti, Madge Hubert's sudden laughter sparkled +through the room. + +"Now, Bertus Sagner," she teased, "you just sit down again and listen to +what I have to say." + +Sagner sat down. + +And as casually as though she were going to pour afternoon tea the girl +slipped back into her own chair, and gave me a genuinely mirthful +side-glance before she resumed her attack on Sagner. + +"You were, too, talking about Mrs. Lennart," she insisted. "When you +asked me to tell you exactly what a girl of my kind thinks of a girl +like 'Little Sister,' do you suppose for a second I didn't understand +that the thing you really wanted to find out was whether Mrs. Lennart +was getting hurt or not in this 'Little Sister' business? Oh, no, Mrs. +Lennart hasn't been hurt for a long, long time--several months perhaps. +I think she looks a little bit bored now and then, but not hurt." + +"Lennart's a splendid fellow," protested Sagner. + +"He's a splendid fool," said Madge Hubert. "And after a woman once +discovers that her husband is a fool I don't suppose that any extra +illustrations on his part make any particular difference to her." + +"Why, you don't--really think," stammered Sagner, "that there's any +actual harm in Lennart's perfectly frank infatuation with 'Little +Sister'?" + +"Oh, no," said Madge Hubert, "of course there's no real harm in it at +all. It's only that Mrs. Lennart has got to realize once for all that +the special public that she has catered to so long and faithfully with +honest values and small profit, has really got a ten-cent taste! Most +men have. And it isn't, you know, because Professor Lennart really wants +or needs all these ten-cent toys and favors, but because he probably +never before in all his studious, straight, idealistic life saw +glittering nonsense so inordinately cheap and easy to get. Talk about +women being 'bargain-hunters'! + +"But, of course, it's all pretty apt to ruin Mrs. Lennart's business. +Anybody with half a heart could see that her stock is beginning to run +down. She hasn't put in a new idea for months. She's wearing last +year's clothes. She's thinking last year's thoughts. Even that blessed +smile of hers is beginning to get just a little bit stale. You can't get +what you want from her any more. Dust and indifference have already +begun to set in. How will it end? Oh, I'll tell you how it will end. +Pretty soon now college will be over and the men will scatter in five +hundred different directions, and 'Little Sister' will be smitten +suddenly with conscientious scruples about the 'old folks at home,' and +will pack up her ruffles and her fraternity pins and go back to the +provincial little town that has made her what she is. And Professor +Lennart will mope around the house like a lost soul--for as much as five +days--moaning, 'Oh, I wish "Little Sister" was here to-night to sing to +me,' and 'I wish "Little Sister" was going to be here to-morrow to go +canoeing with me,' and 'I wish "Little Sister" could see this +moonlight,' and 'I wish "Little Sister" could taste this wild-strawberry +pie.' And then somewhere about the sixth day, when he and Mrs. Lennart +are at breakfast or dinner or supper, he'll look up suddenly like a man +just freed from a delirium, and drop his cup, or his knife, or his fork +'ker-smash' into his plate, and cry out, 'My Heavens, Mary! But it's +pretty good just for _you_ and _me_ to be alone together again!'" + +"And what will Mrs. Lennart say?" interposed Sagner hastily, with a +great puff of smoke. + +For some unaccountable reason Madge Hubert's eyes slopped right over +with tears. + +"What will Mary Lennart say?" she repeated. "Mary Lennart will say: +'Excuse me, dear, but I wasn't listening. I didn't hear what you said. I +was trying to remember whether or not I'd put moth-balls in your winter +suit.' Though he live to be nine hundred and sixty-two, Harold Lennart's +love-life will never rhyme again. But prose, of course, is a great deal +easier to live than verse." + +As though we had all been discussing the latest foreign theory +concerning microbes, Sagner jumped up abruptly and began to rummage +furiously through a pile of German bulletins. When he had found and read +aloud enough things that he didn't want, he looked up and said +nonchalantly, "Let's go home." + +"All right," said Madge Hubert. + +"Maybe you hadn't noticed that I was here," I suggested, "but I think +that perhaps I should like to go home, too." + +As we banged the big, oaken, iron-clamped door behind us, Madge Hubert +lingered a second and turned her white face up to the waning, yellow +moonlight. "I think I'd like to go home through the dark woods," she +decided. + +Silently we all turned down into the soft, padded path that ran along +the piny shore of our little college lake. Sagner of course led the way. +Madge Hubert followed close. And I tagged along behind as merrily as I +could. Twice I saw the girl's shoulders shudder. + +"Don't you like the woods, Miss Hubert?" I called out experimentally. + +She stopped at once and waited for me to catch up with her. There was +the very faintest possible suggestion of timidity in the action. + +"Don't you like the woods?" I repeated. + +She shook her head. "No, not especially," she answered. "That is, not +all woods. There's such a difference. Some woods feel as though they had +violets in them, and some woods feel as though they had--Indians." + +I couldn't help laughing. "How about these woods?" I quizzed. + +She gave a little gasp. "I don't believe there are violets in any woods +to-night," she faltered. + +Even as she spoke we heard a swish and a crackle ahead of us and Sagner +came running back. "Let's go round the other way," he insisted. + +"I won't go round the other way," said Madge Hubert. "How perfectly +absurd! What's the matter?" + +Even as she argued we stepped out into the open clearing and met Harold +Lennart and "Little Sister" singing their way home hand in hand through +the witching night. For an instant our jovial greetings parried +together, and then we passed. Not till we had reached Madge Hubert's +doorstep did I lose utterly the wonderful lilting echo of that young +contralto voice with the man's older tenor ringing in and out of it like +a shimmery silver lining. + +Ten minutes later in Sagner's cluttered workroom we two men sat and +stared through our pipe-smoke into each other's evasive eyes. + +"Madge didn't--hesitate at all--to tell me a thing or two to-night, did +she?" Sagner began at last, gruffly. + +I smiled. The relaxation made me feel as though my mouth had really got +a chance at last to sit down. + +"Am I so very old?" persisted Sagner. "I'm not forty-five." + +I shrugged my shoulders. + +Pettishly he reached out and clutched at a scalpel, cleansed it for an +instant in the flame, and jabbed the point of it into his wrist. The red +blood spurted instantly. + +"There!" he cried out triumphantly. "I have blood in me! It isn't +embalming fluid at all." + +"Oh, quit your fooling, you old death-digger," I said. And then with +overtense impulse I asked, "Sagner, man, do you really understand Life?" + +Sagner's jaw-bones stiffened instantly. "Oh, yes," he exclaimed. "Oh, +yes, of course I understand Life. That is," he added, with a most +unusual burst of humility, "I understand everything, I think, except +just why the gills of a fish--but, oh, bother, you wouldn't know what I +meant; and there's a new French theory about odylic forces that puzzles +me a little, and I never, never have been able to understand the +particular mental processes of a woman who violates the law of species +by naming her firstborn son for any man but his father. I'm not exactly +criticising the fish," he added vehemently, "nor the new odylic theory, +nor even the woman; I'm simply stating baldly and plainly the only three +things under God's heaven that I can't quite seem to fathom." + +"What's all this got to do with Mary Lennart?" I asked impatiently. + +"Nothing at all to do with Mary Lennart," he answered proudly. "Mary +Lennart's son is named Harold." He began to smoke very hard. +"Considering the real object of our being put here in the world," he +resumed didactically, "it has always seemed to me that the supreme test +of character lay in the father's and mother's mental attitude toward +their young." + +"Couldn't you say 'toward their children'?" I protested. + +He brushed my interruption aside. "I don't care," he persisted, "how +much a man loves a woman or how much a woman loves a man--the man who +deserts his wife during her crucial hour and goes off on a lark to get +out of the fuss, and the woman who names her firstborn son for any man +except his father, may qualify in all the available moral tenets, but +they certainly have slipped up somehow, mentally, in the Real Meaning of +things. Thank God," he finished quickly, "that neither Harold Lennart +nor Mary has failed the other like that--no matter what else happens." +His face whitened. "I stayed with Harold Lennart the night little Harold +was born," he whispered rather softly. + +Before I could think of just the right thing to say, he jumped up +awkwardly and strode over to the looking-glass, and puffed out his great +chest and stood and stared at himself. + +"I wish I had a son named Bertus Sagner," he said. + +"It's all right, of course, to have him named after you," I laughed, +"but you surely wouldn't choose to have him look like you, would you?" + +He turned on me with absurd fierceness. "I wouldn't marry any woman who +didn't love me enough to want her son to look like me!" he exclaimed. + +I was still laughing as I picked up my hat. I was still laughing as I +stumbled and fumbled down the long, black, steep stairs. Half an hour +later in my pillows I was still laughing. But I did not get to sleep. My +mind was too messy. After all, when you really come to think of it, a +man's brain ought to be made up fresh and clean every night like a hotel +bed. Sleep seems to be altogether too dainty a thing to nest in any +brain that strange thoughts have rumpled. Always there must be the white +sheet of peace edging the blanket of forgetfulness. And perhaps on one +or two of life's wintrier nights some sort of spiritual comforter thrown +over all. + +It was almost a week before I saw any of the Lennarts again. Then, on a +Saturday afternoon, as Sagner and I were lolling along the road toward +town we met Lennart and "Little Sister" togged out in a lot of gorgeous +golf duds. Lennart was delighted to see us, and "Little Sister" made +Sagner get down on his knees and tie her shoe lacings twice. I escaped +with the milder favor of a pat on the wrist. + +"We're going out to the Golf Club," beamed Lennart, "to enter for the +tournament." + +"Oh," said Sagner, turning to join them. "Shall we find Mrs. Lennart +out at the club? Is she going to play?" + +A flicker of annoyance went over Lennart's face. "Why, Sagner," he said, +"how stupid you are! Don't you know that Mary is lame and couldn't walk +over the golf course now to save her life?" + +As Sagner turned back to me, and we passed on out of hearing, I noted +two red spots flaming hectically in his cheeks. + +"It seems to me," he muttered, "that if I had crippled or incapacitated +my wife in any way so that she couldn't play golf any more, I wouldn't +exactly take another woman into the tournament. I think that singles +would just about fit me under the circumstances." + +"But Lennart is such a 'splendid fellow,'" I quoted wryly. + +"He's a splendid fool," snapped Sagner. + +"Why, you darned old copy-cat," I taunted. "It was Miss Hubert who rated +him as a 'splendid fool.'" + +"Oh," said Sagner. + +"Oh, yourself," said I. + +Involuntarily we turned and watched the two bright figures skirting the +field. Almost at that instant they stopped, and the girl reached up with +all her clinging, cloying coquetry and fastened a great, pink wild rose +into the lapel of the man's coat. Sagner groaned. "Why can't she keep +her hands off that man?" he muttered; then he shrugged his shoulders +with a grim little gesture of helplessness. "If a girl doesn't know," he +said, "that it's wrong to chase another woman's man she's too ignorant +to be congenial. If she does know it's wrong, she's too--vicious. But +never mind," he finished abruptly, "Lennart's foolishness will soon +pass. And meanwhile Mary has her boy. Surely no lad was ever so +passionately devoted to his mother. They are absolutely inseparable. I +never saw anything like it." He began to smile again. + +Then, because at a turn of the road he saw a bird that reminded him of a +beast that reminded him of a reptile, he left me unceremoniously and +went back to the laboratory. + +Feeling a bit raw over his desertion, I gave up my walk and decided to +spend the rest of the afternoon at the library. + +At the edge of the reading-room I found Madge Hubert brandishing a +ferocious-looking paper-knife over the perfectly helpless new magazines. +With a little cry of delight she summoned me to her by the wave of a +_Science Monthly_. Looking over her shoulder I beheld with equal delight +that the canny old Science paper had stuck in Sagner's great, ugly face +for a frontispiece. At arm's length, with opening and narrowing eyes, I +studied the perfect, clever likeness: the convict-cropped hair; the +surly, aggressive, relentlessly busy features; the absurd, overwrought, +deep-sea sort of eyes. "Great Heavens, Miss Hubert," I said, "did you +ever see such a funny-looking man?" + +The girl winced. "Funny?" she gasped. "Funny? Why, I think Bertus Sagner +is the most absolutely fascinating-looking man that I ever saw in my +life." She stared at me in astonishment. + +To hide my emotions I fled to the history room. Somewhat to my surprise +Mrs. Lennart and her little lad were there, delving deep into some +thrilling grammar-school problem concerning Henry the Eighth. I nodded +to them, thought they saw me, and slipped into a chair not far behind +them. There was no one else in the room. Maybe my thirst for historical +information was not very keen. Certainly every book that I touched +rustled like a dead, stale autumn leaf. Maybe the yellow bird in the +acacia tree just outside the window teased me a little bit. Anyway, my +eyes began only too soon to stray from the text-books before me to the +little fluttering wisp of Mrs. Lennart's hair that tickled now and then +across the lad's hovering face. I thought I had never seen a sweeter +picture than those two cuddling, browsing faces. Surely I had never seen +one more entrancingly serene. + +[Illustration: "Oh, I wish I had a sister," fretted the boy] + +Then suddenly I saw the lad push back his books with a whimper of +discontent. + +"What is it?" asked his mother. I could hear her words plainly. + +"Oh, I wish I had a sister," fretted the boy. + +"Why?" said the mother in perfectly happy surprise. + +The lad began to drum on the table. "Why do I want a sister?" he +repeated a trifle temperishly. "Why, so I could have some one to play +with and walk with and talk with and study with. Some one jolly and +merry and frisky." + +"Why--what about _me_?" she quizzed. Even at that moment I felt +reasonably certain that she was still smiling. + +The little lad looked bluntly up into her face. "Why you are--_so old_!" +he said quite distinctly. + +I saw the woman's shoulders hunch as though her hands were bracing +against the table. Then she reached out like a flash and clutched the +little lad's chin in her fingers. If a voice-tone has any color, hers was +corpse-white. "I never--let--_you_--know--that--you--were--too--_young_!" +she almost hissed. + +And I shut my eyes. + +When I looked up again the woman was gone, and the little lad was +running after her with a queer, puzzled look on his face. + +Life has such a strange way of foreshortening its longest plots with a +startling, snapped-off ending. Any true story is a tiny bit out of +rhetorical proportion. + +The very next day, under the railroad trestle that hurries us back and +forth to the big, neighboring city, we found Mrs. Lennart's body in a +three-foot pool of creek water. It was the little lad's birthday, it +seems, and he was to have had a supper party, and she had gone to town +in the early afternoon to make a few festive purchases. A package of +tinsel-paper bonbons floated safely, I remember, in the pool beside her. +For some inexplainable reason she had stepped off the train at the wrong +station and, realizing presumably how her blundering tardiness would +blight the little lad's pleasure, she had started to walk home across +the trestle, hoping thereby to beat the later train by as much as half +an hour. The rest of the tragedy was brutally plain. Somehow between one +safe, friendly embankment and another she had slipped and fallen. The +trestle was ticklish walking for even a person who wasn't lame. + +Like a slim, white, waxen altar candle snuffed out by a child's +accidental, gusty pleasure-laugh, we brought her home to the sweet, +green, peaceful library, with its resolute, indomitable hearthstone. + +Out of all the crowding people who jostled me in the hallway I remember +only--Lennart's ghastly, agonized face. + +"Go and tell Sagner," he said. + +Even as I crossed the campus the little, fluttery, flickery, hissing +word "suicide" was in the air. From the graduates' dormitory I heard a +man's voice argue, "But why did she get off deliberately at the wrong +station?" Out of the president's kitchen a shrill tone cackled, "Well, +she ain't been herself, they say, for a good many weeks. And who +wonders?" + +In one corner of the laboratory, close by an open window, I found Sagner +working, as I had expected, in blissful ignorance. + +"What's the matter?" he asked bluntly. + +I was very awkward. I was very clumsy. I was very frightened. My face +was all condensed like a telegram. + +"Madge Hubert was right," I stammered. "Mrs. Lennart's--business--has +gone into the hands of a--receiver." + +The glass test tube went brittling out of Sagner's fingers. "Do you mean +that she is--dead?" he asked. + +I nodded. + +For the fraction of a moment he rolled back his great, shaggy brows, and +lifted his face up wide-eyed and staring to the soft, sweet, +dove-colored, early evening sky. Then his eyelids came scrunching down +again perfectly tight, and I saw one side of his ugly mouth begin to +smile a little as a man might smile--as he closes the door--when the +woman whom he loves comes home again. Then very slowly, very +methodically, he turned off all the gas-burners and picked up all the +notebooks, and cleansed all the knives, and just as I thought he was +almost ready to go with me he started back again and released a fair, +froth-green lunar moth from a stifling glass jar. Then, with his arm +across my cringing shoulders, we fumbled our way down the long, creaky +stairs. And all the time his heart was pounding like an oil-soused +engine. But I had to bend my head to hear the questions that crumbled +from his lips. + +As we crunched our way across the Lennarts' garden with all the +horrible, rackety noise that the living inevitably make in the presence +of the dead, we ran into Lennart's old gardener crouching there in the +dusk, stuffing cold, white roses into a huge market basket. Almost +brutally Sagner clutched the old fellow by the arm. "Dunstan," he +demanded, "how--did--this--thing--happen?" + +The old gardener shook with fear and palsy. "There's some," he +whispered, "as says the lady-dear was out of her mind. A-h, no," he +protested, "a-h, no. She may ha' been out of her heart, but she weren't +never out of her mind. There's some," he choked, "as calls it suicide, +there's some," he gulped, "as calls it accident. I'm a rough-spoke man +and I don' know the tongue o' ladies, but it weren't suicide, and it +weren't accident. If it had be'n a man that had done it, you'd 'a' +called it just a 'didn't-give-a-damn.'" + +As we neared the house Sagner spoke only once. "Barney," he asked quite +cheerfully, "were you ever rude to a woman?" + +My hands went instinctively up to my head. "Oh, yes," I hurried, "once +in the Arizona desert I struck an Indian squaw." + +"Does it hurt?" persisted Sagner. + +"You mean 'Did it hurt?'" I answered a bit impatiently. "Yes, I think it +hurt her a little, but not nearly as much as she deserved." + +Sagner reached forward and yanked me back by the shoulder. "I mean," he +growled, "do you remember it now in the middle of the night, and are you +sorry you did it?" + +My heart cramped. "Yes," I acknowledged, "I remember it now in the +middle of the night. But I am distinctly not sorry that I did it." + +"Oh," muttered Sagner. + +With the first creaking sound of our steps in the front hall "Little +Sister" came gliding down the stairway with the stark-faced laddie +clutching close at her sash. All the sparkle and spangle were gone from +the girl. Her eyes were like two bruises on the flesh of a calla lily. +Slipping one ice-cold tremulous hand into mine she closed down her other +frightened hand over the two. "I'm so very glad you've come," she +whispered huskily. "Mr. Lennart isn't any comfort to me at all +to-night--and Mary was the only sister I had." Her voice caught suddenly +with a rasping sob. "You and Mr. Sagner have always been so kind to me," +she plunged on blindly, with soft-drooping eyelids, "and I shall +probably never see either of you again. We are all going home to-morrow. +And I expect to be married in July to a boy at home." Her icy fingers +quickened in mine like the bloom-burst of a sun-scorched Jacqueminot. + +"You--expect--to--be--married--in--July to--a--boy--at--home?" cried +Sagner. + +The awful slicing quality in his voice brought Lennart's dreadful face +peering out through a slit in the library curtains. + +"Hush!" I signaled warningly to Sagner. But again his venomous question +ripped through the quiet of the house. + +"You--expected--all--the--time--to--be--married--in--July?" + +"Why, yes," said the girl, with the faintest dimpling flicker of a +smile. "Won't you congratulate me?" Very softly she drew her right hand +away from me and held it out whitely to Sagner. + +"Excuse me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed--my--hands." + +"What?" stammered the girl. "W-h-a-t?" + +"Excuse--me," said Sagner, "but I have just--washed my hands." + +Then, bowing very, very low, like a small boy at his first +dancing-school, Sagner passed from the house. + +When I finally succeeded in steering my shaking knees and flopping feet +down the long front steps and the pleasant, rose-bordered path, I found +Sagner waiting for me at the gateway. Under the basking warmth of that +mild May night his teeth were chattering as with an ague, and his +ravenous face was like the face of a man whose soul is utterly glutted, +but whose body has never even so much as tasted food and drink. + +I put both my hands on his shoulders. "Sagner," I begged, "if there is +anything under God's heaven that you want to-night--go and get it!" + +He gave a short, gaspy laugh and wrenched himself free from me. "There +is nothing _under_ God's heaven--to-night--that I want--except Madge +Hubert," he said. + +In another instant he was gone. With a wh-i-r and a wh-i-s-h and a +snow-white fragrance, his trail cut abruptly through the apple-bush +hedge. Then like a huge, black, sweet-scented sponge the darkening night +seemed to swoop down and wipe him right off the face of the earth. + +Very softly I knelt and pressed my ear to the ground. Across the young, +tremulous, vibrant greensward I heard the throb-throb-throb of a man's +feet--_running_. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Repeated story titles were removed. + +Obvious punctuation errors were corrected. + +Page 189, "Patridge" changed to "Partridge" (Partridge Hunter began +instantly) + +Page 257, two lines of text were transposed. The original read: + + one of our big music people picked him up + jabberingly to America. But the invitation didn't + over there a few months ago and brought him + seem to include the wife and baby--genius and + +The middle two lines were traded. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SICK-A-BED LADY*** + + +******* This file should be named 34829.txt or 34829.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/8/2/34829 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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