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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41581 ***
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+     AMAZING GRACE
+
+  [Illustration: I took up the first one]
+
+
+
+
+     AMAZING GRACE
+
+     _Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining_
+
+     By
+     KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER
+     _Author of_
+     THE ANNALS OF ANN, AT THE AGE OF EVE, ETC.
+
+     ILLUSTRATED BY
+     R. M. CROSBY
+
+     INDIANAPOLIS
+     THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+     PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+     COPYRIGHT 1914
+     THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+     PRESS OF
+     BRAUNWORTH & CO.
+     BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
+     BROOKLYN, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+     TO
+     LAURA NORVELL ELLIOTT
+     WHO HAS THE OLD LETTERS--
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     CHAPTER                             PAGE
+
+     I STRAINED RELATIONS                  1
+
+     II A GLIMPSE OF PROMISED LAND        26
+
+     III NIP AND TUCK                     40
+
+     IV THE QUALITY OF MERCY              59
+
+     V ET TU, BRUTE!                      82
+
+     VI FLAG DAY                          99
+
+     VII STRAWS POINT                    115
+
+     VIII LONGEST WAY HOME               128
+
+     IX MAITLAND TAIT                    141
+
+     X IN THE FIRELIGHT                  157
+
+     XI TWO MEN AND A MAID               168
+
+     XII AN ASSIGNMENT                   186
+
+     XIII JILTED!                        211
+
+     XIV THE SKIES FALL                  230
+
+     XV THE JOURNEY                      244
+
+     XVI LONDON                          278
+
+     XVII HOUSE OF A HUNDRED DREAMS      312
+
+
+
+
+AMAZING GRACE
+
+
+
+
+AMAZING GRACE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+STRAINED RELATIONS
+
+
+Some people, you will admit, can absorb experience in gentle little
+homeopathic doses, while others require it to be shot into them by
+hypodermic injections.
+
+Certainly my Dresden-china mother up to the time of my birth had been
+forced to take this bitter medicine in every form, yet she had never
+been known to profit by it. She would not, it is true, fly in the very
+face of Providence, but she _would_ nag at its coat tails.
+
+"You might as well name this child 'Praise-the-Lord,' and be done with
+it!" complained the rich Christie connection (which mother had always
+regarded as outlaws as well as in-laws), shaking its finger across the
+christening font into mother's boarding-school face on the day of my
+baptism. "Of course all the world knows you're _glad_ she's
+posthumous, but--"
+
+"But with Tom Christie only six weeks in spirit-land it isn't decent!"
+Cousin Pollie finished up individually.
+
+"Besides, good families don't name their children for abstract
+things," Aunt Hannah put in. "It--well, it simply isn't done."
+
+"A woman who never does anything that isn't done, never does anything
+worth doing," mother answered, through pretty pursed lips.
+
+"But, since you must be freakish, why not call her Prudence, or
+Patience--to keep Oldburgh from wagging its tongue in two?" Aunt
+Louella suggested.
+
+Oldburgh isn't the town's name, of course, but it's a descriptive
+alias. The place itself is, unfortunately, the worst overworked
+southern capital in fiction. It is one of the Old South's "types,"
+boasting far more social leaders than sky-scrapers--and you can't
+suffer a blow-out on _any_ pike near the city's limits that isn't
+flanked by a college campus.
+
+"Oldburgh knows how I feel," mother replied. "If this baby had been a
+boy I should have named him Theodore--gift of God--but since she's a
+girl, her name is _Grace_."
+
+She said it smoothly, I feel sure, for her Vere de Vere repose always
+jutted out like an iceberg into a troubled sea when there was a family
+squall going on.
+
+"_All_ right!" pronounced two aunts, simultaneously and acidly.
+
+"All _right_!" chorused another two, but Cousin Pollie hadn't given up
+the ship.
+
+"Just name a girl Faith, Hope or Natalie, if you want her to grow up
+freckle-faced and marry a ribbon clerk!" she threatened. "Grace is
+every bit as bad! It is indicative! It proclaims what you think of
+her--what you will expect of her--and just trust her to disappoint
+you!"
+
+Which is only too true! You may be named Fannie or Bess without your
+family having anything up its sleeve, but it's an entirely different
+matter when you're named for one of the prismatic virtues. You know
+then that you're expected to take an A. B. degree, mate with a
+millionaire and bring up your children by the Montessori method.
+
+"Bet Gwace 'ud ruther be ducked 'n cwistened, anyhow!" observed
+Guilford Blake, my five-year-old betrothed.--Not that we were Hindus
+and believed in infant marriage exactly! Not that! We were simply
+southerners, living in that portion of the South where the principal
+ambition in life is to "stay put"--where everything you get is
+inherited, tastes, mates and demijohns--where blood is thicker than
+axle-grease, and the dividing fence between your estate and the next
+is properly supposed to act as a seesaw basis for your amalgamated
+grandchildren.--Hence this early occasion for "Enter Guilford."
+
+"My daughter is not going to disappoint me," mother declared, as she
+motioned for Guilford's mother to come forward and keep him from
+profaning the water in the font with his little celluloid duck.
+
+"Don't be too sure," warned Cousin Pollie.
+
+"Well, I'll--I'll risk it!" mother fired back. "And if you must know
+the truth, I couldn't express my feelings of gratitude--yes, I said
+_grat_itude--in any other name than Grace. I have had a wonderful
+blessing lately, and I am going to give credit where it is due! It was
+nothing less than an act of heavenly grace that released me!"
+
+At this point the mercury dropped so suddenly that Cousin Pollie's
+breath became visible. Only six weeks before my father had died--of
+delirium tremens. It was a case of "the death wound on his gallant
+breast the last of _many_ scars," but the Christies had never given
+mother any sympathy on that account. He had done nothing worse, his
+family considered, than to get his feet tangled up in the line of
+least resistance. Nearly every southern man born with a silver spoon
+in his mouth discards it for a straw to drink mint julep with!
+
+"Calling her the whole of the doxology isn't going to get that
+Christie look off her!" father's family sniffed, their triumph
+answering her defiant outburst. "She is the living image of Uncle
+Lancelot!"
+
+You'll notice this about in-laws. If the baby is like their family
+their attitude is triumphant--if it's like anybody else on the face of
+the earth their manner is distinctly accusing.
+
+"'Lancelot!'" mother repeated scornfully. "If they had to name him for
+poetry why didn't they call him Lothario and be done with it!"
+
+The circle again stiffened, as if they had a spine in common.
+
+"Certainly it isn't becoming in you to train this child up with a
+disrespectful feeling toward Uncle Lancelot," some one reprimanded
+quickly, "since she gives every evidence of being very much like him
+in appearance."
+
+"My child like that notorious Lancelot Christie!" mother repeated,
+then burst into tears. "Why she's a Moore, I'll have you
+understand--from here--down to _here_!"
+
+She encompassed the space between the crown of my throbbing head and
+the soles of my kicking feet, but neither the tears nor the
+measurements melted Cousin Pollie.
+
+"A Moore! Bah! Why, you needn't expect that she'll turn out anything
+like you. A Lydia Languish mother always brings forth a caryatid!"
+
+"A what?" mother demanded frenziedly, then remembering that Cousin
+Pollie had just returned from Europe with guide-books full of strange
+but not necessarily insulting words, she backed down into her former
+assertion. "She's a Moore! She's the image of my revered father."
+
+"There's something in that, Pollie," admitted Aunt Louella, who was
+the weak-kneed one of the sisters. "Look at the poetic little brow
+and expression of spiritual intelligence!"
+
+"But what a combination!" Aunt Hannah pointed out. "As sure as you're
+a living woman this mouth and chin are like Uncle Lancelot!--Think of
+it--Jacob Moore and Lancelot Christie living together in the same
+skin!"
+
+"Why, they'll tear the child limb from limb!"
+
+This piece of sarcasm came from old great-great-aunt, Patricia
+Christie, who never took sides with anybody in family disputes,
+because she hated them one and all alike. She rose from her chair now
+and hobbled on her stick into the midst of the battle-field.
+
+"Let me see! Let me see!"
+
+"She's remarkably like Uncle Lancelot, aunty," Cousin Pollie declared
+with a superior air of finality.
+
+"She's a thousand times more like my father than I, myself, am," poor
+little mother avowed stanchly.
+
+"Then, all I've got to say is that it's a devilish bad combination!"
+Aunt Patricia threw out, making faces at them impartially.
+
+And to pursue the matter further, I may state that it was! All my life
+I have been divided between those ancient enemies--cut in two by a
+Solomon's sword, as it were, because no decision could be made as to
+which one really owned me.
+
+You believe in a "dual personality"? Well, they're mine! They quarrel
+within me! They dispute! They pull and wrangle and seesaw in as many
+different directions as a party of Cook tourists in Cairo--coming into
+the council-chamber of my conscience to decide everything I do, from
+the selection of a black-dotted veil to the emancipation of the
+sex--while I sit by as helpless as a bound-and-gagged spiritual
+medium.
+
+"They're not going to affect her future," mother said, but a little
+gasp of fear showed that if she'd been a Roman Catholic she would be
+crossing herself.
+
+"Of course not!" Aunt Patricia answered. "It's all written down,
+anyhow, in her little hand. Let me see the lines of her palm!"
+
+"Her feet's a heap cuter!" Guilford advised, but the old lady
+untwisted my tight little fist.
+
+"Ah! This tells the story!"
+
+"What?" mother asked, peering over eagerly.
+
+"Nothing--nothing, except that the youngster's a Christie, sure
+enough! All heart and no head."
+
+Mother started to cry again, but Aunt Patricia stopped her.
+
+"For the lord's sake hush--here comes the minister! Anyhow, if the
+child grows up beautiful she may survive it--but heaven help the woman
+who has a big heart and a big nose at the same time."
+
+Then, with this christening and bit of genealogical gossip by way of
+introduction, the next mile-stone in my career came one day when the
+twentieth century was in its wee small figures.
+
+"I hate Grandfather Moore and Uncle Lancelot Christie, both!" I
+confided to Aunt Patricia upon that occasion, having been sent to her
+room to make her a duty visit, as I was home for the holidays--a
+slim-legged sorority "pledge"--and had learned that talking about the
+Past, either for or against, was the only way to gain her attention.
+"I hate them both, I say! I wish you could be vaccinated against your
+ancestors. Are they in you to stay?"
+
+I put the question pertly, for she was not the kind to endure timidity
+nor hushed reverence from her family connections. She was a woman of
+great spirit herself, and she called forth spirit in other people. A
+visit with her was more like a bomb than a benediction.
+
+"Hate your ancestors?"
+
+At this time she was perching, hawk-eyed and claw-fingered, upon the
+edge of the grave, but she always liked and remembered me because I
+happened to be the only member of the family who didn't keep a black
+bonnet in readiness upon the wardrobe shelf.
+
+"I hate that grandfather and Uncle Lancelot affair! Don't you think
+it's a pity I couldn't have had a little say-so in that business?"
+
+"Yes--no--I don't know--ouch, my knee!" she snapped. "What a
+chatterbox you are, Grace! I've got rheumatism!"
+
+"But I've got 'hereditary tendencies,'" I persisted, "and chloroform
+liniment won't do any good with my ailment. I wish I need never hear
+my family history mentioned again."
+
+"Then, you shouldn't have chosen so notable a lineage," she exclaimed
+viciously. "Your Grandfather Moore, as you know, was a famous
+divine--"
+
+"I know--and Uncle Lancelot Christie was an equally famous infernal,"
+I said, for the sake of varying the story a little. I was so tired of
+it.
+
+She stared, arrested in her recital.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, if you call a minister a divine, why shouldn't you call a
+gambler an infernal?"
+
+"Just after the Civil War," she kept on, with the briefest pause left
+to show that she ignored my interruption, "your grandfather did all
+in his power--although he was no kin to me, I give him credit for
+that--he did all in his power to re-establish peace between the states
+by preaching and praying across the border."
+
+"And Uncle Lancelot accomplished the feat in half the time by flirting
+and marrying," I reminded her.
+
+She turned her face away, to hide a smile I knew, for she always
+concealed what was pleasant and displayed grimaces.
+
+"Well, I must admit that when Lancelot brought home his third Ohio
+heiress--"
+
+"The other two heiresses having died of neglect," I put in to show my
+learning.
+
+"--many southern aristocrats felt that if the Mason and Dixon line had
+not been wiped away it had at least been broken up into dots and
+dashes--like a telegraph code."
+
+I smiled conspicuously at her wit, then went back to my former stand.
+I was determined to be firm about it.
+
+"I don't care--I hate them both! Nagging old crisscross creatures!"
+
+She looked at me blankly for a moment, then:
+
+"Grace, you amaze me!" she said.
+
+But she mimicked mother's voice--mother's hurt, helpless,
+moral-suasion voice--as she said it, and we both burst out laughing.
+
+"But, honest Injun, aunty, if a person's got to carry around a
+heritage, why aren't you allowed to choose which one you prefer?" I
+asked; then, a sudden memory coming to me, I leaped to my feet and
+sprang across the room, my gym. shoes sounding in hospital thuds
+against the floor. I drew up to where three portraits hung on the
+opposite wall. They represented an admiral, an ambassador and an
+artist.
+
+"Why can't you adopt an ancestor, as you can a child?" I asked again,
+turning back to her.
+
+"Adopt an ancestor?"
+
+Her voice was trembling with excitement, which was not brought about
+by the annoyance of my chatter, and as I saw that she was nodding her
+head vigorously, I calmed down at once and regretted my precipitate
+action, for the doctor had said that any unusual exertion or change of
+routine would end her.
+
+"I only meant that I'd prefer these to grandfather and Uncle
+Lancelot," I explained soothingly, but her anxiety only increased.
+
+"Which one?" she demanded in a squeaky voice which fairly bubbled with
+a "bully-for-you" sound. "_Which one_, Grace?"
+
+"Him," I answered.
+
+"They're all hims!" she screamed impatiently.
+
+"I mean the artist."
+
+At this she tried to struggle to her feet, then settled back in
+exhaustion and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Come here! Come here quick!" she panted weakly.
+
+"Yes, 'um."
+
+She wiped away a tear, in great shame, for she was not a weeping
+woman.
+
+"Thank God!" she said angrily. "Thank God! That awful problem is
+settled at last! I knew I couldn't have a moment's peace a-dying until
+I had decided."
+
+"Decided what?" I gasped in dismay, for I was afraid from the look in
+her eyes that she was "seeing things." "Shall I call mother, or--some
+one?"
+
+"Don't you dare!" she challenged. "Don't you leave this room, miss.
+It's _you_ that I have business with!"
+
+"But I haven't done a thing!" I plead, as weak all of a sudden as she
+was.
+
+"It's not what you've done, but what you _are_," she exclaimed.
+"You're the only member of this family that has an idea which isn't
+framed and hung up! Now, listen! I'm going to leave you
+something--something very precious. Do you know about that artist over
+there--James Mackenzie Christie--our really famous ancestor--_my_
+great-uncle, who has been dead these sixty years, but will always be
+immortal? Do you know about him?"
+
+"Yes--I know!"
+
+"Well, I'm going to leave--those letters--those terrible love-letters
+to _you_!"
+
+I drew back, as if she'd pointed a pistol straight at me.
+
+"But they're the skeleton in the closet," I repeated, having heard it
+expressed that way all my life.
+
+She was angry for a moment, then she began laughing reminiscently and
+rocking herself backward and forward slowly in her chair. Her face was
+as detached and crazy as Ophelia's over her botany lesson, when she
+gets on your nerves with her: "There is pansies, that's for thoughts,"
+and so forth.
+
+"Yes, he left a skeleton--what was considered a skeleton in those
+days--Uncle James--our family's great man--but such a skeleton! People
+now would understand how wonderful it is--with its carved ivory
+bones--and golden joints and ruby eyes! _You little fool!_"
+
+"Why, I'm proud!" I denied, backing back, all a-tremble. "I'll love
+those letters, Aunt Patricia."
+
+"You'd better!"
+
+"I'll be sure to," I reiterated, but her face suddenly softened, and
+she caught up my hand in her yellow claw. She studied the palm for a
+moment.
+
+"You'll understand them," she sighed. "Poor little, heart-strong
+Christie!"
+
+And, whether her words were prophetic or delirious, she had told the
+truth. I have understood them.
+
+She gave them over into my keeping that day; and the next morning we
+found her settled back among her pillows, imagining that all her
+brothers and sisters were flying above the mantlepiece and that the
+Chinese vase was in danger. Another day passed, and on Sunday
+afternoon all the wardrobe shelves yielded up their black bonnets.
+
+I was not distressed, but I was lonely, with an ultra-Sabbathical
+repression over my spirits.
+
+"I believe I'll amuse myself by reading over those old letters," I
+suggested to mother, as time dragged wearily before the crowd began to
+gather. But she uttered a shriek, with an ultra-Sabbathical repression
+over its tone.
+
+"Grace, you amaze me!" she said.
+
+"She's really a most American child!" Cousin Pollie pronounced
+severely, having just finished doing the British Isles.
+
+After this it seemed that years and years and years of the twentieth
+century passed--all in a heap. I awoke one morning to find myself set
+in my ways. Most women, in the formation of their happiness, are
+willing to let nature take its course, then there are others who are
+not content with this, but demand a postgraduate course. I,
+unfortunately, belonged to this latter class. Growing up I was fairly
+normal, not idle enough at school to forecast a brilliant career in
+any of the arts, nor studious enough to deserve a prediction of
+mediocre plodding the rest of my life; but after school came the
+deluge. I was restless, shabby and _single_--no one of which mother
+could endure in her daughter.
+
+So I was a disappointment to her, while the rest of the tribe gloated.
+The name, Grace, with all appurtenances and emoluments accruing
+thereto, availed nothing. I was a failure.
+
+"My pet abomination begins with C," I chattered savagely to myself one
+afternoon in June, a suitable number of years after the
+above-mentioned christening, as I made my way to my own private desk
+in the office of _The Oldburgh Herald_, pondering family affairs in my
+heart as I went. "Of course this is at the bottom of the whole agony!
+They just can't bear to see me turn out to be a newspaper reporter
+instead of Mrs. Guilford Blake. And I hate everything that they love
+best--cities, clothes, clubs, culture, civilities, conventions,
+chiffons!"
+
+I was thinking of Cousin Pollie's comment when she first saw a feature
+story in the _Herald_ signed with my name.
+
+"Is the girl named Grace or Disgrace?" she had asked. "Not since
+America was a wilderness has the name of any Christie woman appeared
+outside the head-lines of the society column!"
+
+"The whole connection has raised its eyebrows," I laughed, when I met
+the owner and publisher of the paper down in his private office the
+next day. He was an old friend of the family, having fought beside my
+revered grandfather, and he had taken me into the family circle of the
+_Herald_ more out of sympathy than need.
+
+"That's all right! It's better to raise an eyebrow than to raise
+hell!" he laughed back.
+
+But on the June afternoon I have in mind, when I hurried up-town
+thinking over my pet abominations beginning with C, I was still a
+fairly civilized being. I lived at home with mother in the old house,
+for one thing, instead of in an independent apartment, after the
+fashion of emancipated women--and I still wore Guilford Blake's
+heirloom scarab ring.
+
+"Aren't your nerves a little on edge just now, Grace, from the scene
+this morning?" something kept whispering in my ears in an effort to
+tame my savagery. It was the soft virtuous personality of my inner
+consciousness, which, according to science, was Grandfather Moore.
+"You'll be all right, my dear, as soon as you make up your mind to do
+the square thing about this matter which is agitating you. And of
+course you are going to do the square thing. Money isn't all there
+is."
+
+"Now, that's all rot, parson!" Uncle Lancelot, in the other hemisphere
+of my brain, denied stoutly. "Don't listen to him, Grace! You can't go
+on living this crocheted life, and money will bring freedom."
+
+"He's a sophist, Grace," came convincingly across the wires.
+
+"He's a purist, Grace," flashed back.
+
+"Hush! Hush! What do two old Kilkenny cats of ancestors know about my
+problems?" I cried fiercely. Then, partly to drown out their clamor, I
+kept on: "My pet abominations in several syllables are--checkered
+career--contiguous choice--just because his mother and mine lived next
+door when they were girls--circumscribed capabilities--"
+
+"And the desire of your heart begins with H," Uncle Lancelot said
+triumphantly. "You want Happy Humanness--different brand and harder to
+get than Human Happiness--you want a House that is a Home, and above
+all else you want a Husband with a sense of Humor!"
+
+"But how could this letter affect all this?" I asked myself, stopping
+at the foot of the steps to take a message in rich vellum stationery
+from my bag. "How can so much be contained in one little envelope?"
+
+After all, this was what it said:
+
+      "My dear Miss Christie:
+
+      "While in Oldburgh recently on a visit to Mr. Clarence
+      Wiley"--he was the author of blood-and-thunder detective
+      stories who lived on Waverley Pike and raised pansies between
+      times--"I learned that you are in possession of the
+      love-letters written by the famous Lady Frances Webb to your
+      illustrious ancestor, James Mackenzie Christie. Mr. Wiley
+      himself was my informer, and being a friend of your family
+      was naturally able to give me much interesting information
+      about the remaining evidences of this widely-discussed
+      affair.
+
+      "No doubt the idea has occurred to you that the love-letters
+      of a celebrated English novelist to the first American artist
+      of his time would make valuable reading matter for the
+      public; and the suggestion of these letters being done into a
+      book has made such charming appeal to my mind that I resolved
+      to put the matter before you without delay.
+
+      "To be perfectly plain and direct, this inheritance of yours
+      can be made into a small fortune for you, since the material,
+      properly handled, would make one of the best-selling books of
+      the decade.
+
+      "If you are interested I shall be glad to hear from you, and
+      we can then take up at once the business details of the
+      transaction. Mr. Wiley spoke in such high praise of the
+      literary value of the letters that my enthusiasm has been
+      keenly aroused.
+
+      "With all good wishes, I am,
+      "Very sincerely yours,
+
+      "Julien J. Dutweiler."
+
+There was an embossed superscription on the envelope's flap which
+read: "Coburn-Colt Company, Publishers, Philadelphia." They were
+America's best-known promoters--the kind who could take six inches of
+advertising and a red-and-gold binding and make a mountain out of a
+mole-hill.
+
+"'Small fortune!'" I repeated. "Surely a great temptation _does_
+descend during a hungry spell--in real life, as well as in human
+documents."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A GLIMPSE OF PROMISED LAND
+
+
+"Hello, Grace!"
+
+I was passing the society editor in her den a moment later, and she
+called out a cheery greeting, although she didn't look up from her
+task. She was polishing her finger-nails as busily as if she lived for
+her hands--not by them.
+
+"Hello, Jane!"
+
+My very voice was out of alignment, however, as I spoke.
+
+"Are you going to let all the world see that you're not a headstrong
+woman?" something inside my pride asked angrily, but as if for
+corroboration of my conscientious whisperings, I looked in a
+shamefaced way at the lines of my palm.--The head-line _was_ weak and
+isolated--while the heart-line was as crisscrossed as a centipede
+track!
+
+But a heart-line has nothing at all to do with a city editor's
+desk--certainly not on a day when the crumpled balls of copy paper
+lying about his waste-basket look as if a woman had thrown them! Every
+one had missed its mark, and up and down the length of the room the
+typewriters were clicking falsetto notes. The files of papers on the
+table were in as much confusion as patterns for heathen petticoats at
+a missionary meeting.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+I had made my way to the desk of the sporting editor, who writes
+poetry and pretends he's so aerial that he never knows what day of the
+week it is, but when you pin him down he can tell you exactly what you
+want to know--from the color of the bride's going-away gown to the
+amount the bridegroom borrowed on his life insurance policy.
+
+"Search me!" he answered--as usual.
+
+"But there's something going on in this office!" I insisted.
+"Everybody looks as exercised as if the baby'd just swallowed a
+moth-ball."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+He looked around--then opened his eyes wider. "Oh, I believe I did
+hear 'em say--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That they can't get hold of that story about the Consolidated
+Traction Company."
+
+"--And damn those foreigners who come over here with their fool
+notions of dignity!" broke in the voice of the city editor--then
+stopped and blushed when he saw me within ear-shot, for it's a rule of
+the office that no one shall say "damn" without blushing, except the
+society editor and her assistants.
+
+"Who's the foreigner?" I asked, for the sake of warding off apologies.
+That's why men object so strongly to women mixing up with them in
+business life. It keeps them eternally apologizing.
+
+"Maitland Tait," he replied.
+
+"Maitland Tait? But that's not foreign. That's perfectly good
+English."
+
+"So's he!" the city editor snapped. "It's his confounded John
+Bullishness that's causing all the trouble."
+
+"But the traction company's no kin to us, is it?" the poet inquired
+crossly, for he was reporting a double-header in verse, and our
+chatter annoyed him.
+
+"Trouble will be kin to us--if somebody doesn't break in on Great
+Britain and make him cough up the story," the city editor warned over
+his shoulder. "I've already sent Clemons and Bolton and Reade."
+
+"--And it would mean a raise," the poet said, with a tender little
+smile. "A raise!"
+
+"Are you sure?" I asked, after the superior officer had disappeared.
+"I'd like--a raise."
+
+He looked at me contemptuously.
+
+"You don't know what the Consolidated Traction Company is, I suppose?"
+he asked.
+
+My business on the paper was reporting art meetings at the Carnegie
+Library and donation affairs at settlement homes because the owner and
+publisher drank out of the same canteen with my grandfather--and my
+fellows on the staff called me behind my back their ornamental member.
+
+"I do!" I bristled. "It's located at a greasy place, called
+Loomis--and it's something that makes the wheels go round."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"It certainly does in Oldburgh," he said. "It's the biggest thing we
+have, next to our own cotton mills and to think that they're
+threatening to take their doll-rags and move to Birmingham and leave
+us desolate!"
+
+"Where the iron would be nearer?" I asked, and he fairly beamed.
+
+_"Sure!_ Say, if you know that much about the company's affairs, why
+don't you try for this assignment yourself?"
+
+But I shook my head.
+
+"I've got relatives in Alabama--that's how I knew that iron grows on
+trees down there," I explained.
+
+"Well--that's what the trouble is about! Oldburgh can't tell whether
+this fellow, Maitland Tait, is going to pack the 'whole blarsted
+thing, don't you know, into his portmanteau' and tote it off--or buy
+up more ground here and enlarge the plant so that the company's
+grandchildren will call this place home."
+
+I turned away, feeling very indifferent. Oldburgh's problem was small
+compared with that letter in my hand-bag.
+
+"And he won't tell?" I asked, crossing over to my own desk and fitting
+the key in a slipshod fashion.
+
+"He seems to think that silence is the divine right of corporations.
+Nobody has been able to get a word out of him--nor even to see him."
+
+"Then--they don't know whether he's a human being or a Cockney?"
+
+He leaned across toward me, his elbow flattening two tiers of keys on
+his machine.
+
+"Say, the society's column's having fever and ague, too," he
+whispered. "The tale records that two of our 'acknowledged leaders'
+met him in Pittsburgh last winter--and they're at daggers' points now
+for the privilege of killing the fatted calf for him.--The one that
+does it first is IT, of course, and Jane Lassiter's scared to death!
+The calf is fat and the knife is sharp--but no report of the killing
+has come in."
+
+I laughed. It always makes me laugh when I think how hard some people
+work to get rid of their fatted calves, and how much harder others
+have to labor to acquire a veal cutlet.
+
+"Of course he was born in a cabin?" I turned back to the poet and
+asked, after a little while devoted to my own work, in which I learned
+that my mind wouldn't concentrate sufficiently for me to embroider my
+story of an embryo Michaelangelo the Carnegie Art Club had just
+discovered. "A cabin in the Cornish hills--don't you know?"
+
+The sporting editor pulled himself viciously away from his
+typewriter.
+
+"Ty Cobb--Dry sob--By mob--"
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon!"
+
+"Can't you see when a poem is about to die a-borning?" he asked
+furiously.
+
+"I am sorry--and perhaps I might help you a little," I suggested with
+becoming meekness. "How's this?--High job--Nigh rob--"
+
+I paused and he began writing hurriedly. Looking up again he threw me
+a smile.
+
+"Bully! Grace Christie, you're the light o' my life," he announced,
+"and--and of course that blamed Englishman was born in a cabin, if
+that's what you want to know."
+
+"It's not that I care, but--they always are," I explained. "They're
+born in a cabin, come across in the steerage amid terrific storms--Why
+is it that everybody's story of steerage crossing is stormy?--It seems
+to me it would be bad enough without that--then he sold papers for two
+years beneath the cart-wheels around the Battery, and by sheer
+strength of brain and brawn, has elevated himself into the proud
+privilege of being able to die in a 'carstle' when it suits his
+convenience."
+
+The sporting editor looked solicitous.
+
+"And now, if I were you, to keep from wearing myself out with talking,
+I'd get on the car and ride out to Glendale Park," he advised.
+
+But I shook my head.
+
+"I can't."
+
+"You really owe it to yourself," he insisted. "You are showing
+symptoms of a strange excitement to-day. You look as if you were
+talking to keep from doing something more annoying--if such a thing
+were possible."
+
+"I'm not going to weep--either from excitement or the effects of your
+rudeness," I returned, then wheeling around and facing my desk again I
+let my dual personality take up its song.
+
+     "I can and I can't;
+     I will and I won't;
+     I'll be damned if I do--
+     I'll be damned if I don't!"
+
+The story goes that a queen of Sweden composed this classic many years
+ago, but it's certainly the national song of every one who has two
+people living in his skin that are not on speaking terms with each
+other.
+
+Then, partly to keep from annoying the poet again, partly because it's
+the thing a woman always does, I took out the letter and read it over
+once more.
+
+"Coburn-Colt--Philadelphia!"
+
+The paper was a creamy satin, the embossing severely correct, the
+typing so neat and businesslike that I could scarcely believe the
+letter was meant for me when I looked at the outside only.
+
+"Wonder what 'Julien J. Dutweiler' would call a small fortune?" I
+muttered. "Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars!--Good heavens,
+then mother could have all the crepe meteor gowns she wanted without
+my ever--_ever_ having to marry Guilford Blake for her sake!"
+
+But as I sat there thinking, grandfather took up the cudgels
+bravely--even though the people most concerned were Christies and not
+Moores.
+
+"Think well, Grace! That 'best-selling' clause means not only Maine
+to California, but England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
+Berwick-on-the-Tweed!" he warned. "Everybody who had ever heard of
+either of these two unfortunate people will buy a copy of the book and
+read it to find out what really happened!"
+
+"But the letters are hers!" Uncle Lancelot reminded him. "If people
+don't want posterity to know the truth about them they ought to
+confine themselves to wireless communications."
+
+"And--what would your Aunt Patricia say?" grandfather kept on. "What
+would James Christie say? What would Lady Frances Webb say?"
+
+Thinking is certainly a bad habit--especially when your time belongs
+to somebody else and you are not being paid to think! Nevertheless, I
+sat there all the afternoon, puzzling my brain, when my brain was not
+supposed to wake up and rub its eyes at all inside the _Herald_
+office. I was being paid to come there and write airy little nothings
+for the _Herald's_ airy little readers, yet I added to my sin of
+indecision by absorbing time which wasn't mine.
+
+"Of course the possession of these letters in a way connects you with
+greatness," grandfather would say once in a while, in a lenient,
+musing sort of way. "But I trust that you are not going to let this
+fly to your head. Anyway, as the family has always known, your Uncle
+James Christie didn't leave his letters and papers to his great-niece;
+he merely _left_ them! True, she was very close to him in his last
+days and he had always loved and trusted her--"
+
+"But there's a difference between trusting a woman and trusting her
+_with your desk keys_!" Uncle Lancelot interrupted. "Uncle James ought
+to have known a thing or two about women by that time!"
+
+"Yet we must realize that the value of the possession was
+considerable, even in those days," grandfather argued gently. "We must
+not blame his great-niece for what she did. James Mackenzie Christie
+had caught the whole fashionable world on the tip of his camel's-hair
+brush and pinioned it to canvases which were destined to get
+double-starred notices in guide-books for many a year to come, and the
+correspondence of kings and queens, lords and ladies made a mighty
+appeal to the young girl's mind."
+
+"Then, that's a sure sign they'd be popular once again," said Uncle
+Lancelot. "Of course there's a degree of family pride to be
+considered, but that shouldn't make much difference. The Christies
+have always had pride to spare--now's the time to let some of it
+slide!"
+
+Thus, after hours of time and miles of circling tentatively around the
+battlements of Colmere Abbey--the beautiful old place which had been
+the home of Lady Frances Webb--I was called back with a stern
+suddenness to my place in the _Herald_ office.
+
+"Can _you_ think of anything else?" the poet's voice begged humbly.
+"I'm trying to match up just plain 'Ty' this time--but I'm dry."
+
+I turned to him forgivingly. I welcomed any diversion.
+
+"Rye, lie, die, sky,--why, what's the matter with your think tank?" I
+asked him. "They swarm!"
+
+But before he could thank me, or apologize, the voice of the city
+editor was in the doorway. He himself followed his rasping tones, and
+as he came in he looked backward over his shoulder at a forlorn
+dejected face outside. He looked at his watch viciously, then snapped
+the case as if it were responsible for his spleen.
+
+"Get to work then on something else," he growled. "There's no use
+spending car fare again to Loomis to-day that I can see! He's an
+Englishman--and of course he kisses a teacup at this time of the
+afternoon."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NIP AND TUCK
+
+
+When I reached home late that afternoon I was in that state of
+spring-time restlessness which clamors for immediate activity--when
+the home-keeping instinct tries to make you believe that you'll be
+content if you spend a little money for garden seeds--but a reckless
+demon of extravagance notifies you that nothing short of salary
+sacrificed for railroad fare is going to avail.
+
+Grandfather and Uncle Lancelot, of course, came in with their
+gratuitous advice, the one suggesting nasturtium beds with geraniums
+along the borders--the other slyly whispering that a boat trip from
+Savannah to Boston was no more than I deserved.
+
+Then, reaching home in this frame of mind, I was confronted with two
+very perplexing and unusual conditions. _Mignon_ was being played with
+great violence in the front parlor--and all over the house was the
+scent of burnt yarn.
+
+"What's up?" I demanded of mother, as she met me at the door--dressed
+in blue. "Everything seems mysterious and topsyturvy to-day! I believe
+if I were to go out to the cemetery I'd find the tombstones nodding
+and whispering to one another."
+
+"Come in here!" she begged in a Santa Claus voice.
+
+I went into the parlor, then gave a little shriek.
+
+"Mother!"
+
+I have neglected to state, earlier in the narrative, that the one
+desire of my heart which doesn't begin with H was a player-piano! It
+was there in the parlor, at that moment, shining, and singing its
+wordless song about the citron-flower land.
+
+"It's the very one we've been _watching_ through the windows up-town,"
+she said in a delighted whisper.
+
+"But did you get it as a prize?" I inquired, walking into the dusky
+room and shaking hands with my betrothed, who rose from the instrument
+and made way for me to take possession. "How came it here?"
+
+"I had it sent out--on--on approval," she elucidated. That is, her
+words took the form of an explanation, but her voice was as appealing
+as a Salvation Army dinner-bell, just before Christmas.
+
+"On approval? But why, please?"
+
+"Because I want you to get used to having the things you want,
+darling!"
+
+Then, to keep from laughing--or crying--I ran toward the door.
+
+"What _is_ that burning?" I asked, sniffing suspiciously.
+
+It was a vaguely familiar scent--scorching dress-goods--and suggestive
+of the awful feeling which comes to you when you've stood too close to
+the fire in your best coat-suit--or the comfortable sensation on a
+cold night, when you're preparing to wrap up your feet in a red-hot
+flannel petticoat.
+
+"What is it? Tell the truth, mother!"
+
+But she wouldn't.
+
+"It's your brown tweed skirt, Grace," Guilford finally explained, as
+my eyes begged the secret of them both. They frequently had secrets
+from me.
+
+"My brown tweed skirt?"
+
+"It was as baggy at the knees as if you'd done nothing all winter but
+_pray_ in it!" mother whimpered in a frightened voice. "I've--I've
+burned it up!"
+
+For a moment I was silent.
+
+"But what shall I tramp in?" I finally asked severely. "What can I
+walk out the Waverley Pike in?"
+
+Then mother took fresh courage.
+
+"You're not going to walk!" she answered triumphantly. "You're going
+to ride--in your very--own--electric--coupé! Here's the catalogue."
+
+She scrambled about for a book on a table near at hand--and I began to
+see daylight.
+
+"Oh, a player-piano, and an electric coupé--all in one day! I see! My
+fairy godmother--who was old Aunt Patricia, and she looked exactly
+like one--has turned the pumpkin into a gold coach! You two plotters
+have been putting your heads together to have me get rich quick and
+gracefully!"
+
+"We understand that this stroke of fortune is going to make a great
+change in your life, Grace," Guilford said gravely. He was always
+grave--and old. The only way you could tell his demeanor from that of
+a septuagenarian was that he didn't drag his feet as he walked.
+
+"'Stroke of fortune?'" I repeated.
+
+"The Coburn--" mother began.
+
+"Colt--" he re-enforced, then they both hesitated, and looked at me
+meaningly.
+
+I gave a hysterical laugh.
+
+"You and mother have counted your Coburn-Colts before they were
+hatched!" I exclaimed wickedly, sitting down and looking over the
+music rolls. I did want that player-piano tremendously--although I had
+about as much use for an electric coupé, under my present conditions
+in life, as I had for a perambulator.
+
+"Grace, you're--indelicate!" mother said, her voice trembling.
+"Guilford's a man!"
+
+"A man's a man--especially a Kentuckian!" I answered. "You're not
+shocked at my mention of colts and--and things, are you, Guilford?"
+
+My betrothed sat down and lifted from the bridge of his nose that
+badge of civilization--a pair of rimless glasses. He polished them
+with a dazzling handkerchief, then replaced the handkerchief into the
+pocket of the most faultless coat ever seen. He smoothed his already
+well-disciplined hair, and brushed away a speck of dust from the toe
+of his shoe. From head to foot he fairly bristled with signs of civic
+improvement.
+
+"I am shocked at your reception of your mother's kind thoughtfulness,"
+he said.
+
+He waited a little while before saying it, for hesitation was his way
+of showing disapproval. Yet you must not get the impression from this
+that Guilford was a bad sort! Why, no woman could ride in an elevator
+with him for half a minute without realizing that he was the
+flower-of-chivalry sort of man! He always had a little way of standing
+back from a woman, as if she were too sacred to be approached, and in
+her presence he had a habit of holding his hat clasped firmly against
+the buttons of his coat. You can forgive a good deal in a man if he
+keeps his hat off all the time he's talking to you!
+
+"'Shocked?'" I repeated.
+
+"Your mother always plans for your happiness, Grace."
+
+"Of course! Don't you suppose I know that?" I immediately asked in an
+injured tone. It is always safe to assume an injured air when you're
+arguing with a man, for it gives him quite as much pleasure to comfort
+you as it does to hurt you.
+
+"I didn't--mean anything!" he hastened to assure me.
+
+"Guilford merely jumped at the chance of your freeing yourself of this
+newspaper slavery," mother interceded. "You know what a humiliation it
+is to him--just as it is to me and to every member of the--Christie
+family."
+
+My betrothed nodded so violently in acquiescence that his glasses flew
+off in space.
+
+"You know that I am a Kentuckian in my way of regarding women, Grace,"
+he plead. "I can't bear to see them step down from the pedestal that
+nature ordained for them!"
+
+I turned and looked him over--from the crown of his intensely
+aristocratic fair head to the tip of his aristocratic slim foot.
+
+"A Kentuckian?"
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+"A Kentuckian?" I repeated reminiscently. "Why, Guilford Blake, you
+ought to be olive-skinned--and black-eyed--and your shoes ought to
+turn up at the toes--and your head ought to be covered by a red
+fez--and you ought to sit smoking through a water-bottle of an
+evening, in front of your--your--"
+
+"Grace!" stormed mother, rising suddenly to her feet. "I will not have
+you say such things!"
+
+"What things?" I asked, drawing back in hurt surprise.
+
+"H-harems!" she uttered in a blushing whisper, but Guilford caught the
+word and squared his shoulders importantly.
+
+"But, I say, Grace," he interrupted, his face showing that mixture of
+anger and pleased vanity which a man always shows when you tell him
+that he's a dangerous tyrant, or a bold Don Juan--or both. "You don't
+think I'm a Turk--do you?"
+
+"I do."
+
+He sighed wistfully.
+
+"If I were," he said, shaking his head, "I'd have caught you--and
+_veiled_ you--long before this."
+
+I looked at him intently.
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"That I shouldn't have let you delay our marriage this way! Why should
+you, pray, when my financial affairs have changed so in the last
+year?"
+
+I rose from my place beside the new piano, breaking gently into his
+plea.
+
+"It isn't that!" I attempted to explain, but my voice failed drearily.
+"You ought to know that--finances hadn't anything to do with it. I
+haven't kept from marrying you all these years because we were both so
+poor--then, last year when you inherited your money--I didn't keep
+from marrying you because you were so rich!"
+
+"Then, what is it?" he asked gravely, and mother looked on as eagerly
+for my answer as he did. This is one advantage about a life-long
+betrothal. It gets to be a family institution. Or is that a
+disadvantage?
+
+"I--don't know," I confessed, settling back weakly.
+
+"I don't think you do!" mother observed with considerable dryness.
+
+"Well, this business of your getting to be a famous compiler of
+literature may help you get your bearings," Guilford kept on, after an
+awkward little pause. "You have always said that you wished to
+exercise your own wings a little before we married, and I have given
+in to you--although I don't know that it's right to humor a woman in
+these days and times. Really, I don't know that it is."
+
+"Oh, you don't?"
+
+"No--I don't. But we're not discussing that now, Grace! What I'm
+trying to get at is that this offer means a good deal to you. Of
+course, it is only the beginning of your career--for these fellows
+will think up other things for you to do--and it will give you a way
+of earning money that won't take you up a flight of dirty office
+stairs every day. Understand, I mean for just a short while--as long
+as you insist upon earning your own living."
+
+"And the honor!" mother added. "You could have your pictures in good
+magazines!"
+
+I stifled a yawn, for, to tell the truth, the conflict had made me
+nervous and weary.
+
+"At all events, I must decide!" I exclaimed, starting again to my
+feet. "Somehow, the office atmosphere isn't exactly conducive to deep
+thought--and I've had so little time since morning to get away by
+myself and thresh matters out."
+
+Mother looked at me incredulously.
+
+"Will you please tell me just what you mean, Grace?" she asked.
+
+"I mean that I must get away--I've imagined that I ought to take some
+serious thought, weigh the matter well, so to speak--before I write to
+the Coburn-Colt Publishing Company. In other words, I have to decide."
+
+"Decide?" mother repeated, her face filled with piteous amazement.
+"_Decide?_"
+
+"Decide?" Guilford said, taking up the strain complainingly.
+
+"If you'll excuse me!" I answered, starting toward the door, then
+turning with an effort at nonchalance, for their sakes, to wave them a
+little adieu. "Suppose you keep on playing 'Knowest thou the land
+where the citron-flower blooms,' Guilford--for I am filled with
+_wanderlust_ right now, and this music will help out Uncle Lancelot's
+presentation of the matter considerably!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I'm going to listen to the voices," I explained. "All day long
+grandfather and Uncle Lancelot have been busy making the fur fly in my
+conscience!"
+
+Mother darted across the room and caught my hand.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you have scruples--_scruples_--Grace
+Christie?"
+
+She couldn't have hated smallpox worse--in me.
+
+"Honest Injun, I don't know!" I admitted. "Of course, it does seem
+absurd to ponder over what a family row might be raised in the
+Seventh Circle of Nirvana by the publication of these old
+love-letters, but--"
+
+"James Mackenzie Christie died in 1849," she declared vehemently.
+"Absurd! It is _insane_!"
+
+"That's what the Uncle Lancelot part of my intelligence keeps telling
+me," I laughed. "But--good heavens! you just ought to hear the
+grandfather argument."
+
+"What does he--what does that silly _Salem_ conscience of yours say
+against the publication of the letters?" she asked grudgingly.
+
+I sat down again.
+
+"Shall I tell you?" I began good-naturedly, for I saw that mother was
+at the melting point--melting into tears, however, not assent.
+"Whenever I want to do anything I'm not exactly _sure_ of, these two
+provoking old gentlemen come into the room--the council-chamber of my
+heart--and begin their post-mortem warfare. Grandfather is
+white-bearded and serene, while Uncle Lancelot looks exactly as an
+Italian tenor _ought_ to look--and never does."
+
+"And you look exactly like him," mother snapped viciously. "Nothing
+about you resembles your grandfather except your brow and eyes."
+
+"I know that," I answered resignedly. "Hasn't some one said that the
+upper part of my face is as lofty as a Byronic thought--and the lower
+as devilish as a Byronic _deed_?"
+
+Neither of them smiled, but Guilford stirred a little.
+
+"Go on with your argument, Grace," he urged patiently. He was always
+patient.
+
+"I'm going!" I answered. "All day grandfather has been telling me what
+I already know--that the Coburn-Colt Company doesn't want those
+letters of James Christie's because they are literary, or beautiful,
+or historical, but simply and solely because they are _bad_! They'll
+make a good-seller because they're the thing the public demands right
+now. Lady Frances Webb was a _married_ woman!"
+
+"Nonsense," mother interrupted, with a blush. "The public doesn't
+demand bad things! There is merely a craze for intimate, biographical
+matter--told in the first person."
+
+"I know," I admitted humbly. "This is what distinguishes a human from
+an inhuman document."
+
+"The craze demands a simple straightforward narrative--" Guilford
+began, then hesitated.
+
+"In literature this is the period of the great '_I Am_,'" I broke in.
+"People want the secrets of a writer's soul, rather than the tricks of
+his vocabulary, I know."
+
+"Well, good lord--you wouldn't be giving the twentieth century any
+more of these people's souls than they themselves gave to the early
+nineteenth," he argued scornfully. "She put his portrait into every
+book she ever wrote--and he annexed her face in the figure of every
+saint--and sinner--he painted!"
+
+"Well, that was because they couldn't _see_ any other faces," I
+defended.
+
+"Bosh!"
+
+"But Lady Frances Webb was a good woman," mother insisted weakly.
+"She had pre-Victorian ideas! She sent her lover across seas, because
+she felt that she must! Why, the publication of these letters would do
+_good_, not harm."
+
+"They would shame the present-day idea of 'affinity' right," said
+Guilford.
+
+I nodded my head, for this was the same theory that Uncle Lancelot had
+been whispering in my ears since the postman blew his whistle that
+morning. And yet--
+
+"Maybe you two--don't exactly understand the import of those letters
+as I do," I suggested, sorry and ashamed before the gaze of their
+practical eyes. "But to me they mean so much! I have always _loved_
+James Christie and--his Unattainable. I can feel for them, and--"
+
+"And you mean to say that you are going to give way to an absurd fancy
+now--a ridiculous, far-fetched, namby-pamby, quixotic fancy?" mother
+asked, in a tone of horror.
+
+"I--I'm--afraid so!" I stammered.
+
+"And miss this chance--for all the things you want most? The very
+things you're toiling day and night to get?"
+
+"And put off the prospect of our marriage?" Guilford demanded. "I had
+hoped that this business transaction would satisfy the unaccountable
+desire you seem to have for independence--that after you had circled
+about a little in the realm of emancipated women and their strained
+notions of what constitutes freedom, you'd see the absurdity of it all
+and--come to me."
+
+"I am awfully sorry, Guilford," I answered, dropping my eyes, for I
+knew that "freedom," "independence" and "emancipation" had nothing on
+earth to do with my delayed marriage--and I knew that I was doing
+wrong not to say so. "I am _awfully_ sorry to disappoint you."
+
+"Then you have decided finally?" mother asked in a suspicious voice.
+
+"I believe I have," I answered. "Oh, please don't look at me that
+way--and please don't cry! I can't help it!"
+
+"It is preposterous," Guilford said shortly.
+
+"But you don't--understand!" I cried, turning to him pleadingly. "You
+don't know what it is to feel as I feel about those lovers--those
+people who had no happiness in this world--and are haunted and
+tormented by curiosity in their very graves!--don't you suppose I want
+to do the thing you and mother want me to do? Of course, I do! I want
+this--this new piano--and another brown tweed skirt that doesn't bag
+at the knees--and I want--so many things!"
+
+"Then why in the name of----" he began.
+
+"Because I _won't_!" I told him flatly. "Call it conscience--fancy, or
+what you will!--I have those two people in my power--their secrets are
+right here in my hands! And I'm not going to _give them away_!"
+
+"Grace, you a-maze me!" mother sobbed.
+
+But Guilford rose tranquilly and reached for his hat.
+
+"Any woman who has a conscience like that ought to cauterize it--with
+a curling-iron--and get rid of it," he observed dryly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE QUALITY OF MERCY
+
+
+That night I went to my bedroom and pulled open the top of an
+old-fashioned desk standing in the corner. Except for this desk there
+was not another unnecessary piece of furniture in the apartment, for I
+like a cell-like place to sleep. I consider that fresh air and a clear
+conscience ought to be the chief adjuncts--for a cluttered-up,
+luxurious bedroom always reminds me of Camille--and tuberculosis.
+
+"And all this fuss about a few little faded wisps of paper!"
+
+I sat down before the desk, after I had loosed my hair--which is that
+very, very black, that is the Hibernian accompaniment to blue
+eyes--and had slipped my slippers on.
+
+"You have put me to considerable trouble to-day, Lady Frances."
+
+Her portrait was hanging there--a small, cabinet-sized picture, in a
+battered gold frame. Her lover had succeeded in making her face on
+canvas very beautiful--with the exaggerated beauty of eyes and mouth
+which all portraits of that period show. Her brow was fine and
+thoughtful, irradiating the face with intelligence, yet I never looked
+at her without having a feeling that I was infinitely wiser than she.
+
+Isn't it queer that we have this feeling of superiority over the
+people in old portraits--just because they are dead and we are living?
+We open an ancient book of engravings, and say: "Poor little Mary
+Shelley! Simple little Jane Austen! Naughty little Nell
+Gwynne!"--There's only one pictured lady of my acquaintance who smiles
+down my latter-day wisdom as being a futile upstart thing. I can't
+pity her! Oh, no! Nor endure her either, for she's Mona Lisa!
+
+I had always had this maternal protectiveness in my attitude toward
+Lady Frances Webb, and to-night it was so keen that I could have
+tucked her in bed and told her fairy tales to soothe away the
+trembling fright she must have endured all that day. Instead of doing
+this, however, I satisfied myself with reading some of the letters
+over again. Isn't it a pity that above every writing-desk devoted to
+inter-sex correspondence there is not a framed warning: "Beyond
+Platonic Friendship Lies--Alimony!"
+
+Anyway, Lady Frances and James Christie tried the medium ground for a
+while. Over in a large pigeonhole, far away from the rest, was a
+packet of letters tied with a strong twine. They were the uninteresting
+ones, because they were _muzzled_. The handwriting was the same as
+that of the others--dainty, last-century chirography, as delicate and
+curling as a baby's pink fingers--but I never read them, for I don't
+care for muzzled things. Gossip about Lady Jersey--Marlborough
+House--the cold-blooded ire of William Lamb--all this held but little
+charm--compared with the other.
+
+"Not you--not to-night," I decided, pushing them aside quickly. "I've
+got to have good pay for my pains of this day!"
+
+I sought another compartment, where a batch huddled together--a
+carefully selected batch. They were as many, and as clinging in their
+contact with one another, as early kisses. I took up the first one.
+
+"Dear Big Man"--it began.
+
+"It has been weeks and weeks now since I have seen you! If it were not
+that you lived in that terrible London and I in this lonely country, I
+should be too proud to remind you of the time, for I should expect you
+to be the one to complain.
+
+"Surely it is because of this that I now hate London so! It keeps this
+knowledge of separation--this sense of dreary waiting--from burning
+into your heart, as it does into mine!
+
+"There you are kept too busy to think--but here I can do nothing
+else!--Or perhaps I am quite wrong, and it is not a matter of London
+and Lancashire, after all, but the more primal one of your being a
+man, and my being a woman! _Do_ I love the more? I wonder? And yet, I
+don't think that I care much! I am willing to love more abjectly than
+any woman ever loved before--if you care for me just a little in
+return."
+
+(I always felt _very_ wise and maternal at this point.)
+
+"You were an awful goose, Lady Frances!" I said. "This is a mistake
+that _I_ have never made!"
+
+"Still, I am tormented by thoughts of you in London," the letter kept
+on. "I think of you--there--as a lion. It presses down upon me, this
+recollection that you are James Christie, the great artist, and the
+only release from the torture is when I go alone into the library and
+sit down before the fire. The two chairs are there--those two that
+were there that day--and then I can forget about the lion.
+'Jim--Jim!' I whisper--'just my _lover_!'
+
+"Then your face comes--it has to come, or I could never be good! Your
+rugged face that speaks of great forests which have been your
+home--the fierce young freedom which has nurtured you--and the
+glorious uplift you have achieved above all that is small and weak!
+
+"You have asked me a thousand times why I love you, but I have never
+known what to say--because I love you for so many things--until now,
+when I have nothing but memories--and the ever-present sight of your
+absent face. And now I don't know why I love you, but I know what I
+love best about you. Shall I tell you--though of course you know
+already! It is not your talent--wonderful as it is--for there have
+been other artists; nor your terrible charm with its power to lure
+women away from duty--for England is full of fascinating men; nor your
+sweetness--and I think the first time I saw you smile I sounded the
+depths of this--it is not any of these, dear heart! Not any of these!
+I love best the strength of you which you use to control the
+charm--the untamed force of your personality which makes your talent
+seem just an incident--and the big, _big_ virility of you!
+
+"Do you think for a moment that you look like an artist?
+Half-civilized you? Why, you are a woodsman, dear love--but not a
+hunter! You could never kill living things for the joy of seeing them
+die!
+
+"You look as if you had spent all your life in the woods, doing hard
+tasks patiently--a woodcutter, or a charcoal burner! Ah, a charcoal
+burner! A man who has had to grip life with bared hands and wrest his
+bread from grudging circumstances. This is what you are, Jim, to my
+heart's eyes. You are a primal creature--simple-souled, great-bodied,
+and your mind is given over to naked truth.
+
+"But all the time you are a famous artist--and London's idol! Your
+studio in St. James's Street is the lounging-place for curled
+darlings! The hardest task that your hands perform is over the ugly
+features of a fat duchess!--How can you, Jim? Why don't you come away?
+You are a man first, an artist afterward--and it is the man that I
+love!
+
+"And, Jim, _do_ you know how much I love you? Do you know how your
+face leads me on?--It is your face I must have now, darling. _Portrait
+of the Artist, by Himself_, is a title I have often smiled over,
+wondering how a man could be induced to paint his own features, but
+now I know! It is always because some woman has so clamorously
+demanded it--a woman who loved him! What else can so entirely
+satisfy--and when will you send it to me?"
+
+When I came to the end I was sorry, for I had such a way of getting en
+rapport with her sentiments that I eyed the next express wagon I
+passed, eagerly, to see if it could possibly be bringing the _Portrait
+of the Artist, by Himself_!
+
+And on this occasion I reread a portion of the letter.
+
+"Your face--your rugged face--or I could never be good!"
+
+The picture of a rugged face was haunting me, and after a moment a
+sudden thought came to me.
+
+"Why, that's what _I_ should like!"
+
+I had the grace to feel ashamed, of course, especially as I recalled
+how mother and Guilford had tormented me that afternoon to know why I
+wouldn't marry--and I found the answer in this sudden discovery.
+Still, that didn't keep me from pursuing the subject.
+
+"A rugged face--great forests--fierce freedom--glorious uplift!--Oh,
+Man! Man! Where are you--and where is your great forest?--That's
+exactly what I want!"
+
+I turned back to the desk, after a while, and still allowing my mind
+to circle away from the business at hand somewhat, I drew out another
+letter. It was short--and troubled. The dear, little, lady-like
+writing ran off at a tangent.
+
+"Yes, I have seen the picture! Next to Murillo's _Betrothal of St.
+Catherine_,--the face is the loveliest thing I have ever seen on
+canvas.
+
+"Of course it is idealized--yet so absurdly _like_ that they tell me
+all Mayfair is staring! This talk--this stirring-up of what has been
+sleeping--will make it a thousand times harder for us ever to see each
+other, yet I am glad you did it!
+
+"They are saying--Mayfair--that your 'making a pageant of a bleeding
+heart' is as indelicate as Caroline Lamb's _Glenarvon_! If people are
+going to be in love wickedly at least they ought not to write books
+about it--nor paint pictures of it!... Oh, beloved, let us pray that
+we may always keep bitterness out of our portraits of each other!"
+
+The letter burned my fingers, for the pen marks were quick and
+jagged--like electric sparks--and I felt the pain that had sent them
+out; so I turned back to others of the batch--others that I knew
+almost by heart, yet always found something new in.
+
+"I don't know that it's such an enviable state, after all, this being
+in love," I mused. "It seems to me it consists of--quite a mixture!
+But, of course, it will take Heaven itself to solve the problem of a
+thornless rose!"
+
+I ran my finger over the edges of the improvised envelopes, heavily
+sealed and bearing complicated foreign stamping. There were dozens of
+them--many only the common garden variety of love-letters, long-drawn
+out, confidential, reminiscent or hopeful, as the case might be--and a
+few which sounded at times almost light-hearted.
+
+"When I say that I think of you all the time I am not so original as
+my critics give me credit for being, dear heart," she wrote in one.
+"Nothing else in the annals of love-making is so trite as this, but
+when I explain how persistently your image is before me, how
+intricately woven with every thought of the future--how inseparably
+linked with every vision of happiness--you will know that mine is no
+light nor passing attachment.
+
+"If I give you one foolish example of this will it bore you? I've
+written you before, I believe, that this spring I have been outdoors
+all the time--riding or driving about the country, because the mad
+restlessness of thinking about you drives me out. In this house, in
+these gardens, _you_ are so constantly present that I can do nothing
+but remember--then I go away, hoping to forget--and what happens?--I
+go into a castle--a place where you have never been, perhaps--and
+before I can begin talking with any one, or think of any sensible
+thing to say the thought comes to me: 'How well the figure of my lover
+would fit in with all this grandeur! How naturally and easily he would
+swing through these great rooms!'
+
+"Then, early some mornings I ride into the village--past cottages that
+look so humble and happy that I feel my heart stifling with longing to
+possess one of them--and _you_! 'How happy I could be living there,' I
+think, 'but--how tremendously tall and stalwart Jim would look coming
+in through this low doorway, as I called him to supper!'
+
+"Then I spend hours and hours planning the real home I want us to
+have, dear love of mine. I don't care much whether it is a castle or a
+cottage, just so it has you in it--and all around it must be the sight
+of distant hills! These for _your_ artist's soul!
+
+"You and a hundred distant hills, Jim! Then days--and nights, and
+nights and days--and summers and winters of joy!
+
+"Some time this will come to pass--it must--and we shall call it
+heaven! And we shall rejoice that we were strong to keep the faith
+through the days of trial and longing so that we could reach it and be
+worthy of it.
+
+"And, when this shall come, I can never know fear again--fear that
+London will make you cease to love me--that some other woman may gain
+possession of you--that the artist in you may crush out and starve the
+lover. There will be but one thought of fear then, and that will be
+that you may die and leave me, but this will not be hopeless, for I
+too can die!
+
+"Oh, do you remember that first day--that wonderful, anguished,
+bewildering first day--then that night when I kissed you? When I think
+of sickening fear I always remember that time. Two weeks before the
+London newspapers had chronicled your visit to Colmere Abbey 'to paint
+the portrait of the novelist, Lady Frances Webb,' but you were
+deceiving the newspapers, for you had lost your power to paint!
+
+"It was quite early in the morning of that eighth or ninth day of
+blessed dalliance, when the canvas still showed itself accusingly
+bare, that you threw down your brush and declared you were going back
+to London, 'because--because Colmere Abbey had robbed your hands of
+their power.'
+
+"And what did I do when you told me this terrible thing? I said,
+wickedly and without shame, 'Would you go away and leave me all alone
+in idleness?'
+
+"'Idleness?' you repeated, pretending not to understand.
+
+"'Neither can I do any work--since you came to Colmere!'
+
+"You stood quite still beside the easel for a breathless moment, then:
+
+"'Do _I_--keep _you_--from working?' you asked.
+
+"Your face tried to look sorry and amazed, but the triumph showed
+through and glorified your dear eyes.
+
+"'Then certainly I must go away--at once--to-day,' you kept on, but
+you came straight across the room and placed your hands upon my
+shoulders. 'Just this once--just one time, sweetheart, then I'll go
+straight away and never see you again!'
+
+"And that night, true to your promise, you did go away, but I followed
+you to the gates--and when I saw horses ready saddled there to take
+you away from me, the high resolves I had made came fluttering to
+earth. I put my hands up to your face and kissed you. During all the
+giddy joy of that day's confessional I had kept from doing this,
+but--not when I saw you leaving!
+
+"'I wish that this kiss could mark your cheek--and let all the world
+know that you are mine,' I whispered, shivering against you in that
+first madness of fear over losing you.
+
+"'You've made a mark!' you laughed fondly. 'A mark that I shall carry
+all the days of my life.'
+
+"But I was still fearful.
+
+"'You may know that you are marked, but how will the world--how will
+other women know that you are mine?'
+
+"'The world shall know it,' you declared, brushing back my hair and
+kissing me again. 'There will never be another woman in my life--and
+some day, when I can paint your portrait, it will certainly know then.
+To me you are so very beautiful.'"
+
+Another letter was just a note, addressed to London, and evidently
+written in great haste to catch a delayed post-bag.
+
+"Oh, my dear, that orange tree of ours--that you and I planted
+together that day--is putting out tiny blossoms! Do you suppose it is
+a happy omen, Jim? How I have worked with it through this dreary
+winter--and now to think that it is blooming!
+
+"Your dear hands have touched it! It is a living thing which can
+receive my caresses and repay their tenderness by growing tall and
+strong and beautiful--like you. Do you wonder that I love it?
+
+"When you come again I shall take you out to see it, and we shall walk
+softly up to the shelf where it stands--so carefully, to keep from
+jarring a single leaf--and we shall separate the branches, still very
+carefully, to look down at the little new stems. And, Jim--Jim--the
+blossoms will be like starry young eyes looking up at us! The pink,
+faintly-showing glow will be as delicate as a tiny cheek, when sleep
+has flushed it--and the petals will close over our fingers with all
+the clinging softness of a helpless little clutch!
+
+"We will be very happy for a little while, but, because I am savage
+and resentful over our delayed joy, I shall cry on your shoulder and
+say it's cruel--_cruel_--that you and I have only this plant to love
+together."
+
+After this came two or three more, like it, then I reached for one
+which brought a misty wetness to my eyes. The lover was gone--quite
+gone--and the woman had seemed to feel that they would meet no more.
+
+... "At other times I remember all the months which have gone by since
+then--and the miles of dark water which roll between your land and
+mine. God pity the woman who has a lover across the sea!
+
+"_Am_ I sorry that I sent you away? You ask me this--yet how can you!
+How many letters I have written, bidding you, nay _begging_ you to
+come back--how many times have I dropped them into the post-bag in
+the hall--then, after an hour's thought, have run in terror and
+snatched them out again!
+
+"I am trying so hard to be good! Can I hold out--just a little while
+longer? I am going to die young, remember, and that is the one hope
+which consoles me! It used to be that I shrank from the medical men
+who told me this--who told me with their pitying eyes and grave
+looks--but now I welcome their gravity. Sir Humphrey Davy has written
+a letter to my husband, advising him to send me off to Italy for this
+incoming winter--but I shall not go! 'I fear that dread phthisis in
+the rigor of English cold,' he writes--but for me it can not come too
+soon!
+
+"... Yet all the time the knowledge haunts me that our lives are
+passing! I can not bear it! I spend the hours out in the garden--where
+the sun-dial tells me--all _silently_--of the day's wearing on.
+
+"Since you went away I can not listen to the sound of the clock in the
+hall. That chime--that holy trustful chime--'O Lord, our God, be Thou
+our Guide,' shames the unholy prayer on my lips.
+
+"Then the clock ticks, ticks, ticks--all day--all night--on, and on,
+and on--to remind me of our hearts' wearying beats! Does this thought
+ever come to madden you? That our hearts have only so many times to
+throb in this life--and when we are apart every pulsation is wasted?"
+
+I thrust this letter back into its place--then hastily closed down the
+desk. The sensation of reading a thing like that is not pleasant. She
+had written with an awful, _awful_ pain in her heart--and she had
+lived before the days of anesthetics!
+
+"Women don't feel things like that--now," I muttered, as I crossed the
+room and lowered the curtain. "They--they have too many other things
+to divert them, I suppose!"
+
+I knew, however, that I was judging everybody by myself, and certainly
+_I_ had never known an awful hurt like that.
+
+"Why, I could listen to a _taximeter_ tick--for a whole year--while
+Guilford was away from me, and I don't believe it would make me
+nervous for a sight of him."
+
+I was considerably disgusted with myself for my callousness as I came
+to this conclusion, however, and I sat down in the window, overlooking
+the tiny strip of rose-garden to think it out. Presently I crossed the
+room again to the desk.
+
+_"I'm_ not going to jest at scars--even if I haven't felt a wound!" I
+decided, once and for always.
+
+I opened the desk then and gathered up the letters, packet by packet,
+tying them into one big bundle.
+
+"Publish these--heart-throbs!"
+
+I was so furious that I could have gagged Uncle Lancelot if he had
+opened his mouth--which he didn't dare do! In this respect he and
+grandfather are very much like living relatives. They'll argue with
+you through ninety-nine years of indecision, but once you've made up
+your mind irrevocably they close their lips into a sullen
+silence--saving their breath for "I told you so!"
+
+"I don't see how anybody could have thought of such blasphemy!" I kept
+on. "It would be like a vivisection! That's what people want though,
+nowadays--they won't have just a book! They want to be present at a
+clinic!--They want to see others' hearts writhe--because they have no
+feelings of their own!"
+
+Then, after my thoughts had had time to get away from the past up into
+the present and project themselves, somewhat spitefully, into the
+future, I made another decision, slamming the desk lid to accentuate
+it.
+
+"I shall not publish them myself--nor ever give anybody else a chance
+to publish them!" I declared. "By rights they are not really mine! I
+am just their guardian, because Aunt Patricia couldn't take them on
+her journey with her--and some day I shall take them on a journey with
+me. To Colmere Abbey--that dream-house of mine! That's the thing to
+do! And burn them on the hearth in the library, where she likely
+burned his--if she did burn them! Of course I can't run the risk of
+what the next generation might do!"
+
+This last thought tormented me as I fell asleep.
+
+"No, I can not hand those letters down to my daughters," I decided
+drowsily, being in that hazy state where the mind traverses unheard-of
+fields--unheard-of for waking thought--and queer little twisting
+decisions come. "They would _never_ be able to understand!"
+
+I was aroused by this hypothesis into sudden wakefulness.
+
+"Of course they could not understand--me or my feelings!" I muttered,
+sitting up in bed and facing the darkness defiantly. "They _could_
+not--if--_if_ they were Guilford's daughters, too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ET TU, BRUTE!
+
+
+My first waking thought the next morning had nothing on earth to do
+with the dilemma of the day before. I stretched my arms lazily, then a
+little shrinkingly, as I remembered what the daily grind would be.
+There was to be a Flag Day celebration of the Daughters of the
+American Revolution--and I was to report Major Coleman's speech.
+That's why I shrank. I am not a society woman.
+
+"D. A. R.," I grumbled, jumping out of bed and going across to the
+window to see what kind of day we were going to have.--"_D-a-r-n!_"
+
+Anyway, the day was all right, and after waving a welcome to the
+sun--whose devout worshiper I am--I rubbed a circle of dust off the
+mirror and looked at myself. Every woman has distinctly pretty
+days--and distinctly homely ones; and usually the homely ones come to
+the front viciously when you're booked for something extraordinary.
+However, this proved to be one of my good-looking periods, and out of
+sheer gratitude I polished off the whole expanse of the mirror.
+Incidentally, I am not an absolutely dustless housekeeper, in spite of
+my craze for simplicity. I consider that there are only two things
+that need be kept passionately clean in this life--the human skin and
+the refrigerator.
+
+"Are you going to dress for the fête--before you go to the office?"
+mother inquired rebelliously, as she saw me arranging my hair with
+that look of masculine expectation later on in the morning. "Why don't
+you get your other work off, then come back home and dress?"
+
+"Well--because," I answered indifferently.
+
+"But the _Sons_ of the Revolution are going to meet with the
+Daughters!" she warned.
+
+"I know that."
+
+As if to demonstrate my possession of this knowledge I turned away
+from the mirror and displayed my festive charms. A light gray
+coat-suit had been converted into the deception of a gala garment by
+the addition of Irish lace; and mother, looking it over
+contemptuously, went into her own bedroom for a moment, and came back
+carrying her diamond-studded D. A. R. pin. She held it out toward
+me--with the air of a martyr.
+
+"But--aren't you going to wear it yourself?" I asked, with a little
+feeling of awe at the lengths of mother-love. She had been regent of
+her chapter--and loved the organization well enough to go to
+Washington every year.
+
+"No."
+
+"Then--then do you mean to say that you're not going to Mrs. Walker's
+to-day?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Why--mother!"
+
+I turned to her and saw that a tear had dropped down upon the last
+golden bar bridging the wisp of red, white and blue. There were ten
+bars in all, each one engraved for an ancestor--and when I wore the
+thing I felt like a foreign diplomat sitting for his picture.
+
+"What's the matter, honey?" I asked. She had always been my little
+girl, and I felt at times as if I were unduly severe in my discipline
+of her.
+
+"Grace, you don't know how I feel!"
+
+The words came jerkily--and I knew that I was in for it.
+
+"Does your head ache?" I asked hastily. "You'd better get on the car
+and ride out into the--"
+
+"My head _doesn't_ ache!" she denied stoutly. "It's my h-heart!--To
+see you--Grace Chalmers Christie--racing around to such things as this
+in a coat-suit! You ought, by right of birth and charm, be the chief
+ornament of such affairs as this--the chief ornament, I say--yet you
+go carrying a _'hunk o' copy paper_!'"
+
+"In my bag," I modified.
+
+"And you get up and leave places before you get a bite of food--and
+race back to that office, like a wild thing, to _'turn it in_!'"
+
+This contemptuous use of my own jargon caused me to laugh.
+
+"And do you think that the wearing of this heavy pin will prove so
+exhausting that I'll have to stay at Mrs. Walker's to-day for a bite
+of food?" I asked.
+
+She looked at me in helpless reproach.
+
+"I want you to go to this thing as a D. A. R.," she explained, "not as
+a _Herald_ reporter."
+
+"Then I'll wear it," I promised, kissing her soothingly. "But you must
+go, too."
+
+She shook her head again.
+
+"I can't--I really can't!" she said. "I've got nothing fine enough to
+wear. This is going to be a magnificent thing, every one tells
+me--with all the local Sons--and this wonderful Major Coleman to
+lecture on flags."
+
+She looked at me suspiciously as she uttered her plaint about the Sons
+being present, and in answer, I thrust forward one gray suede pump.
+
+"But I'm ready for any Son on earth--Oldburgh earth," I protested.
+"Don't you _see_ my exquisite lace collar--and the pink satin rose in
+my chapeau--and this silken and buskskin footgear? Surely no true Son
+would ever pause to suspect the 'hunk o' copy paper' which lieth
+beneath all this glory!"
+
+"Isn't Guilford going with you?" she called after me as I left the
+house a few minutes later. "Will he meet you at the office?"
+
+"No--thank heaven--it's an awful thing to have to listen to two men
+talk at the same time--especially when you're taking one down in
+shorthand--and Guilford is mercifully busy this afternoon."
+
+I had a bunch of pink roses, gathered fresh that morning from our
+strip of garden, and I stopped in the office of the owner and
+publisher when I had reached the _Herald_ building. Just because he's
+old, and drank out of the same canteen with my grandfather I made a
+habit of keeping fresh flowers in his gray Rookwood vase. This spot
+of color, together with the occasional twinkle from his eyes, made the
+only break in the dusty newspapery monotony of the room. He looked up
+from his desk, and his face brightened as he saw my holiday attire.
+
+"Well, Grace?"
+
+He started up, big and shaggy--and wistful--like a St. Bernard. I like
+old men to look like St. Bernards--and young ones to look like
+greyhounds.
+
+"Don't get up--nor clear off a chair for me," I warned, catching up
+the vase and starting toward the water-cooler. "I can't stay a
+minute."
+
+He collapsed into his squeaky revolving chair. When he was a lad a
+Yankee minnie ball had implanted a kiss upon his left shoulder-blade,
+and he still carried that side with a jaunty little hike--a most
+flirtatious little hike, which, however, caused the distinguished rest
+of him to appear unduly severe.
+
+"Ah! But you must explain the 'dolled-up' aspect," he begged.
+
+I laughed at the schoolgirl slang.
+
+"Why, this is Flag Day!" I told him. "How can you have
+forgotten?--There will be a gigantic celebration at Mrs. Hiram
+Walker's--and all the pedigreed world will be there."
+
+He smiled--slowly.
+
+"And you're writing it up?"
+
+"Just Major Coleman's lecture! They say he is quite the most learned
+man in the world on the subject of flags. He knows them and loves
+them. He carries them about with him on these lecture tours in
+felt-lined steel cases."
+
+"Cases?" he smiled.
+
+"Certainly," I answered. "Whatever a man esteems most precious--or
+useful--he has cases for! The commercial man has his sample cases--the
+medical man his instrument cases--the artistic man, his--"
+
+"Divorce cases," he interrupted dryly.
+
+"Alas, yes!" I sighed, my thoughts traveling back.
+
+He wheeled slowly, giving me a glance which finally tapered off with
+the pink rosebuds in my hands.
+
+"Then," he asked kindly, "if you're going to a very great affair this
+afternoon, why don't you keep these flowers and wear them yourself?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"But I'm a newspaper woman!" I said with dignity. "I might as well
+wear a vanity-bag as to wear flowers."
+
+"Bosh! You're not a newspaper woman, Grace," he denied, still looking
+at me half sadly. "And yet--well, sometimes it is--just such women as
+you who do the amazing things."
+
+"Mother thinks so, certainly!" I laughed. "But you meant in what way,
+for instance?"
+
+He hesitated, studying me for a moment, while I held still and let
+him, for there's always a satisfaction in being studied when there's a
+satin rose in your hat.
+
+"Oh--nothing," he finally answered, with a look of regret upon his
+face.
+
+"But it is something!" I persisted, "and, even if I am in a big hurry,
+I shan't budge until you tell me!"
+
+"Well, since you insist--I only meant to say that I'd been doing a
+little thinking on my own account lately--as owner and publisher of
+this paper, with its interests at heart--and I've wondered just how
+much a woman might accomplish, after a man had failed."
+
+"A woman?"
+
+"By the ill use of her eyes, I mean," he confessed, his own eyes
+twinkling a little. "Women can gain by the ill use of their eyes what
+men fail to accomplish by their straightforward methods."
+
+"But that's what men hate so in women!" I said.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Ye-es--maybe! That is, they make a great pretense of hating a woman
+when she uses her eyes to any end save one--charming them for their
+own dear sakes!"
+
+"They naturally grudge her the spoils she gains by the ill use of
+those important members," I answered defensively.
+
+"Oh," he put in quickly, "I wasn't going to suggest that you do any
+such thing--unless you wanted to! I was merely thinking--that was
+all!"
+
+"And besides," I kept on, "all the men who have ever done anything
+worth being interviewed for--nearly all of them, I mean--are so old
+that--"
+
+He interrupted me wrathfully.
+
+"Old men are not necessarily blind men, Miss Christie," he explained.
+"But we'll change the subject, if you please!"
+
+"Anyway, it doesn't happen once in twenty years that a newspaper woman
+gets a scoop just because she's a woman," I continued, not being ready
+just then to change the subject even if he had demanded it.
+
+"It does," he contradicted. "It's one of the most popular plots for
+magazine stories."
+
+"Bah! Magazine stories and life are two different propositions, my
+dear Captain Macauley!" I explained with a blasé air. "I should like
+some better precedent before I started out on an assignment."
+
+"Yet you are a most unprecedented young woman," he replied in a
+meaning tone. "I've suspected it before--but recent reports confirm my
+worst imaginings."
+
+I glanced at him searchingly.
+
+"You've been talking with mother?" I ventured.
+
+For a moment he was inscrutable.
+
+"Oh, I know you have!" I insisted. "She's told it to everybody who
+will listen."
+
+"The story of the Coburn-Colt that wasn't hatched?"
+
+His face was severe, but the little upward twist of his left shoulder
+was twitching as if with suppressed emotion.
+
+"She told you with tears in her eyes, I know," I kept on. "All the old
+friends get the tearful accompaniment."
+
+"Well, miss, doesn't that make you all the more ashamed of your
+foolishness?" he demanded.
+
+"My foolishness?"
+
+Something seemed to give way under me as he said this, for he was
+always on my side, and I had never found sympathy lacking before.
+
+"I mean that--that Don Quixote carried to an extreme becomes Happy
+Hooligan," he pronounced.
+
+I drew back in amazement.
+
+"Why, Captain Horace Macauley--of Company A--18th Kentucky Infantry!"
+
+He tried hard not to smile.
+
+"You needn't go so far back--stay in the present century, if you
+please."
+
+"But ever since then--even to this good day and in a newspaper office,
+where the atmosphere is so cold-blooded that a mosquito couldn't fly
+around without getting a congestive chill, you know your reputation!
+Why, you could give the Don horse spurs and armor, then arrive a full
+week ahead of him at a windmill!"
+
+"Tommy-rot."
+
+"Supererogation is a prettier word," I amended, but he shook his head.
+
+"No! Six syllables are like six figures-they get you dizzy when you
+commence fooling with them! Besides, I was discussing _your_ right to
+commit foolish acts of self-sacrificing, Grace, not mine."
+
+"But it didn't seem foolish to me," I tried to explain.
+
+"When you're working in this rotten newspaper office, where no woman
+could possibly feel at home, for the vigorous sum of seventy-five
+dollars a month?--Then it doesn't seem idiotic?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"And your mother moping and pining for the things she ought to have?"
+
+"No-o--not much!"
+
+"And Guilford Blake standing by, waiting like a gentleman for this
+fever of emancipation to pass by and desquamation to take place?"
+
+This interested me.
+
+"What's 'desquamation?'" I asked. "I haven't time to get my dictionary
+now."
+
+"You couldn't find it in any save a medical dictionary, likely," he
+explained, with a pretense at patience. "Anyway, it's the peeling off
+process which follows a high fever--especially such fevers as you
+girls of this restless, modern temperament so often experience!"
+
+I shivered.
+
+"Ugh! It doesn't sound pretty!" I commented.
+
+"Nor is it pretty," he assured me, "but it's very wholesome. Once
+you've caught the fever, lived through it, peeled off and got a shiny
+new skin you're forever immune against its return. This, of course, is
+what Guilford is waiting so patiently for. He is one of the most
+estimable young fellows I know, Grace, and--"
+
+I looked wounded.
+
+"Don't you suppose I know that?" I asked. Then glancing quickly at the
+watch bracelet on my wrist, and seeing with a gasp of relief that the
+hands were pointing toward the dangerous hour of three, I turned
+toward the door.
+
+"I must hurry!" I plead. "You've really no idea what an interesting
+occasion a Flag Day celebration is, Captain Macauley!"
+
+"No?" he smiled, understanding my sudden determination to leave.
+
+"Indeed, no! Why, for three hundred and sixty-four days in the year
+you may have a gentle Platonic affection for General Washington, Paul
+Revere and the rest, but on the other day--Flag Day--your flame is
+rekindled into a burning zeal! You can't afford to be late! You must
+hurry!--Especially if you have to go there on the street-car!"
+
+"It's a deuced pity you can't get up a zeal for a devoted _living_
+man," he called after me in a severe voice as I reached the door.
+"It's a pity you can't see the idiocy of this determination of
+yours--before that publishing company revokes its offer."
+
+"Well, who knows?" I answered, waving him a gay good-by. "I hate
+street-cars above everything, and I'm sorry my coupé isn't waiting at
+the door right now!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FLAG DAY
+
+
+Now, according to my ethics, there are two kinds of men who go to
+daylight parties--idiots and those that are dragged there by their
+wives.
+
+I had scarcely crossed the lawn of Seven Oaks and found for myself a
+modest place beside the speaker's stand--which was garlanded with as
+many different kinds of flags as there were rats in Hamelin Town--when
+I observed that this present congregation held a fair sprinkling of
+each kind.
+
+But these held my attention for only a moment--because of the house in
+the background, and the trees overhead. (To be candid, Mrs. Hiram
+Walker's country place is not exactly a soothing retreat to visit
+when temptation is barking at your heels like a little hungry dog--and
+the desire of your heart begins with H.)
+
+"House that's a Home" might have been written on the sign-board of the
+car-station much more truthfully than "Seven Oaks"--for only the
+immense patriarchal ones were included in the "Seven" there being
+hordes of lesser ones which were no more mentioned than children are
+when they're getting big enough to be paying railroad fare. The grove
+was well cared for, but not made artificial, and even the
+luxuriousness of the house itself could not hurt the charm, for the
+Hiram Walkers were human beings before they were society column
+acrobats.
+
+Our families had always been friends, so I happened to know that years
+and years ago, when Mr. Walker was a clerk in an insurance
+office--with a horse and buggy for business through the week and joy
+unconfined on Sunday--they had been in the habit of haunting this
+spot, he and his slim young wife--bringing a basket full of supper
+and thrusting the baby's milk bottle down into the ice-cream freezer.
+Then, there were more years, of longing and saving; they bought the
+hill, patiently enduring a period of blue-prints and architectural
+advice before the house was built. By this time Mrs. Walker's slimness
+was gone, and Mr. Walker had found out the vanity of hair tonics--but
+the house was theirs at last. It was big and very beautiful--roomy,
+rather than mushroomy--and thoughtful, rambling, old-timey, spreading
+out a great deal of portico to the kiss of the sun. Brown-hooded monks
+and clanking beads ought, by rights, to have gone with that portico.
+
+Then, the June sunshine was doing such wonders with the oaks, great
+and small, along the hillsides!
+
+It touched up, with a tinge of glory, even the shining motor-cars in
+the driveway. There were dozens of them--limousines, touring cars,
+lady-like coupés--with their lazy, half-asleep attendants, and the
+regularity of their unbroken files, their dignity, their quietness,
+and the glitter of the sun against their metal gave them something of
+a martial aspect. The silver sheen of the lamps and levers was brought
+out in a manner to suggest a line of marching men, silent, but very
+potent--and enjoying more than a little what they offered to view, the
+dazzle of helmet, sword and coat-of-mail.
+
+The beauty of it all--the softened glory of the shade in which I sat
+making me feel that I was a spectator at a tournament--cast a spell
+over me, for I never find it very hard to fall spellbound. Isn't it
+funny that when you're possessed of an intelligence which has fits of
+St. Vitus' dance they call it Imagination?--That's the kind mine
+is--jerky and unreliable. It is the kind of imagination which can take
+a dried-up acorn and draw forth a medieval forest; or gaze upon a
+rusty old spur and live over again the time when knights were bold.
+
+But to get back to "those present."
+
+First of all, I noted Oldburgh's best-known remittance man. I noted
+him mentally, mind you, not paragraphically, for they never made me do
+the real drudgery of the society page. He was sitting beside his mama,
+swinging her gauze fan annoyingly against her lorgnette chain. His
+divorce the year before had come near uniting Church and State, since
+it's a fact that nothing so cements conflicting bodies like the
+uprising of a new common foe; and he had sinned against both
+impartially. After him came two or three financial graybeards; three
+or four yearling bridegrooms, not broken yet to taking the bit between
+their teeth and staying rebelliously at the office; a habitual
+"welcomer to our city"--Major Harvey Coleman, a high officer in the
+Sons of the American Revolution, and the pièce de résistence of this
+occasion--then--then--!
+
+Well, certainly the impassive being next him was the most
+unsocial-looking man I had ever had my eyes droop beneath the gaze of!
+
+He was sitting in the place of honor--in the last chair of the first
+row--but despite this, he so clearly did not belong at that party,
+and he so clearly wished himself away that I--well, I instantly began
+searching through the crowds to find a woman with handcuffs! I felt
+sure that, whoever she might be--she hadn't got him there any other
+way!
+
+And yet--and yet--(my thoughts were coming in little dashing jerks
+like that) he _was_ rather too big for any one woman to have handled
+him!
+
+I decided this after another look and another droop of my own eyes,
+for he was still looking--and that was what I decided about him
+first--that he was very _big_! Then misbehaving brown hair came next
+into my consciousness. It came to top off a picture which for a moment
+caused me to wonder whether he was really a flesh-and-blood man at
+Mrs. Walker's reception, or the spirit of some woodsman--come again,
+after many years, to haunt the grove of the Seven Oaks.
+
+His New York clothes didn't make a bit of difference--except to spoil
+the illusion a little. They were all light gray, except for a glimpse
+of blue silk hose, and their perfection only served to remind you that
+it was a pity for a man who looked like _that_ to dress like _that_!
+
+Modern man has but one artistic garment--a bathrobe; yet it wouldn't
+have relieved my feelings any if this man had been dressed in one. For
+he wasn't artistic--and certainly he wasn't modern!
+
+Still, I felt the pity of it all, for he ought to have had better
+perceptions. He ought to have had his clothes and cosmic consciousness
+match! He ought to have been dressed in a coat of goatskin--and his
+knees ought to have been bare--and the rawhide thongs of his moccasins
+ought to have been strong and firm!
+
+I had just reached this point in my plans for the change in his
+wardrobe, when our hostess bustled up and shooed me out of my quiet
+corner.
+
+"Grace," she whispered, "move out a bit, will you, and let me crowd a
+man in over there--"
+
+"In here?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Where he can't _escape_!" she explained.
+
+I gathered up my opened sheet of copy paper and moved obediently into
+the next chair, which she had indicated.
+
+"That's right--thank you! I've found out by experience that if you let
+certain suspicious characters linger on the ragged edges of a crowd
+like this they're sure to disappear."
+
+Then she turned and beckoned to my Fifth-Avenue-looking
+backwoodsman--with a smile of triumph.
+
+"_Him?_" I asked in surprise.
+
+She was looking in his direction, so failed to see the expression of
+my face.
+
+"It's no more than he deserves--having this American Revolution rubbed
+in on him," she observed absently. "I have never worked so hard in my
+life over any one man as I have over this identical Maitland Tait!"
+
+I saw him rise and come toward her--then I began having trouble with
+my throat. I couldn't breathe very easily.
+
+"Maitland Tait!" I gasped.
+
+"Yes--_the_ Maitland Tait!"
+
+Her voice sounded with a brass-band echo of victory.
+
+"But how did you--"
+
+"By outwitting Pollie Kendall--plague take her!"
+
+The man was coming leisurely, stopping once to speak to one of the
+graybeard financiers.
+
+"Have you met him?" Mrs. Walker asked carelessly, as he approached.
+
+"No."
+
+She turned to him.
+
+"I'm going to put you in here--where you'll have to stay," she
+laughed, her big, heavy frame looking dwarfed beside his own towering
+height.
+
+"I wasn't going to run away."
+
+"No? You can't always tell--and I thought it safe to take every
+precaution, for this lecture may be long, and it's certain to be
+irritating to one of your nationality.--In this location you'll be in
+the clutches of the Press, you see, and--by the way, you must meet
+Miss Christie!--Mr. Tait, Miss Christie!"
+
+His face was still perfectly impassive, and he bowed gravely--with
+that down-to-the-belt grace which foreigners have. I nodded the pink
+satin rose on my hat in his direction. This was all! Neither made any
+further demonstration than that!--And to think that since Creation's
+dawn--the world over--the thing is done just as idly and carelessly as
+that! "Mr. Tait, Miss Christie!"--These are the words which were
+said--and, dear me, all the days of one's life ought to be spent in
+preparation for the event!
+
+"You are a Daughter of the Revolution, I presume?" his voice finally
+asked me--a deep clear voice, which was strong enough to drown out the
+Wagnerian processionals beating at that moment against my brain, and
+to follow me off on the mother-of-pearl cloud I had embarked upon. It
+was a glorious voice, distinctly un-American, but with the suggestion
+of having the ability to do linguistic contortions. He looked like a
+man who had traveled far--over seas and deserts--and his voice
+confirmed it. It proclaimed that he could bargain with equal ease in
+piasters and pence. Still, it was a big wholesome voice. It matched
+the coat of goatskin, the bare knees and the moccasins I had planned
+for him.
+
+"Yes, I am," I answered.
+
+Our eyes met for an instant, as he disengaged his gaze from that
+ten-barred insignia on my coat. Far, far back, concealed by his dark
+iris, was a tinge of amused contempt.
+
+"Then I dare say you're interested in this occasion?" he inquired. I
+shouldn't say that he inquired, for he didn't. His tone held a
+challenge.
+
+"No, indeed, I'm not!" I answered foolishly. "I came only because I
+have to write up Major Coleman's speech for my paper. I am a special
+writer for the _Herald_."
+
+And it was then that he smiled--really smiled. I saw a transformation
+which I had never seen in any other man's face, for with him a smile
+escapes! There is a breaking up of the ruggedness, an eclipse of the
+stern gravity for a moment, and--no matter how much you had cared for
+these an instant before--you could not miss them then--not in that
+twinkling flood of radiance!
+
+"Oh--so you're not an ancestor-worshiper?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But I thought Americans were!" he insisted.
+
+"Americans?" I repeated loftily. "Why, of course, that's an
+English--religion."
+
+"Not always," he answered grimly, and the Italian band stationed
+behind the clump of boxwood cut short any further conversation.
+
+I was glad, for I did not want to talk to him then. I merely wanted to
+stand off--and look at him--and tell myself what manner of man he must
+be.
+
+To do this I glanced down at my copy paper, with one eyelid raised in
+favor of his profile. An ancestor-worshiper? Absurd! Ancestors were
+quite out of the question with him, I felt sure. There was something
+gloriously _traditionless_ about his face and expansive frame. But his
+hands? Those infallible records of what has gone before?--I dropped my
+eyes to their normal position. His hands were _good_! They were big
+and long and brown--that shade of brownness that comes to a meerschaum
+pipe after it has been kissed a time or two by nicotine. And his hair
+was brown, too light by several shades to match with his very dark
+eyes, but it likely looked lighter on account of its conduct, standing
+up, and away, and back from his face. His complexion spoke of an
+early-to-bed and early-to-tub code of ethics. His nose and mouth were
+well in the foreground.
+
+"You are a man who cares nothing at all for your ancestors--but you'll
+care a great deal for your descendants!" was the summing up I finally
+made of him.
+
+At the close of the band's Hungarian Rhapsody he leaned over and
+whispered to me.
+
+"Did you say the _Herald_?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have had my--attention called to your paper recently," he said, in
+so serious a tone that I was compelled to look up and search for the
+smile which I felt must lurk behind it. And when I saw it there I felt
+reassured, and smiled in response.
+
+"So they told me at the office," I said with great cordiality. "Is it
+three or four of our reporters you've thrown down your front steps?"
+
+"Oh, I haven't got close enough to them to throw them down the steps,"
+he disclaimed quickly. "That's one thing you have to guard against
+with reporters. They've got you--if they once see the whites of your
+eyes!"
+
+I felt it my duty to bristle, in defense of my kind.
+
+"Not unless your eyes _talk_," I said. Then, when he stared at me in
+uncertainty for a moment, I dropped my own eyes again, for I felt
+that they were proclaiming their convictions as loudly as a Hyde Park
+suffragette meeting.
+
+The band at that moment struck up _The Star-Spangled Banner_ in a
+manner to suggest the president's advent into the theater, and I
+searched in my bag for my pencil. I had seen the lecturer cough.
+
+"I say--how long is this convocation supposed to last?" Maitland Tait
+inquired in a very inconspicuous whisper, as the white-flanneled lion
+of the affair arose from his chair and became the cynosure of
+lorgnettes.
+
+"Well, this talk will absorb about forty-five minutes, I should
+hazard," I said. Already I had had the forethought to jot down the
+usual opening: "Ladies and Gentlemen--Daughters and Sons of the
+American Revolution: It is with a feeling of profoundest pleasure that
+I have the privilege of being with you to-day," etc. So for the moment
+my attention was undivided.
+
+"And there will be other talks?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And a walk through the gardens, I believe Mrs.--Mrs. Walker said?"
+
+"Probably so. The Seven Oaks gardens are very lovely in June."
+
+At the mention of gardens his eyes wandered, with what I fancied was a
+tinge of homesickness, toward the colorful flowering spaces beyond the
+box hedges. There were acres and acres of typical English gardens back
+there; and the odor of the sweet old-fashioned shrubs came in on
+gentle heat waves from the open area. He looked as if he would like to
+be back there in those English-looking gardens--with all the people
+gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+STRAWS POINT
+
+
+"And are you going to write up the whole thing?" he inquired, during a
+little commotion caused by one of the large flags slipping from its
+stand and threatening to obscure the speaker.
+
+"You mean make a society column report of it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No. I'm a sort of special feature writer on the _Herald_, and I am to
+get only this speech of Major Coleman's to put in my Sunday page."
+
+The lecture had commenced in good earnest by this time, and I was
+scribbling away in shorthand as I talked.
+
+"Not one among us is insensible to the visions of patriotic pride and
+affection which the very name of 'Old Glory' conjures up within us,
+but at the same time we may do well to review, quite dispassionately,
+once in a while the wonderful chain of historical changes which came
+about in evolving this flag to its present form.... For we all realize
+that there is no perfect thing in this world which has not been an
+evolution from some imperfect thing.... When Pope Gregory,
+the"--Somethingth, I quite failed to catch his number--"granted to
+Scotland the white cross of St. Andrew, and to England the red cross
+of St. George, he faintly surmised what a tempest in a teapot he was
+stirring up!"
+
+He paused, and the man at my side got in a word, edgewise.
+
+"All of it?" he asked, looking aghast at the pages of long-tailed dots
+and dashes under my hand. I laughed.
+
+"I'm paid to do it," I answered. "I don't disfigure my handwriting
+this way for nothing."
+
+"But--but--you must be very clever," he commented, so appalled at the
+thought that he forgot he was talking to a stranger. I like that
+faculty. I like a man who dares to be awkwardly sincere.
+
+"Not clever--only very needy," I replied, turning over the page as I
+saw the lecturer replace the white flag of St. Andrew into its stand
+and take up the thread of his talk. "And I don't know that I need get
+every word of the discourse. The women who read my page don't care a
+rap about flags--but they do care to see a picture of Major Coleman
+and his wife and their dog on the piazza of their winter home, just
+out from Tampa!--I've got to have enough of this lecture to carry that
+picture."
+
+He nodded gravely.
+
+"I see. But after you get this report?"
+
+"I'm going back to the city," I answered. "I have to catch the five
+o'clock car in."
+
+"... The jealousy became so fierce between the two nations--the absurd
+jealousy over which should first salute the flag of the other--St.
+George claiming great superiority in the way of godliness over St.
+Andrew, and St. Andrew, with the true Scotch spirit, stiffening his
+neck to the breaking point, while waiting for St. George to take off
+his hat to him, that when the story of this dissension reached the
+ears of Pope Gregory, he--"
+
+I never knew what he did until afterward, for at that moment I saw
+Maitland Tait slip his watch out carefully, guarding the action with
+an outspread left hand.
+
+"I've an engagement at five, too," he said.
+
+"... He determined to lose no time," was the next sentence I found
+myself jotting down on paper, and wondering whether Major Coleman had
+really said such a thing or whether it had been born in my mind of the
+stress of the moment.... "He was a man of the most impulsive,
+sometimes of the most erratic, actions."
+
+"Of course!" my heart said between thumps. "I shouldn't like him if he
+were not."
+
+"I can make my excuses to Mrs. Walker at the same time you make
+yours," the deep voice said, in a surprisingly soft tone.
+
+"... For he saw in such a course protection and peace," Major Coleman
+announced. "All the world suspected that his ultimate aim was union,
+but--"
+
+"An international alliance," my heart explained, as I jotted down the
+words of the lecturer.
+
+"Mayn't I take you back to town in my car?"
+
+"... And all the world knew that he was a man absolutely untrammeled
+by tradition," the white-flanneled one proclaimed.
+
+"Thank you, that would be lovely, but I'm afraid Mrs. Walker won't
+consent to your going so soon," I said between curlicues.
+
+"I'm going, however," he answered. "I've an important engagement,
+and--I'm not going to stay at this--this," he closed his lips firmly,
+but the silence said "_cussed_," that dear, fierce, American
+adjective. "I'm not going to stay at this party one minute after
+you're gone. I don't like to talk to just any woman."
+
+"... Yet I would have you understand that he was a temperamental man,"
+was thundered in a warning tone from the speaker's stand. "He was
+quick in judgment and action, but he was fine and sensitive in spirit.
+I've never a doubt that he disliked and feared the occasion which
+caused this precipitate action. He was quaking in his boots all the
+time, but he was courageous. He decided to make brief work of
+formalities and take a short cut to his heart's desire."
+
+"What was it he did?" I asked of Mr. Tait, startled at the thought of
+what I'd missed. "Do you know what this thing was that Pope Gregory
+did?"
+
+"No-o--listen a minute!" he suggested.
+
+"... Can't you just imagine now that he was afraid of what people
+might say--or do?" asked the major encouragingly. "It was absolutely
+unprecedented in the annals of history--such a quick, rash and sudden
+decision. If England and Scotland were going to be eternally bickering
+over their flags, they should have _one_ flag! They should be united!
+They should--"
+
+"The _Union Jack_!" whispered the deep voice close at my side, while
+the grave dark eyes lighted, as--as they should have lighted, or I'd
+never have forgiven him. "He created the Union Jack, by George!"
+
+And the speaker on the stand demonstrated the truth of this conclusion
+by displaying a big British flag, which caught in its socket as he
+attempted to lift it and occasioned another pause in the speech.
+
+"This enthusiasm makes me hungry," Maitland Tait observed, as the
+audience courteously saluted the ancient emblem of hostility, and the
+echoes of applause died away. "Since we're going to get no tea here,
+can't we drive by some place up-town? There's a good-looking place in
+Union Street--"
+
+"But that would make you very late for your engagement, I'm afraid," I
+demurred. "It will take some little time to drive in."
+
+He looked at me wonderingly for a moment.
+
+"My engagement? Oh, yes--but it can wait."
+
+"Then, if it can, I'm afraid Mrs. Walker will not let you off. I
+happen to know that--"
+
+He cut short my argument by motioning me to pay attention to the
+speaker, who at the moment had replaced the flag of Pope Gregory's
+cunning, and was talking away at a great rate.
+
+"... Yet, who can say that the hastiest actions do not often bring
+about the best results? Certainly when a decision is made out of an
+excessive desire to bring happiness to all parties concerned, its
+immediate action can not fail to denote a wholesome heartiness which
+should always be emulated.... Different from most men of his native
+country, possessing a genuinely warm heart, a subtle mentality,
+coupled with a conscience which impelled him always toward the right,
+he was enabled, by this one impetuous act, to become a benefactor of
+mankind! What he longed for was harmony--a harmonious union; and what
+he has achieved has been the direct outcome of a great longing. He
+created a union--wholesome, strengthening and permanent," I took down
+in shorthand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have a confused impression--I suppose I should say post-impression,
+for I didn't remember anything very clearly until afterward--that
+Betsy Ross, Pope Gregory, the Somethingth, and Mrs. Hiram Walker were
+all combining to tie my hands and feet together with thongs of red,
+white and blue.
+
+It seemed hours and hours before that lecture ended, then more hours
+before the tall restless man and I could make our way through a sea of
+massaged faces to a distant point where our hostess stood giving
+directions to a white-coated servant.
+
+She turned to me, with a fluttering little air of regret, when I
+reached her side.
+
+"Grace, surely you don't have to hurry off at this unchristian hour!"
+she insisted. "My dear, you really should stay! Solinski has arranged
+the loveliest spread, and I'm not going to keep the company waiting
+forever to get to it, either!--The ices will be the surprise of the
+season."
+
+"I'm sorry," I began, but she interrupted me.
+
+"Why _didn't_ your mother come?"
+
+Already her vague regret over my own hasty departure had melted away,
+and as she saw the tall man following me, evidently bent upon the same
+mission as mine, she put her query in a perfunctory way to hide her
+chagrin.
+
+"Mother couldn't come, Mrs. Walker. There is only one D. A. R. pin in
+the family, as you know--and I had to wear that."
+
+Maitland Tait, looking over my shoulder, heard my explanation and
+smiled.
+
+"It is a great deprivation to miss the rest of your charming party,
+Mrs. Walker," he began, but as he mentioned going, in a cool final
+voice, our hostess emitted a little terrified shriek.
+
+"What? Not you, too!"
+
+His face was the picture of deep contrition.
+
+"I _am_ sorry," he said, as only an Englishman can say it, and it
+always sounds as if he were digging regret up out of his heart with a
+shovel, "but I have an important engagement that really can not
+wait--"
+
+"And the General Seth O'Callen Chapter fairly holding its breath to
+meet you!" she wailed, the despair in her voice so genuine that it was
+impossible to keep back a smile. "That is our chapter composed
+entirely of _young_ women, you know, and I'd given their regent my
+word of honor that you'd be here to-day!"
+
+"Which the Regent has entirely forgotten in the charm of that
+delightful lecture we've just heard, I'm sure," he answered, his tones
+regretfully mollifying. "If it were at all possible for me to get word
+to the man--the men--"
+
+The rest of the fabrication was cut short and drowned out by the
+shriek of a trolley-car, grinding noisily round a curve of the track
+at that instant. It was the five-o'clock car, and I had grown to
+watch for its shriek as fearfully as ever Cinderella listened for the
+stroke of twelve from the castle clock. For me there was never a
+garden party without its trolley-car back to the city--its hateful,
+five-o'clock car--its hurried, businesslike, hungry summons--while ice
+in tea glasses tinkled to the echo.
+
+From force of long habit now that grinding sound of the car-wheels
+acted upon my nervous system like a fire alarm upon an engine
+horse--and I started to run.
+
+"Charming party--so sorry to have to rush off this way--hope next time
+I'll not be so busy--yes, I'll tell mother!"
+
+I gathered the folds of copy paper close, having forgotten to thrust
+them away out of sight into my bag, and made a break for the front
+gate. Then, as I reached the line of waiting motor-cars, I
+remembered--and stopped still with a foolish little feeling.
+
+Looking back I saw Mrs. Walker shaking hands in an injured fashion
+with her troublesome lion--who, after the manner of lions, proved that
+he could afford anxiety as well after being caught as before,--and
+turning her back resolutely upon his departing glory.--The whole of
+the General Seth O'Callen Chapter was before her, I knew she was
+thinking bitterly.
+
+"Thank goodness she won't see this!" I volunteered to myself, as the
+tall gray figure came hastily down the line and caught up with me.
+"She has troubles enough of her own, and--and she won't stop to wonder
+over whether I went back to the city by trolley, motor, or chariot of
+fire!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LONGEST WAY HOME
+
+
+"You hadn't forgotten?" he inquired, coming up behind me with an
+expression of uneasiness as I passed the first two or three cars in
+the line.
+
+"No--that is, I forgot for only a moment! I'm so used to going to town
+on this trolley-car."
+
+"Then--ah, here we are--"
+
+The limousine to which I was conducted was a gleaming dark-blue
+affair, with light tan upholstery, and the door-knobs, clock-case and
+mouth-piece of the speaking-tube were of tortoise-shell.
+
+The chauffeur touched something and the big creature began a softened,
+throbbing breathing. Isn't it strange how we can not help regarding
+automobiles as _creatures_? Sometimes we think of them as gliding
+swans--at other times as fiery-eyed dragons. It all depends upon
+whether _we're_ the duster, or the dustee.
+
+I gained the idea as I stepped into this present one--which of course
+belonged to the gliding swan variety--that its master must be rather
+ridiculously well-to-do--for a cave-man. His initials were on the
+panels, and the man at the wheel said, "Mr. Tait, sir," after a
+fashion that no American-trained servant, white, black, or
+almond-eyed, ever said. Evidently the car had come down from
+Pittsburgh and the chauffeur had made a longer journey. Together,
+however, they spelled perfection--and luxury. Still, strange to say,
+the notion of this man's possible wealth did not get on my throat and
+suffocate me, as the notion of Guilford's did. I felt that the man
+himself really cared very little about it all. The idea of his being a
+man who could do hard tasks patiently did not fade in the glamour of
+this damask and tortoise-shell.
+
+"Which is--the longest way to town?" he asked in a perfectly grave,
+matter-of-fact way as we started.
+
+"Down this lane to the Franklin Pike, then out past Fort Christian to
+Belcourt Boulevard--and on to High Street," I replied in a perfectly
+grave, matter-of-fact way, as if he were a tubercular patient, bound
+to spend a certain number of hours in aimless driving every day.
+
+"Thank you," he answered very seriously, then turned to the chauffeur.
+
+"Collins, can you follow this line? I think we drove out this way the
+day the car came?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir--thank you," the man declared, slipping his way in and
+out among the throngs of other vehicles.
+
+Then as we whirled away down the pike I kept thinking of this
+man--this young Englishman, who had come to America and elevated
+himself into the position of vice-president and general-manager of the
+Consolidated Traction Company, but, absurdly enough, no thought of the
+limousine nor the traction company came into my musings. I thought of
+him as a spirit--a spirit-man, who had lived in the woods. He had
+dwelt in a hut--or a cave--and toiled with his hands, hewing down
+trees, burning charcoal, eating brown bread at noon. Then, at dusk, he
+laid aside his tools, rumbling homeward in a great two-wheeled cart,
+whistling as he went, but softly--because he was deep in thought.
+
+The seven _ages_ of man are really nothing to be compared in point of
+interest with the different conditions of mind which women demand of
+them.
+
+Very young girls seek about--often in vain--for a man who can compel;
+then later, they demand one who can feel; afterward their own
+expansion clamors for one who can understand--but the final stage of
+all is reached when the feminine craving can not be satisfied save by
+the man who can _achieve_.
+
+This, of course, indicates that the woman herself is
+experienced--sometimes even to the point of being a widow--but it is
+decidedly a satisfying state of mind when it is once reached, because
+it is permanent.
+
+And your man of achievement is pretty apt to be an uncomplicated
+human. His deepest "problem" is how to make the voices of the
+nightingale and alarm clock harmonize. For he is a lover between
+suns--and a _laborer_ during them.
+
+At Solinski's Japanese tea-room in Union Street, the limousine slowed
+up. The band was playing _The Rosary_ as we went in, for it was the
+hour of the afternoon for the professional seers and seen of
+Oldburgh's medium world to drop in off the sidewalks for half an hour
+and dawdle over a tutti-frutti. The ultra-sentimental music always
+gets such people as these--and the high excruciating notes of this
+love-wail were ringing out with an intense poignancy.
+
+"Each hour a pearl--each pearl a prayer--"
+
+"Which table do you prefer?" my companion asked me, but for a moment I
+failed to answer. I was looking up at the clock, and I saw that the
+hands were pointing to six. I had met Maitland Tait at four!--Thus I
+had two pearls already on my string, I reckoned.
+
+"Oh, which table--well, farther back, perhaps!"
+
+I came down to earth after that, for getting acquainted with the
+caprices of a man's appetite is distinctly an earthly joy. Yet it
+certainly comes well within the joy class, for nothing else gives you
+the comfortable sense of possession that an intimate knowledge of his
+likes and dislikes bestows.
+
+Just after the "each-hour-a-pearl" stage you begin to feel that you
+have a _right_ to know whether he takes one lump or two! And the
+homely, every-day joys are decidedly the best. You don't tremble at
+the sounds of a man's rubber heels at the door, perhaps, after you're
+so well acquainted with him that you've set him a hasty supper on the
+kitchen table, or your fingers have toyed with his over the dear task
+of baiting a mouse-trap together--but he gets a dearness in this phase
+which a pedestal high as Eiffel Tower couldn't afford.--It is this
+dearness which makes you endure to see Prince Charming's coronet
+melted down into ducats to buy certified milk!
+
+"And what are--those?" Maitland Tait asked, after the tea-service was
+before us, and I had poured his cup. He was looking about the place
+with a frank interest, and his gaze had lighted upon a group of
+marcelled, manicured manikins at a near-by table. They were chattering
+and laughing in an idly nervous fashion.
+
+I dropped in two lumps of sugar and passed him his cup.
+
+"They are wives," I answered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Just wives."
+
+Being English, it took him half a second to smile--but when he did I
+forgave him the delay.
+
+"_Just_ wives? Then that means not mothers, nor helpmeets, nor--"
+
+"Nor housekeepers, nor suffragettes, nor saints, nor sinners, nor
+anything else that the Lord intended, nor apprehended," I finished up
+with a fierce suddenness, for that was what Guilford wanted me to be.
+"They're _just_ wives."
+
+He stirred his tea thoughtfully.
+
+"That's what I find all over America," he said, but not with the air
+of making a discovery. "Men must work, and women must _eat_."
+
+"And the sooner it's over the sooner to--the opera," I said.
+
+He looked at me in surprise.
+
+"Then you recognize it?" he asked.
+
+"Recognize it? Of course _I_ recognize it--but I'm not a fair sample.
+I work for my living."
+
+He was silent for a moment, looking at the manikins with a sort of
+half-hearted pity.
+
+"If they could all be induced to work they'd not be what they are--to
+men," he observed.
+
+"To men?"
+
+"I find that an American wife is a tormenting side-issue to a man's
+busy life," he said, with a tinge of regret. "And I am sorry, too--for
+they are most charming. For my part, I should like a woman who could
+do things--who was clever enough to be an inspiration."
+
+I nodded heartily, forgetful of personalities.
+
+"I too like the workers in the world," I coincided. "My ideal man is
+one whose name will be made into a verb."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Like Marconi, eh, and Pasteur--and--"
+
+"And Boycott, and Macadam, and--oh, a host of others!"
+
+It was quite a full minute before he spoke again.
+
+"I don't see how I could make my name into a verb," he said quietly,
+"but I must begin to think about it. It is certainly a valuable
+suggestion."
+
+It was my turn to laugh, which I did, nervously.
+
+"In Oldburgh, Tait seems to stand for the opposite of dictate," I
+hazarded. "That means to _talk_, and you won't--talk."
+
+"But I am talking," he insisted. "I'm asking you questions as fast as
+ever I can."
+
+"However, your technique is wrong," I replied. "You shouldn't ask
+questions of a newspaper woman. You should let her ask the questions,
+and you should furnish the answers."
+
+"But you're not a newspaper woman now, are you?" he demanded in some
+alarm. "I hope not--and certainly I must ask you questions before I
+begin to tell you things. There are quite a few facts which I wish to
+find out now."
+
+"And they are, first--?"
+
+"Where you live?"
+
+I told him, and he took from his pocket a small leather book with his
+name, Maitland Tait, and an address in smaller letters which I could
+not make out, on the inside lining. In a small, rather cramped hand,
+he wrote the address I gave him, "1919 West Clydemont Place," then
+looked up at me.
+
+"Next?" I laughed, in a flutter.
+
+"Next I want to know when you will let me come to see you?"
+
+"When?" I repeated, rather blankly.
+
+He drew slightly back.
+
+"I should have said, of course, _if_ you will let me come, but--"
+
+"But I shall be very glad to have you come," I made haste to explain.
+"I--I was only thinking!"
+
+I was thinking of my betrothed--for the first time that afternoon.
+
+"The length of time I am to stay in the South is very uncertain," he
+went on to explain with a gentle dignity. "At first it appeared that I
+might have to make a long stay, but we are settling our affairs so
+satisfactorily that I may be able to get back to Pittsburgh at any
+time now. That's why I feel that I can't afford to lose a single day
+in doing the really important things."
+
+"Then come," I said, with a friendly show, which was in truth a
+desperate spirit of abandon. "Come some day--"
+
+"To-morrow?" he asked.
+
+"To-morrow--at four."
+
+But during the rest of the meal grandfather and Uncle Lancelot came
+and took their places on either side of me. They were distinctly de
+trop, but I could not get rid of them.
+
+"This is--really the wrong thing to do, Grace," grandfather said, so
+soberly that when I rose to go and looked in the mirror to see that my
+hat was all right, his own sad blue eyes were looking out at me in
+perplexed reproach. "--Very wrong."
+
+Then the sad blue eyes took in the lower part of my face. I believe
+I've neglected to say that there is a dimple in my chin, and Uncle
+Lancelot's spirit is a cliff-dweller living there. He comes out and
+taunts the thoughtful eyes above.
+
+"Nonsense, parson!" he expostulated jauntily now. "Look on the lips
+while they are red! She's _young_!"
+
+"Youth doesn't excuse folly," said grandfather severely.
+
+"It exudes it, however," the other argued.
+
+I turned away, resolutely, from their bickering. I had enough to
+contend with besides them--for suddenly I had begun wondering what on
+earth mother _would_ say, after she'd said: "Grace, you amaze me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MAITLAND TAIT
+
+
+The only difference between the houses in West Clydemont Place and
+museums was that there was no admission fee at the front door.
+Otherwise they were identical, for the "auld lang syne" flavor greeted
+you the moment you put foot into that corner of the town. You knew
+instinctively that every family there owned its own lawn-mower and
+received crested invitations in the morning mail.
+
+Yet it was certainly not fashionable! Indeed, from a
+butler-and-porte-cochère standpoint it was shabby. The business of
+owning your own lawn-mower arises from a state of mind, rather than
+from a condition of finances, anyway. We were poor, but aloof--and
+strung high with the past-tension. The admiral, the ambassador and
+the artist rubbed our aristocracy in on any stray caller who lingered
+in the hall, if they had failed to be pricked by it on the point of
+grandfather's jeweled sword in the library.
+
+I saw 1919 through a new vista as I came up to it in the late dusk,
+following the Flag Day reception, and I wondered what the effect of
+all this antiquity would be on the mind of a man who so clearly
+disregarded the grandfather clause in one's book of life. I hoped that
+he would be amused by it, as he had been by the long-tailed D. A. R.
+badge on my coat.
+
+"You'd better have a little fire kindled up in the library, Grace,"
+mother observed chillingly just after lunch that next afternoon. "It's
+true it's June, but--"
+
+"But the day _is_ bleak and raw," I answered, with a sudden cordial
+sense of relief that she was on speaking terms with me again.
+"Certainly I'll tell Cicely to make a fire."
+
+"The dampness of the day has nothing at all to do with it," she kept
+on with frozen evenness. "I suggested it because a fire is a safe
+place for a girl to look into while her profile is being studied."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+Her sense of outraged propriety suddenly slipped its leash.
+
+"It keeps her eyes looking earnest, instead of _eager_," she burst
+out. "And any girl who'd let a man--allow a man--to run away from a
+party whose very magnificence was induced on his account, and take her
+off to tea in a public place, and come to see her the very next
+afternoon--a stranger, and a foreigner at that--is--is playing with
+fire!"
+
+"You mean she'd better be playing with fire while he's calling?" I
+asked quietly. "We must remember to have the old andirons polished,
+then."
+
+She stopped in her task of dusting the parlor--whose recesses without
+the shining new player-piano suddenly looked as bare and empty as a
+shop-window just after the holidays.
+
+"You wilfully ignore my warning," she declared. "If this man left that
+party yesterday and comes calling to-day, of course he's impressed!
+And if you let him, of course _you're_ impressed. This much goes
+without saying; but I beg you to be careful, Grace! You happen to have
+those very serious, _betraying_ eyes, and I want you to guard them
+while he's here!"
+
+"By keeping my hands busy, eh?" I laughed. "Well, I'll promise,
+mother, if that'll be any relief to you."
+
+So the fire was kindled, as a preventative measure; and at four
+o'clock he came--not on the stroke, but ten minutes after. I was glad
+that he had patronized the street railway service for this call, and
+left the limousine in its own boudoir--you couldn't imagine anything
+so exquisite being kept in a lesser place--or I'm afraid that our
+little white-capped maid would have mistaken it for an ambulance and
+assured him that nobody was sick. Gleaming blue limousines were scarce
+in that section.
+
+"Am I early?" he asked, after we had shaken hands and he had glanced
+toward the fire with a little surprised, gratified expression. "I
+wasted a quarter of an hour waiting for this car."
+
+Now, a woman can always forgive a man for being late, if she knows he
+started on time, so with this reassurance I began to feel at home with
+him. I leaned over and stirred the fire hospitably--to keep my eyes
+from showing just how thoroughly at home I felt.
+
+"No--you are not early. I was expecting you at four, and--and mother
+will be down presently."
+
+He studied my profile.
+
+"I was out at the golf club dance last night," he said, after a pause,
+with a certain abruptness which I had found characterized his more
+important parts of speech. I stood the tongs against the marble
+mantlepiece and drew back from the flame.
+
+"Was it--enjoyable?" I asked politely.
+
+"Extremely. Mrs. Walker was there, and she had very kindly forgiven
+me for my defection of the afternoon. In fact, she was distinctly
+cordial. She talked to me a great deal of you and your mother."
+
+My heart sank. It always does when I find that my women friends have
+been talking a great deal about me.
+
+"Oh, did she?"
+
+"She is very fond of you, it seems--and very puzzled by you."
+
+"Puzzled because I work for the _Herald_?"
+
+I spoke breathlessly, for I wondered if Mrs. Walker had told of the
+Guilford Blake puzzle, as well; but after one look into the candid
+half-amused eyes I knew that this information had been withheld.
+
+"Well, yes. She touched upon that, among other things."
+
+"But what things?" I asked impatiently. At the door I heard the maid
+with the tea tray. "I suppose, however, just the usual things that people
+tell about us. That we have been homeless and penniless--except for
+this old barn--since I was a baby, and that, one by one, the pomps of
+power have been stripped from us?"
+
+He looked at me soberly for a moment.
+
+"Yes, she told me all this," he said.
+
+"And that our historic rosewood furniture was sold, years ago, to Mrs.
+Hartwell Gill, the grocer's wife who used the chair-legs as
+battering-rams?"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Against Oldburgh's unwelcoming doors? Yes."
+
+"And that--"
+
+"That you belonged to the most aristocratic family in the whole
+state," he interrupted softly. "So aristocratic that even the
+possession of the rosewood furniture is an open sesame! And of course
+this state is noted for its blooded beings, even in my own country."
+
+"Really?" I asked, with a little gratified surprise.
+
+"Indeed, yes!" he replied earnestly. "And Mrs. Walker told me
+something that I had not in the least thought to surmise--that you are
+a descendant of the famous artist, Christie. I don't know why I
+happened not to think about it, for the name is one which an
+Englishman instantly connects with portrait galleries. He was very
+favorably known on our side."
+
+"Yes. He had a very remarkable--a very pathetic history," I said.
+
+Turning around, he glanced at a small portrait across the room.
+
+"Is--is this James Christie?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. There is a larger one in the hall."
+
+He walked across the room and examined the portrait. After a
+perfunctory survey, which did not include any very close examination
+of the strong features--rugged and a little harsh, and by no means the
+glorious young face which had been a lodestar to Lady Frances Webb--he
+turned back to me. For a moment I fancied that he was going to say
+something bitter and impulsive--something that held a tinge of
+mass-hatred for class, but his expression changed suddenly. I saw
+that his impulse had passed, and that what he would say next would be
+an afterthought.
+
+"Do you care for him--for this sort of thing?" he asked, waving his
+hand carelessly toward the other portraits in the room and toward the
+sword, lying there in an absurd sort of harmlessness beneath its glass
+case. "I imagined that you didn't."
+
+He spoke with a tinge of disappointment. Evidently he was sorry to
+find me so pedigreed a person.
+
+"I do--and I don't," I answered, coming across the room to his side
+and drawing back a curtain to admit a better light. "I certainly care
+for--him."
+
+"The artist?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But why?" he demanded, with a sudden twist of perversity to his big
+well-shaped mouth. "To me it seems such a waste of time--this
+sentiment for romantic antiquity. But I am not an unprejudiced judge,
+I admit. I have spent all the days of my life hating aristocracy."
+
+"Oh, my feeling for him is not caused by his aristocracy," I made
+haste to explain. "And indeed, the Christies were very commonplace
+people until he elevated them into the ranks of fame. He was not only
+an artist of note, but he was a very strong man. It is this part of
+his history that I revere, and when I was a very young girl I
+'adopted' him--from all the rest of my ancestors--to be the one I'd
+care for and feel a pride in."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Of course you don't understand," I attempted to explain with a little
+flurry. "No _man_ would ever think of adopting an ancestor, but--"
+
+He interrupted me, his smile growing gentler.
+
+"I think I understand," he said. "I did the selfsame thing, years ago
+when I was a boy. But my circumstances were rather different from
+yours. I selected my grandfather--my mother's father, because he was
+clean and fine and strong! He was--he was a collier in Wales."
+
+"A collier?" I repeated, wondering for the moment over the
+unaccustomed word.
+
+"A coal-miner," he explained briefly. "He was honest and
+kind-hearted--and I took him for my example. He left me no heirlooms
+that--"
+
+I turned away, looking at the room's furnishings with a feeling of
+reckless contempt.
+
+"Heirlooms are--are a nuisance to keep dusted!" I declared quickly.
+
+"Yet you evidently like them," he said, as we took our places again
+before the fire, and the little maid, in her nervous haste, made an
+unnecessary number of trips in and out. The firelight was glowing
+ruddily over the silver things on the tea-table, and looking up, I
+caught his eyes resting upon the ring I wore--Guilford's scarab. "That
+ring is likely an heirloom?"
+
+"Yes--the story goes that Mariette himself found it," I elucidated,
+slipping the priceless old bit of stone off my hand and handing it to
+him to examine.
+
+But as I talked my head was buzzing, for grandfather was at one ear
+and Uncle Lancelot was at the other.
+
+"Grace, you ought to tell him!" grandfather commanded sharply. "Tell
+him this minute! Say to him: 'This ring is an heirloom in the family
+of my betrothed.'"
+
+"_Rot_, parson!" came in Uncle Lancelot's dear comforting tones.
+"Shall a young woman take it for granted that every man who admires
+the color of her eyes is interested in her entire history?--Why, it
+would be absolutely indelicate of Grace to tell this man that she's
+engaged. It's simply none of his business."
+
+"You'll see! You'll see!" grandfather warned--and my heart sank, for
+when a member of your family warns you that you'll see, the sad part
+of it is that you _will_ see.
+
+"It's a royal scarab, isn't it?" Maitland Tait asked, turning the
+ancient beetle over and viewing the inscription on the flat side.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--oh, I don't know, I'm sure," I answered in a bewildered
+fashion. Then suddenly I demanded: "But what else did Mrs. Walker tell
+you? Surely she didn't leave off with the mention of one illustrious
+member of my family."
+
+"She told me about your great-aunt--the queer old lady who left James
+Christie's relics to you because you were the only member of the
+family who didn't keep a black bonnet in readiness for her funeral,"
+he laughed, as he handed me back the ring.
+
+"They were just a batch of letters," I corrected, "not any other
+relics."
+
+"Yes--the letters written by Lady Frances Webb," he said.
+
+It was my turn to laugh.
+
+"I knew that Mrs. Walker must have been talkative," I declared. "She
+didn't tell you the latest touch of romance in connection with those
+letters, did she?"
+
+He was looking into the fire, with an expression of deep
+thoughtfulness; and I studied his profile for a moment.
+
+"Late romance?" he asked in a puzzled fashion, as he turned to me.
+
+"A publishing company has made me an offer to publish those letters!
+To make them into a stunning 'best-seller,' with a miniature portrait
+of Lady Frances Webb, as frontispiece, I dare say, and the
+oftenest-divorced illustrator in America to furnish pictures of
+Colmere Abbey, with the lovers mooning 'by Norman stone!'"
+
+He was silent for a little while.
+
+"No, she didn't tell me this," he finally answered.
+
+"Then it is because she doesn't know it!" I explained. "You see,
+mother is still too grieved to mention the matter to any one by
+telephone--and it happens that she hasn't met Mrs. Walker face to face
+since the offer was made."
+
+"And--rejected?" he asked, with a little smile.
+
+"Yes, but how did you know?"
+
+The smile sobered.
+
+"There are some things one _knows_," he answered. "Yet, after all,
+what are you going to do with the letters? If you don't publish them
+now how are you going to be sure that some other--some future
+possessor will not?"
+
+"I can't be sure--that's the reason I'm not going to run any risks," I
+told him. "I'm going to burn them."
+
+He started.
+
+"But that would be rather a pity, wouldn't it?" he asked. "She was
+such a noted writer that I imagine her letters are full of literary
+value."
+
+"It would be a cold-blooded thing for _me_ to do," I said
+thoughtfully. "I've an idea that some day I'll take them back to
+England and--and burn them there."
+
+"A sort of feeling that they'd enjoy being buried on their native
+soil?" he asked.
+
+"I'll take them to Colmere Abbey--her old home," I explained. "To me
+the place has always been a house of dreams! She describes portions of
+the gardens in her letters--tells him of new flower-beds made, of new
+walls built--of the sun-dial. I have always wanted to go there, and
+some day I shall bundle all these letters up and pack them in the
+bottom of a steamer trunk--to have a big bonfire with them on the very
+same hearth where she burned his."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+IN THE FIRELIGHT
+
+
+Again there was a silence, but it was not the kind of silence that
+gives consent. On the other hand his look of severity was positively
+discouraging.
+
+"If I may inquire, what do you know about this place--this Colmere
+Abbey?" he finally asked. "I mean, do you know anything of it in this
+century--whether it's still standing or not--or anything at all save
+what your imagination pictures?"
+
+It was a rather lawyer-like query, and I shook my head, feeling
+somewhat nonplused.
+
+"No--nothing!"
+
+"Then, if you should go to England, how would you set about finding
+out?"
+
+"Oh, that wouldn't be so bad. In fact, I believe it would be a unique
+experience to go journeying to a spot with nothing more recent than a
+Washington Irving sketch as guide-book."
+
+He looked at me half pityingly.
+
+"You might be disappointed," he said gently. "For my part, I have
+never taken up a moment's time mooning about people's ancestral
+estates--I've had too much real work to do--but I happen to know that
+residents often fight shy of tourists."
+
+I had a feeling of ruffled dignity.
+
+"Of course--tourists!" I answered, bridling a little.
+
+"Because," he hastened to explain, "the owners of the places can so
+often afford to live at home only a short season every year. Many of
+them are poor, and the places they own are mortgaged to the turrets."
+
+"And the shut-up dilapidation would not make pleasant sight-seeing for
+rich Americans?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I happen to have heard some such report about this Colmere
+Abbey--years ago," he said.
+
+"Are you sure it was the same place?" I asked, my heart suddenly
+bounding. "Colmere, in Lancashire?"
+
+"Quite sure! I was brought up in Nottingham, and have heard of the
+estate, but have never seen it."
+
+"Then it's still there--my house of dreams?"
+
+For a moment I waited, palpitatingly, for him to say more, but he only
+looked at me musingly, then back into the fire. After a second he
+leaned forward, shaking his unruly hair back, as if he were trying to
+rid himself from a haunting thought.
+
+"I--I can't talk about 'landed gentry,'" he said, turning to me with a
+quick fierceness. "I grow violent when I do! You've no idea how
+hateful the whole set is to a man who has had to make his own way in
+the world--against them!" Then, after this burst of resentment, his
+mood seemed to change. "But we must talk about England," he added,
+with a hasty gentleness. "There are so many delightful things we can
+discuss! Tell me, have you been there? Do you like it?"
+
+I nodded an energetic affirmative.
+
+"I have been there and--I love it! But it was a long while ago, and I
+wasn't old enough to understand about the things which would interest
+me most now."
+
+"A long while ago?"
+
+"Yes--let me see--ten years, I believe! At all events it was the
+summer after we sold the rosewood furniture--and the piano. Mother was
+so amazed at herself for having the nerve to part with the grand piano
+that she had to take a sea-voyage to recover herself."
+
+"But what a happy idea!" he commented seriously, as he looked around.
+"A grand piano would really be a nuisance in this cozy room."
+
+For a long time afterward I wondered whether my very deepest feeling
+of admiration for him had been born at the moment I looked at him
+first, or when he made this remark. But I've found it's as hard to
+ascertain Love's birthday as it is to settle the natal hour of a
+medieval author.
+
+"How long have you been in America?" I next asked, abruptly; and he
+looked relieved.
+
+"Ten years--off and on," he answered briskly. "Most of the time in
+Pittsburgh, for my grandfather had chosen that place for me. He would
+not have consented to my going back to England often, if he had lived,
+but I have been back a number of times, for I love journeying over the
+face of the earth--and, strange as it may seem, I love England. Some
+day--when things--when my affairs--are in different shape over there I
+shall go back to stay."
+
+The tea things were finally arranged by Cicely's nervous dusky hands,
+and with a cordial showing of the letter-but-not-spirit-hospitality,
+mother appeared, in the wake of the steaming kettle.
+
+Her expression said more plainly than words that she would do the
+decent thing or die.
+
+"I was--" she began freezingly, as we both arose to greet her, "I
+was--"
+
+She took in at a glance Maitland Tait's gigantic size, and shrank
+back--a little frightened. Then his good clothes reassured her. A
+giant who patronizes a good New York tailor is a _cut_ above an
+ordinary giant, she evidently admitted.
+
+"--detained," she added, with the air of making a concession. She
+accepted the chair he drew up for her, and his down-to-the-belt grace
+began making itself conspicuous. She looked him over, and her
+jaundiced eye lost something of its color.
+
+"--_unavoidably_," she plead, with a regretful prettiness.
+
+Then she made the tea, and when she saw how caressingly the big man's
+smooth brown hands managed his cup, the remaining thin layer of ice
+over her cordiality melted, and she became the usual charming mother
+of a marriageable daughter. While she was at all times absolutely
+loyal to Guilford, still she knew that a mother's appearance is a
+daughter's asset, and she had always laid up treasures for me in this
+manner.
+
+"You were at Mrs. Walker's Flag Day reception yesterday Grace tells
+me?" she inquired as casually as if a bloody battle of words had not
+been waging over the occurrence all morning. "And Mrs. Kendall was
+talking with me this morning on the telephone about her dance Friday
+night--"
+
+She paused, looking at him interrogatively, because that had been Mrs.
+Kendall's own emotion when mentioning the matter.
+
+Mr. Tait glanced toward me.
+
+"Ah, yes--I had forgotten! You will be there?"
+
+"Yes," I answered hastily, and mother came near scalding the kitten on
+the rug in the excess of her surprise. All morning, through the smoke
+of battle, I had sent vehement protestations against having my white
+tissue redraped for the occasion, declaring that nothing could induce
+me to go.
+
+"I find that one usually goes to no less than three social affairs on
+a trip like this--and I--well, I'm afraid I'm rather an unsocial
+brute! I select the biggest things to go to, for one has to talk
+less, and there is a better chance of getting away early," he
+explained.
+
+Mother left the room soon after this--the sudden change of decision
+about the dance had been too much for her. Even perfect clothes and
+well-bred hands and a graceful waist-line could not make her forgive
+this in me. She made a hasty excuse and left.
+
+Then our two chairs shifted themselves back into their former
+positions before the fire and we talked on in the gloaming. Somehow,
+since that outburst of anger against the present-day owners of Colmere
+Abbey, the vision of the big man--the cave-man--in the coat of
+goatskins, with the bare knees and moccasins, had come back
+insistently.
+
+Yet it was just a vision, and after a few minutes it vanished--after
+the manner of visions since the world began. He looked out the window
+at the creeping darkness and rose to go.
+
+"Then I'm to see you Friday night?" he asked at parting.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm--I'm glad."
+
+There had been a green and gold sunset behind the trees in the park
+across the way, and after a moment more he was lost in this weird
+radiance; then he suddenly came to view again, in the glow of electric
+light at the corner.
+
+A car to the city swung round the curve just then, and a dark figure,
+immensely tall in the shadows, stepped from the pavement. I heard the
+conductor ring up a fare--a harsh metallic note that indicated
+_finality_ to me--then silence.
+
+"He's gone--gone--gone!" something sad and lonesome was saying in my
+heart. "What if he should be suddenly called back to Pittsburgh and I
+shouldn't see him again?"
+
+To see the very last of him I had dropped down beside the front door,
+with my face pressed against the lace-veiled glass, and so intent was
+I upon my task that I had entirely failed to hear mother's agitated
+step in the hall above.
+
+I was brought to, however, when I heard the click of the electric
+switch upon the stair. The lower hall was suddenly flooded with light.
+I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could. Mother's face, peering
+at me from the landing, was already pronouncing sentence.
+
+"Grace, I was just coming down to tell you that--well, I am compelled
+to say that you _amaze_ me!" she emitted first, with a tone of utter
+hopelessness struggling through her newly-fired anger. "Down on your
+knees in your new gown--and gowns as scarce as angels' visits, too!"
+
+"Ah--but--I'm sorry--"
+
+"What on earth are you doing there?" she kept on.
+
+I turned to her, blinking in the dazzling light.
+
+"I was--let me see?--oh, _yes_!" A brilliant thought had just come to
+me. "--I was looking for the _key_!"
+
+Now, I happen to hate a liar worse than anything else on earth, and I
+hated myself fervently as I told this one.
+
+"The key?" she asked suspiciously.
+
+"It--it had fallen on the floor," I kept on, for of course whatever
+you do you must do with all your might, as we learn in copy-book days.
+
+"And it never occurred to you to turn on the light?" she demanded,
+coming up and looking at me as if to see the extent of disfigurement
+this new malady had wrought. "Down on your knees searching for a
+key--and it never occurred to you to turn on the light?"
+
+"No," I answered, thankful to be able to tell the truth again. "No, it
+never once occurred to me!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+TWO MEN AND A MAID
+
+
+Have you ever thought that the reason we can so fully sympathize with
+certain great people of history, and not with others, is because we
+are occasionally granted a glimpse of the emotion our favorites
+enjoyed--or endured?
+
+For instance, no man who has ever knocked the "t" out of "can't"
+stands beside Napoleon's tomb without a sensation which takes the form
+of: "_We_ understand each other--don't we, old top?"
+
+And every year at spring-time, Romeo is patted on the back
+condescendingly by thousands of youths--so susceptible that they'd
+fall in love with anything whose skirt and waist met in the back.
+
+The night of the Kendalls' dance _I_ knew what Cleopatra's cosmic
+consciousness resembled--exactly. I knew it from the moment she
+glanced away from the glint of her silver oars of the wonderful Nile
+barge (because the glint of Antony's dark eyes was so much more
+compelling) to the hour she recklessly unwrapped the basket of figs in
+her death chamber! I ran the whole gamut of her emotions--'twixt love
+and duty--and I came out of it feeling that--well, certainly I felt
+that a conservatory is a room where eavesdroppers hear no good of
+themselves!
+
+"Is everybody crazy to-night?" I whispered to Guilford, as we paused
+for a moment before the dancing commenced just outside one of the
+downy, silky reception rooms--quite apart from the noisy ballroom
+farther back--and I saw two people inside. The girl was seated before
+the piano, and was singing softly, while the man stood at her side,
+listening with a rapt expression.
+
+"Who would ever have thought that _that_ girl would be singing _that_
+song to _that_ man?" I asked, with a quivery little feeling that the
+world was going topsyturvy with other people besides me. The singer
+was the careless, rowdy golf champion of the state, and the man
+listening was Oldburgh's astonishing young surgeon--the kind who never
+went anywhere because it was said he laid aside his scalpel only when
+he was obliged to pick up his fork.
+
+"What is the song?" Guilford inquired, looking in, then drawing back
+softly and dropping the curtain that screened the doorway.
+
+"_Caro Mio Ben!_"
+
+"A love song?"
+
+I smiled.
+
+"Well, rather!"
+
+Then somebody crowded up and separated Guilford and me. I stood there
+listening to the lovely Italian words, and wondering if the night were
+in truth bewitched. Guilford, under the impulse induced by a white
+tissue gown and big red roses, had suffered an unusual heart-action
+already and had spent half an hour whispering things in my ear which
+made me feel embarrassed and ashamed. The only thing which can
+possibly make a lifelong engagement endurable is the brotherly
+attitude assumed by the lover in his late teens.
+
+"Come in," he said, elbowing his way back to me through the chattering
+throng of the autumn's débutantes, after a few minutes. "I hear the
+violins beginning to groan--and say--_haven't_ they got everybody
+worth having here to-night?"
+
+"I don't--know," I replied vaguely, looking up and down the length of
+the room that we were entering.
+
+"But--there's Mrs. Walker, and there are the Chester girls, and Dan
+Hunter, just back from Africa--and--"
+
+"Certainly they've got a fine selection of Oldburgh's solid,
+rolled-gold ornaments," I commented dryly, as my eyes searched the
+other side of the room.
+
+"Oh, besides local talent in plenty to create some excitement, there's
+an assortment of imported artists," he went on. "That French fellow,
+d'Osmond, has been teaching some of the kids a new figure and they're
+going to try it to-night. Have you met him?"
+
+"Yes, indeed--oh, no, of course I haven't met him, Guilford!" I
+answered impatiently. "How could I meet a stray French nobleman? The
+society editor is _his_ Boswell."
+
+He turned away, hurt at my show of irritation, but I didn't care. I
+was in that reckless mood that comes during a great fire, or a storm
+at sea, or any other catastrophe when the trivialities of living fade
+into pygmy proportions before the vast desire for mere life.
+
+"And there's that Consolidated Traction Company fellow," he said
+humbly, calling my attention to a bunch of new arrivals at the doors
+of the ballroom. "What's his name?"
+
+"Maitland Tait."
+
+"Have you met him?" he inquired.
+
+Now usually Guilford is not humble, nor even very forgiving, so that
+when he turned to me again and showed that he was determined to be
+entertaining, I glanced at a mirror we happened to be passing. How
+easy it would be to keep men right where we wanted them if life could
+be carried on under frosted lights, in white tissue gowns, holding big
+red roses!
+
+"Yes, I've met him," I answered giddily. "He was at Mrs. Walker's Flag
+Day reception Tuesday--and he brought me to town in his car, then came
+calling Wednesday afternoon, and--"
+
+Guilford had stopped still and was looking at me as if anxious to know
+when I'd felt the first symptoms.
+
+"Oh, it's true," I laughed desperately.
+
+"Then why----"
+
+"Didn't I tell you?"
+
+"Yes--that is, you might have mentioned it. Of course, it really makes
+no difference--" He smiled, dismissing it as a triviality.
+
+Gentle reader, I don't know whether your sympathies have secretly been
+with Guilford all the time or not--but I know that mine were
+distinctly with him at that moment. If there is ever a season when a
+woman's system is predisposed toward the malady known as sex love, it
+is when some man is magnanimous about another man. And Guilford's
+manner at that instant was magnanimous--and I already had fifty-seven
+other varieties of affection for him! I decided then, in the twinkling
+of my fan chain, which I was agitating rather mercilessly, that if
+Guilford were the kind of a man I _could_ love, he'd be the very man I
+should adore.
+
+--But he wasn't. And the kind I could love was disentangling himself
+from the group around the door and coming toward me at that very
+moment.
+
+"Have you met him?" I asked of my companion, trying to pretend that
+the noise was my fan chain and not my heart.
+
+"No."
+
+In another instant they were shaking hands cordially.
+
+"You'll excuse me a moment?" Guilford asked, turning to me--after he
+and Maitland Tait had propounded and answered perfunctory questions
+about Oldburgh. "I wanted to speak to--Delia Ramage."
+
+I had never before in my life heard of his wishing to speak to Delia
+Ramage, but she was the nearest one to him, so he veered across to her
+side, while I was left alone with the new arrival. This is called
+heaping coals of fire.
+
+"I was glad to see you--a moment ago," Maitland Tait said in that low
+intimate tone which is usually begotten only by daily or hourly
+thought. Take two people who have not seen each other for a week, nor
+thought of each other, and when they meet they will shrill out
+spontaneous, falsetto tones--but not so with two people whose spirits
+have communed five minutes before. They lower their voices when they
+come face to face, for they realize that they are before the sanctum.
+"You're looking most--unusually well."
+
+He was not, but I refrained from telling him so. Most thoughtful men
+assume a look of constraint when they are forced to mingle with a
+shallow-pated, boisterous throng, and he was strictly of this type--I
+observed it with a thrill of triumph.
+
+Yet the festive appearance of evening dress was not unbecoming to him.
+His was that kind of magnificent plainness which showed to advantage
+in gala attire, and I knew that even if I could get him off to live
+the life of a cave-man, occasionally a processional of the tribe would
+cause him to thrust brilliant feathers into his goatskin cap and bind
+his sandals with gleaming new thongs. But then the martial excitement
+of a processional would cause his eyes to light up with a brilliancy
+to match the feathers in his cap, and a dance could not do this.
+
+"Of course you're engaged for the first dance?" he asked, as the music
+began and a general commotion ensued. "I knew that I'd have to miss
+that--when I was late. But"--he came a step closer and spoke as if
+acting under some hasty impulse--"I want to tell you how very lovely
+I think you are to-night! I hope you do not mind my saying this? I
+didn't know it before--I thought it was due to other influences--but
+you are beautiful."
+
+It was at this moment that the silver oars of the Nile barge were
+dimmed under the greater resplendence of dark eyes--and the purple
+silk sails closed out the sky, but closed in heaven. Cleopatra and I
+might have cut our teeth on the same coral ring, for all the
+inferiority _I_ felt to her in that instant.
+
+"I--I'm afraid--" I began palpitatingly, for you must know that
+palpitations are part of the Egyptian rôle--the sense of danger and
+wrong were what raised--or lowered--the flitting space of time out of
+the ordinary lover thrills. "I am afraid----"
+
+"But you must not say that!" he commanded, his deep voice muffled.
+"This is just the beginning of what I wish to say to you."
+
+I wrenched my eyes away from his--then looked quickly for Guilford.
+Grandfather Moore's warnings in my ear were choking the violin music
+into demoniac howls. I don't believe that any woman ever really enjoys
+having two men love her at the same time--and this is not
+contradicting what I've said in the above paragraph about Cleopatra. I
+never once said that I had _enjoyed_ feeling like her--you simply took
+it for granted that I had!
+
+"Aren't you going to dance--with some one?" I asked, turning back
+quickly, as Guilford's arm slipped about me and we started away into a
+heartless, senseless motion. Maitland Tait stood looking at me for an
+instant without answering, then swept his eyes down the room to where
+Mrs. Charles Sefton--a sister-in-law of the house of Kendall--and her
+daughter Anabel were standing. Mrs. Sefton was a pillar of society,
+and, if one _must_ use architectural similes, Anabel was a block. They
+caught him and made a sandwich of him on the spot. I whirled away with
+Guilford.
+
+At the end of the dance I found myself at the far end of the ballroom,
+close to a door that opened into a small conservatory. The dim green
+within looked so calm and uncomplicated beside the glare of light
+which surrounded me that I turned toward it--thirstily.
+
+"I'm going in here to rest a minute, Guilford," I explained, setting
+him free with a little push toward a group of girls he knew. "You run
+along and dance with some of them. Men aren't any too plentiful
+to-night."
+
+"No-o--I'll go with you," he objected lazily, slipping his cigarette
+case from his pocket. "You're too darned pretty to-night to stay long
+in a conservatory alone."
+
+"But I'll not be alone," I replied, with a return of that frightful
+recklessness which tempted me to throw myself on his mercy and say:
+"I'm in love with this Englishman--madly in love! I have never been in
+love before--and I hope I shall never be again if it always feels like
+this!" Instead of saying this, however, I said, with a smile: "Don't
+think for a moment that I shall be alone. Grandfather and Uncle
+Lancelot will be with me."
+
+He looked disgusted.
+
+"What's going on in your conscience now?" he asked, with slightly
+primped lips.
+
+"Something--that I'll tell you about later."
+
+"But has it got to be threshed out to-night?" he demanded irritably.
+"I had hoped that we might spend this one evening acting like human
+beings."
+
+"Still, it seems that we can't," I answered, with a foolish attempt to
+sound inconsequential. "Please let me sit down in here by myself for a
+little while, Guilford."
+
+He turned on his heel, with an unflattering abruptness, and left me. I
+entered the damp, earthy-smelling room, where wicker tables held giant
+ferns, and a fountain drizzling sleepily in the center of the
+apartment, broke off the view of a green cane bench just beyond; I
+made for this settee and sank down dejectedly.
+
+How long I sat there I could not tell--one never can, if you've
+noticed--but after a little while I heard the next dance start, and
+then three people, still in the position of a sandwich, entered.
+
+"How warm it is to-night!" I heard Maitland Tait's voice suddenly
+proclaim, in a fretful tone, as if the women with him were responsible
+for the disagreeable fact. But he drew up a chair, rather meekly, and
+subsided into it. "This is the first really warm night we've had this
+summer."
+
+"It seems like the irony of fate, doesn't it?" Anabel Sefton asked
+with a nervous little giggle. There are some girls who can never talk
+to a man five minutes without bringing fate's name into the
+conversation.
+
+"We had almost no dances during April and May, when one really needed
+violence of some sort to keep warm," her mother hastened to explain.
+"And now, at this last dance of the season, it is actually hot."
+
+"The last big dance, mother."
+
+"Of course!" Mrs. Sefton leaned toward the other two chairs
+confidentially. "A crush like this is too big," she declared.
+
+"Oh, but I like the big affairs," Anabel pouted. "You never know then
+who you're going to run across! Just think of the unfamiliar faces
+here to-night! I happened up on Gayle Cargill and Doctor Macdonald
+down in the drawing-room a while ago--where they'd hidden to sing
+Italian, sotto voce!"
+
+"Then Dan Hunter is here--for a wonder," her mother agreed, as if a
+recital of Oldburgh's submerged tenth were quite the most interesting
+thing she could think up for a foreigner's delectation, "and Grace
+Christie! Have you met Miss Christie, Mr. Tait?"
+
+"Yes," he replied.
+
+"She's gone in for newspaper work," Anabel elucidated.
+
+"Just a pose," her mother hastily added. "She really belongs to one of
+our best families, and is engaged to Guilford Blake."
+
+"But she won't marry him," Anabel said virtuously. "I'm sure _I_ can't
+understand such a nature. They've been engaged all their lives
+and----"
+
+"She doesn't deserve anything better than to lose him," her mother
+broke in. "If he should chance to look in some other direction for a
+while she'd change her tactics, no doubt."
+
+"Oh--no doubt," echoed a deep male voice, the tones as cool as the
+water-drops plashing into the fountain beside him.
+
+"Anyway, it's her kind--those women who would be sirens if the
+mythological age hadn't passed--who cause so much trouble in the
+world," Mrs. Sefton wound up. At fifty-two women can look upon sirens
+dispassionately.
+
+After a while the music began throbbing again, and a college boy came
+up to claim Anabel. The trio melted quietly away. I rose from my chair
+and started toward the door when I saw that Maitland Tait had not left
+with the others. He was standing motionless beside the fountain.
+
+I came up with him and he did not start. Evidently he had known all
+the while that I was in the room.
+
+"Well?" he said, with a certain aloofness that strangely enough gave
+him the appearance of intense aristocracy. "Well?"
+
+"Well--" I echoed, feebly, but before I could go away farther he had
+drawn himself up sharply.
+
+"I was coming to look for you--to say good-by," he said.
+
+"Good-by?" I repeated blankly. "You mean good night, don't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Our eyes met squarely then, and mine dropped. They had hit against
+steel.
+
+"And this is--good-by?" I plead, while I felt that wild wind and waves
+were beating against my body and that the skies were falling.
+
+"Of course!" he answered harshly. "What else could it be?"
+
+I think that we must have stood there in silence for a minute or more,
+then, without speaking another word, or even looking at me squarely
+in the face again, he moved deliberately away and I lost all trace of
+him in the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+AN ASSIGNMENT
+
+
+The next afternoon the city editor again said "Damn" and blushed.
+
+"You needn't blush," I said to him wearily.
+
+He glanced around in surprise.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No! I quite agree with you!"
+
+It was late in the afternoon, but I made no apology for my tardiness,
+as I hung my hat on its nail and started toward my desk.
+
+"Oh, you feel like saying it yourself, eh?" he questioned.
+
+"I do."
+
+He turned then and looked at me squarely. It was very seldom that he
+did such a thing, and as some time had elapsed since his last look he
+was likely able to detect a subtle change in my face.
+
+"What's wrong with you?" he asked gruffly. "If you had _my_ job, now,
+there'd be something to worry over! What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+He turned away, precipitately.
+
+"Gee! Let me get out of here! That's what women always say when
+they're getting ready to cry."
+
+"But I'm not going to cry!" I assured him, as he dashed through the
+doorway and I turned with some relief to my desk, for talking was
+somewhat of an effort.
+
+I raised the top, whistling softly--one can nearly _always_ manage a
+little sizzling whistle--then shrank back in terror from what I saw
+there.--Such chaos as must have been scattered about before sunrise on
+the morning of the First Day! Was it possible that I had been excited
+yesterday to the point of leaving the mucilage bottle unstopped?
+
+I set to work, however, with a little sickening sense of shame, to
+making right the ravages that had taken place.
+
+"A woman may fashion her balloon of anticipation out of silver
+tissue--but her parachute is _always_ made of sack-cloth!" I groaned.
+
+My desk was really in the wildest disorder. The tin top of the
+mucilage bottle had disappeared, the bottle had been overturned, its
+contents had been lavished upon the devoted head of a militant
+suffragette, and she was pinioned tightly to my blotting-pad.
+
+"The elevator to Success is not running--take the stairs," grinned a
+framed motto above the desk.
+
+"You take a--back seat!" I said, jumping up and turning the thing to
+the wall. "What do I care about success, if it's the sort of thing
+connected with typewriters, offices, copy paper and a pot of paste?
+I'm--I'm _des-qua-mat-ing_!"
+
+Never before in my experience had the life of journalistic devotion
+looked quite so black as the ink that accompanies it.
+
+"Mottoes about success ought to belong to men, anyhow!" I said again,
+looking up furiously at the drab back of the frame. "I'm not a man,
+nor cut out for man's work. I'm just a woman, and my head aches!"
+
+I looked again at the militant suffragette, for it was a tragedy to
+me. I had spent a week of time and five honest dollars in the effort
+to get that photograph from a New York studio. She wasn't any common
+suffragette, but a strict head-liner.
+
+"I'm not even a woman--I'm a child to let a little thing like this
+upset me," I was deciding a while later, when the door of the room
+opened again and some one entered.
+
+"You're a big baby!" the city editor pronounced disgustedly, coming up
+to my desk and lowering his voice. "I knew you were going to cry."
+
+"I--I think I may be coming down with typhoid," I said coldly, to
+keep from encouraging him in conversation. "And I've got a terrible
+lot of work to do before it gets quite dark. Really, an awful lot."
+
+He dropped back a few paces, then circled nearer once more.
+
+"Got anything--special?" he asked aimlessly.
+
+His manner was so entirely inconsequential that I knew he had the most
+important thing for a month up his sleeve.
+
+"Do you call this--mess anything special?" I asked. "I've got to do a
+general house-cleaning, and I wish I had a vacuum machine that would
+suck the whole business up into its mouth, swallow it and digest
+it--so I'd never see a scrap of it again."
+
+Have I said before that he was a middle-aged man, named Hudson, and
+had scant red hair? It doesn't make any special difference about his
+looks, since I hadn't taken any rash vow to marry the first
+unfortunate man who crossed my path, but he looked so ludicrously
+insignificant and unlike an instrument of fate as he stood there,
+trying to break the news to me by degrees.
+
+"Hate your ordinary work this afternoon?" he asked.
+
+"I hate everything."
+
+"Then, how would you like to change off a little?"
+
+"I'd like to change off from breathing--if that would accommodate you
+any," I replied.
+
+He made a "tut-tut" admonition with the tip of his tongue.
+
+"You might not find blowing red-hot coals any pleasanter," he warned,
+"and angry little girls like you can't hope to go to heaven when they
+die!"
+
+I rose, with a great effort after professional dignity.
+
+"Mr. Hudson, evidently you have an assignment for me," I said. "Will
+you be so good as to let me know what it is?"
+
+But even then he looked for a full thirty seconds into the luscious
+doors of a fruit stand across the street.
+
+"I want _you_ to get--that Consolidated Traction Company story for
+me," he then declared.
+
+I jumped back as I had never jumped but once in my life before--the
+time when Aunt Patricia announced that she was going to leave James
+Christie's love-letters to me.
+
+"You were at that dance last night!" I cried out accusingly, then
+realizing the absurdity of this I began stammering. "I mean, that I'm
+a special feature writer!" I kept on before he had had time to send me
+more than a demon's grin of comprehension.
+
+"You are and this story is devilish special," he returned. "I want you
+to get it."
+
+His tone, which all of a sudden was the boiled-down essence of
+business, sent me in a tremor over toward the nail where my hat hung.
+It was getting dark and I remembered then that I had heard fragments
+of telephonic conversation earlier in the evening anent "catching him
+there about seven."
+
+"Well?"
+
+He looked at me--with almost a human expression.
+
+"I wasn't at the ball last night--but grapevines have been rustling, I
+admit," he said. "I hate like the very devil to ask you to do it, if
+you want to know the truth, but there's no other way out. I hope you
+believe me."
+
+"A city editor doesn't have to be believed, but has to be obeyed," I
+responded, rising again from my chair where I had dropped to lock my
+desk. "Now, what is it I must do?"
+
+"Well, I have a hunch that you will succeed where Clemons and Bolton
+and Reade have failed," he said. "And the foolish way the fellow acts
+makes it necessary for us to use all haste and strategy!"
+
+"The fellow?"
+
+"Maitland Tait. A day or two ago it was understood that he might
+remain in this town for several days longer--then to-day comes the
+news that he's straining every nerve to get away to-morrow!"
+
+"Oh, to-morrow!"
+
+"It appears that all the smoke in Pittsburgh is curling up into
+question marks to find out when he's coming back--"
+
+"He's so important?"
+
+"Exactly! But to-night he's going to hold a final conference at
+Loomis, and you can catch him before time for this if you'll go right
+on now."
+
+"Very well," I answered, feeling myself in profound hypnosis.
+
+"And, say! You'll have to hurry," he said, pressing the advantage my
+quiet demeanor offered. "Here! Take this hunk o' copy paper and hike!"
+
+I accepted the proffered paper, still hypnotized, then when I had
+reached the door I stopped.
+
+"Understand, Mr. Hudson, I'm doing this because you have assigned it
+to me!" I said with a cutting severity. "Please let that be perfectly
+plain! I shouldn't go a step toward Loomis--not even if it were a
+matter of life and death--if it were _not_ a matter of urgent
+business!"
+
+He looked at me blankly for a moment, then grinned. Afterward I
+realized that he knew this declaration was being made to my own inner
+consciousness, and not to him.
+
+"Don't ask him for a photograph--for God's sake!" he called after me,
+from the head of the steps. "Remember--you're going out there on the
+_Herald's_ account and the _Herald_ doesn't need his picture, because
+it happens that we've already got a dandy one of him!"
+
+I turned back fiercely.
+
+"I hadn't _dreamed_ of asking him for his photograph!" I fired. "I
+hope I have some vestige of reasoning power left!"
+
+At the corner a car to Loomis was passing, and once inside I inspected
+every passenger in the deadly fear of seeing some one whom I knew.
+There was no one there, however, who could later be placed on the
+witness-stand against me, so I sat down and watched the town outside
+speeding by--first the busy up-town portion, then the heavy wholesale
+district, with its barrels tumbling out of wagon ends and its mingled
+odor of fruit, vinegar and molasses, combined with soap and tanned
+hides. After this the river was crossed, we sped through a suburban
+settlement, out into the open country, then nearer and nearer and
+nearer.
+
+All the time I sat like one paralyzed. I hated intensely the thought
+of going out there, but the very speed of the car seemed to furnish
+excuse enough for me not to get off! I didn't have will power enough
+to push the bell, so when the greasy terminal of the line was reached
+I rose quietly and left the car along with a number of men in overalls
+and a bevy of tired dejected-looking women.
+
+"They ought to call it 'Gloom-is,'" I muttered, as I alighted at the
+little wooden station, where one small, yellow incandescent light
+showed you just how dark and desolate the place was. "And these people
+live here!--I'll never say a word against West Clydemont Place again
+as long as I live!"
+
+Without seeming to notice the gloom, the people who had come out on
+the car with me dispersed in different directions, two or three of the
+men making first for the shadow of a big brick building which stood
+towering blackly a little distance up from the car tracks. I followed
+after them, then stopped before a lighted door at this building while
+they disappeared into a giant round-house farther back. The whir of
+machinery was steady and monotonous, and it served to drown out the
+noise my heart was making, for I was legitimately frightened, even in
+my reportorial capacity, as well as being embarrassed and ashamed,
+independent of the _Herald_. It was a most unpleasant moment.
+
+"This must be the office!"
+
+The big door was slightly ajar, so I entered, rapping with unsteady
+knuckles a moment later against the forbidding panels of another door
+marked "Private."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well" is only a tolerant word at best--never encouraging--and now it
+sounded very much like "Go to the devil!"
+
+"I don't give a rap if he _is_ the Vice-President and General Manager
+of the Consolidated Traction Company," I muttered, the capital letters
+of his position and big corporation, however, pelting like giant
+hailstones against my courage. "I'm Special Feature Writer for _The
+Oldburgh Herald_!"
+
+"If you've got any business with me open that door and come in!" was
+the further invitation I received. "If you haven't, go on off!"
+
+The invitation wasn't exactly pressing in its tone, but I managed to
+nerve myself up to accepting it.
+
+"But I have got some--business with you!" I gasped, as I opened the
+door.
+
+Mr. Tait turned around from his desk--a worse-looking desk by far than
+the one I had left at the _Herald_ office.
+
+"Good lord--that is, I mean to say, _dear_ me!" he muttered, as he
+wheeled and saw me. "Miss Christie!"
+
+  [Illustration: "This must be the office"]
+
+"Are you so surprised--then?"
+
+"Surprised? Of course, a little, but--no-o, not so much either, when
+you come to think of it!"
+
+The room was bare and barn-like, with a couple of shining desks, and
+half a dozen chairs. A calendar, showing a red-gowned lady, who in
+turn was showing her knees, hung against the opposite wall. Mr. Tait
+drew up one of the chairs.
+
+"Thank you--though I haven't a minute to stay!"
+
+I stammered a little, then sat down and scrambled about in my bag for
+a small fan I always carried.
+
+"A minute?"
+
+"Not long, really--for it's getting late, you see!"
+
+My fingers were twitching nervously with the fan, trying to stuff it
+back into the bag and hide that miserable copy paper which had sprung
+out of its lair like a "jack-in-the-box" at the opening of the clasp.
+
+He smiled--so silently and persistently that I was constrained to look
+up and catch it. He had seemed not to observe the copy paper.
+
+"If you're in such a hurry your '_business_' must be urgent," he said,
+and his tone was full of satire.
+
+"It is, but--"
+
+I looked at him again, then hesitated, my voice breaking suddenly.
+Somehow, I felt that I was a thousand miles away from that magic spot
+on the Nile where the evening before had placed me. He looked so
+different!
+
+"You needn't rub it in on me!" I flashed back at him.
+
+His chair was tilted slightly against the desk, and he sat there
+observing me impersonally as if I were a wasp pinned on a cardboard.
+He was looking aloof and keenly aristocratic--as he was at the
+entrance of the conservatory the evening before.
+
+"Rub it in on you?"
+
+"I mean that I didn't want to come out here to-night!"
+
+My face was growing hot, and try as I would to keep my eyes dry and
+professional-looking something sprang up and glittered so
+bewilderingly that as I turned away toward the lady on the calendar,
+she looked like a dozen ladies--all of them doing the hesitation
+waltz.
+
+He straightened up in his chair, relieving that impertinent tilt.
+
+"Oh,--you didn't want to come?"
+
+"Of course not!"
+
+I blinked decisively--and the red-gowned one faded back to her normal
+number, but my eyelids were heavy and wet still.
+
+"But--but--"
+
+"Please don't think that I came out here to-night because I wanted to
+see you, Mr. Tait!" I was starting to explain, when he interrupted me,
+the satire quite gone.
+
+"But, after all, what else was there to do?" he asked, with surprising
+gentleness.
+
+"What else?"
+
+"Yes. Certainly it was _your_ next move,--Grace!"
+
+My heart out-did the machinery in the round-house in the way of making
+a hubbub at that instant, but he seemed not to hear.
+
+"I mean to say--I--I expected to hear from you in some manner to-day.
+That is, I _hoped_ to hear."
+
+I gave a hysterical laugh.
+
+"But you didn't expect me to board a trolley-car and run you down
+after night in your own den--surely?" I demanded.
+
+He half rose from his chair, hushing my mocking word with a gesture.
+His manner was chivalrously protecting.
+
+"You shan't talk that way about yourself!" he said insistently.
+"Whatever you have chosen to do is--is--all right!"
+
+I felt bewildered.
+
+"I just wanted to let you know--" I began, when he stopped me again,
+this time with an air of finality.
+
+"Please don't waste this _dear_ little hour in explaining!" he begged.
+"I want you to know--to feel absolutely that nothing you might ever do
+could be misunderstood by me! I feel now that I _know_ you--your
+impulsive, headstrong ways--"
+
+"'Heart-strong,' Aunt Patricia used to say," I modified softly.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Of course--'heart-strong!' I understand you! I understand why you
+refrained from telling me of your engagement, even."
+
+My eyes dropped.
+
+"I didn't--know then."
+
+"You didn't know how I felt--what an unhappy complication you were
+stirring up."
+
+There was a tense little silence, then he spoke again.
+
+"If you are not in love with your fiancé--never have been in love with
+him--why do you maintain the relationship?" he asked, in as careful
+and businesslike a manner as if he were inquiring the price of
+pig-iron.
+
+"Because--because that's the way we do things down here in this
+state," I answered. "What we _never_ have done before, we have a hard
+time starting--and mother idolizes him!"
+
+He smiled--his own particular brand of smile--for the first time.
+
+"Little--goose!" he said.
+
+"Then--last night, when you pretended that you were going straight
+away--"
+
+"I _am_ going away," he broke in with considerable dignity. "That is,
+I have my plans laid that way now."
+
+"Plans?"
+
+"Yes. It's true that my resolution to get away from this town was born
+rather precipitately last night; however, I have been able to make my
+plans coincide."
+
+"Oh!" I began with a foolish little quiver in my voice, then collected
+myself. "I'm glad that you could arrange your affairs so
+satisfactorily."
+
+He looked across at me, his mouth grim.
+
+"Why should I stay?" he demanded. "To-night will see the finishing up
+of the business which brought me to Oldburgh!"
+
+Then, and not until then, I'm afraid, did I really recall the face of
+my city editor--and the fact that he had sent me out to obtain an
+interview, not a proposal.
+
+"Your business with the Macdermott Realty Company?" I inquired.
+
+Maitland Tait looked at me with an amused smile.
+
+"What do you know about that?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing except what all the world knows!"
+
+I managed to inject some hurt feeling into my voice, as if I had a
+right to know more, which in truth I felt.
+
+"And how much does the world know?"
+
+"Merely that you've either planned to shut down this plant here and
+move the whole business to Birmingham, or you've bought up acres and
+acres more of Oldburgh's suburbs and will make this spot so important
+and permanent that the company's grandchildren will have to call it
+home."
+
+"But you--_you_ don't know which I've done, eh?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Then shall I tell you? Are you interested?"
+
+"I'm certainly interested in knowing whether or not you'll--ever come
+back to Oldburgh--but I don't want you to tell _me_ anything you'd
+rather I shouldn't know."
+
+"I believe I want to tell you," he replied, his face softening
+humorously. "We have bought acres and acres more of Oldburgh's
+suburbs, and we're going to have quite a little city out here!"
+
+"There's room for improvement," I observed, looking out through the
+window into the greasy darkness.
+
+"There is and I'm going to see to it that the improvement's made!
+There will be model cottages here in place of those miserable hovels
+that I'm glad you can't see from here to-night--and each cottage will
+have its garden spot--"
+
+"That's good!" I approved. "I love gardens."
+
+"Wait until you see some English ones I have seen," he said
+patriotically.
+
+"I shall--then pattern my own by them! But--these Loomis plans?"
+
+"Model cottages, with gardens--then a schoolhouse, with well-kept
+grounds--a club-room for men--"
+
+"And a _sewing_ circle for their wives," I added contemptuously.
+
+He looked taken aback.
+
+"Don't you like that?" he asked anxiously. "Why shouldn't they sew?"
+
+"But why should they--just because they're women?" I asked in answer,
+and after a moment he began to see light.
+
+"Of course if you prefer having them write novels, model in clay and
+illumine parchments we'll add those departments," he declared, with a
+generous air. "We're determined to have everything that an altruistic
+age has thrust upon the manufacturer to reduce his net income."
+
+"And--occasionally--_you'll_ be coming back to Oldburgh to see that
+the gardens grow silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all
+in a row?" I suggested, but after a momentary smile his face sobered.
+
+"I don't know! There are things--in England--that complicate any
+arrangements, I mean _business_ arrangements, I might wish to make
+just now."
+
+"And Loomis will have to get along without you?"
+
+I had put the question idly, with no ulterior motive in the world, but
+he leaned forward until the arm of his revolving chair scraped against
+my chair.
+
+"Loomis _can_ get along without me," he said, in a low tone, "and
+therefore must--but if I should find that I am needed--_wanted_ here
+in Oldburgh--"
+
+The shriek of the city-bound trolley-car broke in at that instant
+upon the quiet of the room, interrupting his slow tense words; and I
+sprang up and crossed to the window, for I felt suddenly a wild
+distaste to having Maitland Tait say important things to me then and
+there! Something in me demanded the most beautiful setting the world
+could afford for what he was going to say!
+
+"I ought--I ought to catch that car!"
+
+He followed me, his face gravely wondering.
+
+"My motor is here. I'll take you back to town," he said, looking over
+my shoulder into the noisy, dimly-lit scene.
+
+"But--weren't you going to be busy out here this evening?"
+
+"Yes--later. I'll go with you, then return to a meeting I have here."
+
+He rang the bell beside his desk and a moment later the face of
+Collins appeared in the doorway. Outside the limousine was breathing
+softly.
+
+I don't remember what we talked about going in to town, or whether we
+talked at all or not; but when the machine slowed up at the _Herald_
+building and Maitland Tait helped me out, there was the same light
+shining from his eyes that shone there the night before--the light
+that made the glint of the silver oars on Cleopatra's Nile barge turn
+pale--and the radiance half blinded me.
+
+"Grace, you don't want me to say anything to-night--I can see that,"
+he said. "And you are right--if you are still bound to that other man!
+I can say nothing until I know you are free--"
+
+He whispered the words, our hands meeting warmly.
+
+"But, if you are going away!--You'll come and say good-by?"
+
+"If it's to say good-by there'll be no use coming," he answered. "You
+_know_ how I feel!"
+
+"But we must say good-by!" I plead.
+
+He leaned forward then, as he made a motion to step back into the car.
+His eyes were passionate.
+
+"What matters where good-by is said--if we can do nothing but say it?"
+he demanded. "It's _your_ next move, Grace."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+JILTED!
+
+
+When a tempest in a teapot goes out at the spout it is always
+disappointing to spectators!
+
+One naturally expects the vessel to burst--or the lid to fly off, at
+least--and when neither takes place one experiences a little collapsed
+feeling of disappointment.
+
+The barest thought of the pain I was going to inflict upon Guilford
+Blake when I broke my lifelong engagement to him had been sending
+shivers up and down my backbone ever since four o'clock on the
+afternoon of Mrs. Hiram Walker's reception--_then_, when I turned away
+from Maitland Tait's motor-car the night I went to Loomis on urgent
+business, and came face to face with my betrothed standing in the
+shadow of the office door waiting for me--the unexpected happened!
+
+Mr. Blake broke his engagement with me!
+
+"Grace, you amaze me!" he said.
+
+He said it so quietly, with so icy an air of disapproval that I looked
+up quickly to see what the trouble was. Then I observed that he had
+told the truth. I hadn't crushed, wounded, nor annihilated him. I had
+simply amazed him.
+
+"Oh, Guilford! I didn't know you were here!"
+
+"I suppose not."
+
+"But, how does it happen--?"
+
+He motioned me to silence.
+
+"Have the goodness to let me ask the questions," he suggested.
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+"Will you, first of all, tell me what this means?" was the opening
+query, but before I could reply he went on: "Not that _I_ have any
+right to pry into your affairs, understand!"
+
+"Guilford!"
+
+"It's true! My right to question you has ceased to exist!"
+
+"You mean that you have washed your hands of me?" I gasped. After all,
+it was most unusual for Guilford and me to be talking to each other
+like this. I was bewildered by the novelty of it.
+
+He caught the sound of the gasp and interpreted it as a plea for
+quarter. It settled him in his determination.
+
+"I must," he declared.
+
+"By all means--if that's the way you feel about it," I said
+courteously, as if granting a request.
+
+He looked down at me, in a manner that said: "It hurts me more than it
+does you, my child."
+
+"I've endured--things from you before this, Grace," he reminded me,
+"But to-night--why, this out-Herods-Herod!"
+
+Now, if he had looked hurt--cruelly wounded or deeply shocked--I'd
+have been penitent enough to behave decently to him. But he didn't. He
+was simply angry. He looked like the giant when he was searching
+around for Jack and saying: "Fee! Faw! Fum! I smell the blood of an
+Englishman!"
+
+"But what have I done?" I demanded indignantly. "Mayn't a man come to
+see me, and--"
+
+"Certainly he may!"
+
+"And mayn't I--"
+
+"And you may go to see him, too--if you like!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean--I mean," he answered, stammering a little with wrath, "of
+course _you_ may do such things--Grace Christie may--but my future
+wife may not."
+
+For a moment I had a blinded angry paralysis descend upon me. I had a
+great desire to do something to relieve the situation, but I didn't
+know what to do--rather as you feel sometimes at the breakfast table
+when your morning grapefruit hits you squarely in the eye.
+
+"Suppose you try to calm yourself a little and tell me just what the
+trouble is," I said, struggling after calmness for my own individual
+use.
+
+He took off his hat and mopped his brow.
+
+"Your mother suspected last night that something had gone wrong with
+you at that dance," he began explaining, the flash of the street light
+at the corner showing that he had gone quite pale.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"She said that you came in looking wild-eyed and desperate."
+
+"I am not willing to admit that," I said with dignity.
+
+"And, then she knew you didn't sleep!" he kept on. "All day she has
+been feeling that something was amiss with you."
+
+"I see! And when I didn't show up to-night at dinner--"
+
+"She called the office--naturally."
+
+"Naturally!" I encouraged.
+
+"And the fool who answered the telephone consoled her by telling her
+that you had--gone--out--to--_Loomis_!"
+
+He paused dramatically, but I failed to applaud.
+
+"Well, what next?" I inquired casually.
+
+He drew back.
+
+"Then you don't deny it?"
+
+I gave a little laugh.
+
+"Why should I attempt to deny it?" I asked. "Haven't you just caught
+me in the act of coming back in Mr. Tait's car?"
+
+"I have!" he answered in gloating triumph, "that is, I have caught you
+leaving his car--while he made love to you at the curb! This, however,
+doesn't necessarily confirm the Loomis rumor!"
+
+He waited for me to explain further, but I simply bowed my head in
+acquiescence.
+
+"Yes," I said serenely. "He was making love to me."
+
+"And you acknowledge this, too?"
+
+I made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I acknowledge everything, Guilford!--That you and I have been the
+victims of heredity, first of all, and--"
+
+He drew back stiffly.
+
+"Victims? I beg pardon?"
+
+"I mean in this engagement of ours--that we had nothing to do with!"
+
+"But I assure you that I have never looked upon myself in the light of
+a victim!" he said proudly. "And--although I know that it will not
+interest you especially--I wish to add that I have never given a
+serious thought to any other woman in my life."
+
+"Yet you have never been in love with me!" I challenged.
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"I have always felt very close to you," he endeavored to explain. "We
+have so many things in common--there is, of course, a peculiar
+congeniality--"
+
+"Congeniality?"
+
+It struck me that the only point of congeniality between us was that
+we were both Caucasians, but I didn't say it.
+
+"Our parents were friends long before we were born! This, of itself,
+certainly must bring in its wake a degree of mutual affection," he
+explained, and as the words "mutual affection" came unfeelingly from
+his lips I suddenly felt a thousand years further advanced in wisdom
+than he.
+
+"But real love may be--is, I'm sure--a vastly different thing from the
+regard we've had for each other," I ventured, trying not to make a
+display of my superiority in learning, but he interrupted me
+contemptuously.
+
+"'Real love!' What could you possibly know about that?" he asked
+chillingly. "You, who are ready to flirt with any stray foreigner who
+chances to stop over in this city for a week! But for me--why, I have
+never glanced at another woman! I have always understood my good
+fortune in being affianced to the one woman in the whole country round
+who was best fitted to bear the honored name which has descended to
+me."
+
+When he said this I began to feel sorry for him. I was not sorry for
+his disappointment, you understand, but for his view-point. "I was
+never fitted for it, Guilford!" I said humbly. "It's true I come of
+the same sort of stock that produced you--but I am awkwardly grafted
+on my family tree! At heart I am a barbarian."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean--the things you love most I simply forget about."
+
+"I think you do!" he coincided heartily. "You have certainly forgotten
+all about ordinary propriety to-night."
+
+At this I waxed furious again.
+
+"How I hate that word propriety!" I said. "And there's another one--a
+companion word which I never mean to use until I'm past sixty! It's
+_Platonic_!--Those two words remind me of tarpaulins in a smuggler's
+boat because you can hide so much underneath them!"
+
+"I'm not speaking of hiding things," he fired back, as angry as I was.
+"And, if you want to know the truth, I rather admire your honesty in
+not trying to pretend that your flirtation with this Englishman _is_
+Platonic!--Yet that certainly doesn't throw any more agreeable light
+upon this happening to-night.--You _did_ go to Loomis!"
+
+I could scarcely keep from laughing at this, for his anger seemed to
+be centered in one spot--like an alderman's avoirdupois! He was
+thinking far less of losing me than of the indelicacy of my going to
+Loomis.
+
+"Yes," I answered, trying to make my words inconsequential. "Old man
+Hudson sent me!"
+
+His hat, which he had held deferentially in his hand all this time,
+suddenly fluttered to the ground.
+
+"What!"
+
+"Didn't you and mother _know_ that?" I asked.
+
+"That--that it was a business proposition?" he panted.
+
+"Certainly--or I should never have gone! How little you and mother
+know about me, after all, Guilford."
+
+He looked crestfallen for a moment, then his face brightened once more
+into angry triumph.
+
+"But I saw him making love to you!" he summed up hastily, as an
+afterthought.
+
+"Yes--you did," I assured him exultantly.
+
+"And you met him for the first time--let me see? What day was it?"
+
+I ignored the sarcasm.
+
+"Tuesday," I answered. "At four o'clock in the afternoon."
+
+"And not a soul in this town knows a thing about him!"
+
+"Except myself," I protested. "I know a great deal about him."
+
+"Then, do you happen to know--I heard it from a fellow in Pittsburgh
+who has followed his meteoric career as captain of industry--do _you_
+happen to know that he makes no secret of having left England because
+he was so handicapped by disadvantages of birth?"
+
+I hesitated just a moment--not in doubt as to what I should say, but
+as to how I should say it.
+
+"That's all right, Guilford," I answered complacently. "If his
+ancestors all looked like 'gentlemen of the jury' it doesn't lessen
+his own dignity and grandeur."
+
+Now, if you've never been in a circuit court room you can't appreciate
+the above simile, but Guilford was a lawyer.
+
+He looked at me in a dazed fashion for an instant.
+
+"Grace, you don't feel ill--nor anything--do you?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"But I can't believe that you're exactly right in your mind!"
+
+"Well--maybe--"
+
+"I can't believe that to-morrow morning will actually dawn and find us
+asunder," he kept on quickly. "It must be some sort of fantastic
+dream."
+
+"It will seem very--queer, at first, Guilford," I confessed, with a
+preliminary shrinking at the thought of facing mother.
+
+"Queer's no word to use in connection with it," he answered crossly,
+then I heard heavy footsteps in the corridor above, and I took a
+quick step toward him.
+
+"I must go up-stairs," I whispered. "Old man Hudson is making night
+hideous, I know!--But all this is really true, Guilford! And--and you
+must wear _this_ in your vest pocket now!"
+
+I slipped the scarab ring into his hand.
+
+"You are determined?" he asked dully.
+
+"I am--awakened," I replied.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you are not really in love with me--never have been in
+love with me, and never could be except upon certain occasions when I
+was dreadfully dressed-up--where there were red roses and the sound of
+violin music."
+
+"Grace, you are--unkind," he said, with a groping look on his face. "I
+confess that I don't in the least understand you!"
+
+"Then how lucky we are!" I exclaimed. "So many people don't find this
+out until after they've got their house all furnished! We're going to
+be friends always, Guilford."
+
+Then, without waiting for him to say more I turned away and ran
+breathlessly up the steps into the office.
+
+The brilliant light in the city news room met me squarely as I opened
+the door. I blinked a little--then raised my left hand and examined it
+closely. It looked--_awful_! I had worn that same ring ever since I
+was seventeen years old--and I felt as I might feel if I'd just had my
+hair cut off or suffered some other unprecedented loss.
+
+The city editor looked up from his desk.
+
+"Well?" he inquired. "Have you got it?"
+
+I was still gazing at that left hand.
+
+"No," I answered stupidly. "It's _gone_!"
+
+He jumped to his feet.
+
+"Here!" he commanded sharply. "Sit down here!"
+
+I sat down, letting my bag slide to the floor.
+
+"You don't feel sick--do you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You didn't fall off the street-car--did you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You haven't happened to any sort of trouble--have you?"
+
+"No."
+
+The "No--No--No--" was in the monotonous tone a person says
+"Ninety-nine" when his lungs are being examined.
+
+Mr. Hudson looked at me closely.
+
+"Then--the story!" he said.
+
+I blankly reached for my bag, opened it and took out the blank copy
+paper.
+
+"Oh--damn--" he began, then swallowed.
+
+This awakened me from my trance.
+
+"But he _does_!" I exclaimed in triumph. He _is_--and he's _going to
+be_!"
+
+"Here?" the editorial voice called out sharply and joyously. "Here in
+Oldburgh?"
+
+My head bobbed a concise yes.
+
+"Bigger and better than ever?" my questioner tormented.
+
+"A thousand times! Happiness for everybody!--Where there's a family
+there'll also be a House that's a Home--"
+
+The old fellow began scribbling.
+
+"I reckon he means model cottages," he observed sourly. "They all make
+a great pretense of loving their neighbor as themselves in this day
+and time."
+
+"Yes--even if it's a cottage it will certainly be a model one--and
+what more could one desire?" I asked, rambling again.
+
+"Then--what else?"
+
+"And--oh! Gardens! Gardens--gardens!"
+
+He held up his hand.
+
+"Wait--you go too darn fast!"
+
+"I'm sorry! Maybe I have gone too fast!" I answered, as I settled back
+in my chair and my face reddened uncomfortably. "Maybe I have gone too
+fast!"
+
+"You have! You confuse me--talking the way you do and looking the way
+you do! By rights I ought to make you write the story out
+yourself--but you don't look as if you could spell 'Unprecedented good
+fortune in the annals of Oldburgh's industrial career,' to-night!"
+
+"I'm sure I couldn't," I admitted readily. "Please don't ask me to."
+
+"Well--go on with your narrative. What else?"
+
+"Acres and acres! Acres and _acres_!" I impressed upon him. "That's
+what I've always wanted! I love acres so much better than
+neighbors--don't you?"
+
+He paused in his writing.
+
+"Of course the Macdermott Realty Company did the stunt?" he asked,
+scratching his head with his pencil tip and leaving a little black
+mark along the field of redness. "We mustn't forget to mention each
+individual member of the firm.--And then--?"
+
+"A schoolhouse," I remembered.
+
+He glared.
+
+"A schoolhouse?" he questioned. "What for?"
+
+"For the children!" I answered, lowering my eyes. "Did you think there
+wouldn't be any children? How could there be a House that was a Home
+without them?"
+
+"Oh, and this fellow, Tait, is going to see to it that they're
+educated, eh? They're going to have advantages that he didn't
+have--and all that sort of thing? Very praiseworthy, I'm sure!"
+
+I sprang up from my chair.
+
+"I'm going home, Mr. Hudson, please!" I begged. "There _is_ something
+wrong with my head."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"It's different from any other woman's head I ever saw," he admitted
+half grudgingly. "It's _level_!"
+
+"But indeed you're mistaken!" I plead. "Right this minute I'm--I'm
+seeing things!"
+
+Then, when I said this a gentle light stole over his face--such a
+light I'm sure that few people ever saw there--perhaps nobody ever had
+except Mrs. Hudson the day he proposed to her.
+
+"Visions?" he asked kindly. "A House that's a Home--and _English_
+gardens."
+
+"That's not fair!" I warned. "I really ought not to have gone out
+there to-night--and I don't know whether he'll want all this written
+up or not--for I didn't mention the _Herald's_ name in our
+conversation, and--"
+
+"Bosh!" he snapped. "Rot! And piffle! You had a right to go out there
+if I sent you--and of course he can't object to the public knowing
+_now_! Why, I expect any one of the reporters could have got as much
+out of him to-night as you did!"
+
+"Do you really think so?" I asked, from the doorway. "Good night, Mr.
+Hudson. You can easily make two columns out of that, by drawing on
+your--past experience."
+
+He waved me crossly away, without once looking up or saying "Thank
+you" and I caught a car home. Half an hour later, when the curve was
+turned into the full face of West Clydemont Place I still thought I
+was "seeing things." A big motor-car stood before our door, but my
+heart changed its tune when I got closer. It was not a limousine. It
+was a doctor's coupé. Mother had suffered a violent chill.
+
+"Grace, I--have no words!" she moaned, as I came into the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE SKIES FALL
+
+
+Before morning words began coming to her--gradually. First she moaned,
+then muttered, then raged. The chill disappeared and fever came on. By
+daybreak, however, they had both been left with the things that were,
+and mother slipped into her kimono.
+
+"Go bring me the morning paper," she condescended, after the passing
+of the creamery wagon announced that busy life was still going on.
+
+I rushed out into the front yard. The tree-tops were misty with that
+white fog which looks as if darkness were trailing her nightrobe
+behind her; and already on the neighboring lawns the automatic
+sprinklers were caroming across the green as if they had St. Vitus'
+dance.
+
+"On a day like this _nothing_ is too good to be true!" I decided, as I
+picked up the paper and scurried back into the house.
+
+"And got _your_ name to it--Grace Chalmers Christie!" mother wailed in
+despair, as she opened the sheet and saw two columns, broken by a face
+that could do much more sensible things than "launch a thousand ships
+and burn the topless towers of Ilium."
+
+"Let's--see," I suggested, peering over her shoulder and watching the
+words dancing up and down on either side of this face. I couldn't read
+anything, but I managed to catch an occasional "Macdermott" as it
+pranced along in front of an occasional "model cottage."
+
+"Take it!--Burn it!" mother commanded, after she had read enough to
+realize that the thing was entirely too dull to prove interesting to
+any feminine creature.
+
+She thrust it into my hand, and I took it into my bedroom, where I
+began a frenzied search for the scissors.
+
+"I'd rather have you by yourself--away from all suggestions of
+Macdermotts and enlarged traction companies," I whispered, snipping
+the picture from the page and laying it caressingly in the drawer of
+the old-fashioned desk.
+
+There it lay all morning--and I whispered to it and caressed it.
+
+"A picture in a drawer is worth two on the wall," I said once, as I
+pushed it away quickly to keep mother from seeing it. But the fun of
+the secret was not at all times uppermost.
+
+"You are so beautiful--so beautiful," I wailed, as I looked at it
+another time. "I almost wish you were not--so beautiful."
+
+For you must know that no woman in love ever _enjoys_ her man's good
+looks! She loves him for so many other things besides beauty that she
+feels this demand is a needless cruelty--adding to her torture and
+making her love him the more. The only male beauty she can
+ungrudgingly adore is that which she cradles in her arms--the
+miniature of the Big Good Looks which have lured her and tormented
+her!
+
+Then--just for the sake of keeping away from this drawer--I did
+different things to pass away the morning. I said good-by to the
+picture, then went into the library and looked up a word in the
+dictionary. I looked at the picture again after that--to make sure
+that it was still there--then I decided to wash my hair. But I changed
+my mind, for I was afraid the water might drip on the picture and ruin
+it. I looked up a bodkin and some blue baby ribbon--and forgot to gear
+up the corset-cover whose eyelets were gaping hungrily before my eyes.
+While I was trying to remember what one usually does with a bodkin and
+blue ribbon I looked at the picture again--and, well, if you have ever
+been there you can understand; and if you haven't no words could ever
+explain.
+
+Then the telephone in the hall! I tried to keep away from it as hard
+as they say a murderer tries to keep away from the scene of his
+crime.
+
+"I won't call him until afternoon," I kept telling myself. "It would
+be perfectly outrageous. I'll call him from the office--just about
+dusk, and----"
+
+Then I began seeing things again--houses and English gardens, with
+children and schoolhouses in the background, and a smile on the face
+of Pope Gregory, the Somethingth, when he saw the Union Jack and Old
+Glory flying in peace above this vision--until I came to the office in
+time for the one o'clock staff meeting.
+
+The first thing I saw there was a note lying on my desk. It bore no
+post-mark, so I knew that it must have come by messenger.
+
+"What can he have said?" I thought, catching it up and weighing it in
+my hands. "And I wonder why he sent it here to the _Herald_ office,
+instead of out home--and why he addressed it to Miss G. C. Christie,
+as if it were a business communication instead of to Miss Grace
+Chalmers Christie, and why----"
+
+I looked at it again. It was surely from him, for it was written on
+traction company paper. I was glad of this, for I can forgive a man
+for anything--if he doesn't use fancy note-paper with his monogram in
+the corner.
+
+I weighed it, and turned it over several times, and found a vague
+"Habana" fragrance about it--before I ran a hairpin under the flap and
+opened it. It ran as follows:
+
+      "My dear Miss Christie--
+
+      "I have no doubt that you already know every man to be an
+      Achilles--who welds a heel protector out of his egotism. Now,
+      it happens that my most vulnerable spot is a distaste to
+      being made a fool of; and to-day I can realize what a heavy
+      coating of self-importance lay over this spot yesterday to
+      blind me to your real motive.
+
+      "My apology for being such an easy-mark is that it was a case
+      of mistaken identity. I want you to know that, as an actress,
+      you are amazing! I firmly believed that an unusually fair and
+      charming woman was doing me a great honor--but I awoke this
+      morning from my trance to find that a clever newspaper
+      reporter had outwitted me.
+
+      "I understand now why American Woman must be kept as a
+      tormenting side-issue in a man's busy life. He can't afford
+      to let her come to the front or she throws dust in his eyes.
+
+      "Of course the words I said to the vision of my own fancy and
+      the promises I exacted, do not hold good with the reporter. I
+      am leaving Oldburgh at noon to-day, and even if I were not,
+      you would not care to see me again, since I know nothing more
+      that would serve as a front-page article for the _Herald_."
+
+      "Very sincerely yours,
+      "MAITLAND TAIT."
+
+Now, do you know what happens when a woman receives such a letter as
+this--a letter that starts seismic disturbances? Well, first she
+blames her eyesight. She thinks she hasn't read the thing aright! Then
+she carries it off into some dark corner where she hopes she can see
+better, for the strong glare of day seems to make matters worse. If
+there's an attic near, so much the better!
+
+But there was no available attic to the _Herald_ office, so I walked
+into the society editor's private room and slammed the door. I had
+thrust the note into my blouse, so that I'd have a little
+breathing-spell while I was getting it out, and as I tugged with a
+contrary belt pin I breathed very hard and fast.
+
+But the second reading disclosed few details that had not been sent
+over the wires at the first report. Likewise the third, fourth and
+fifth. After that I lost count, and when I regained consciousness
+there was a heavy knock at the door--a knock in the possessive case. I
+rose wearily and admitted the rightful owner.
+
+"Say, Grace," she commenced excitedly, "the old man's asking for
+you--Captain Macauley! He wants you to come down to his den at once
+for an interview. How does it feel to be the biggest thing on the
+_Herald_--for a day?"
+
+I put my hand up to my forehead.
+
+"It feels like----"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Then try to look like it," she suggested. "Why, you look positively
+seasick to-day."
+
+I didn't stop to explain my bearing false witness, but dashed past her
+to the head of the stairs. Captain Macauley's office was on a lower
+floor, and by the time I had gone leisurely down the steps I had
+quieted my eyelids somewhat.
+
+"Well, Grace--how about the illegitimate use of weapons?" the old man
+laughed, lifting his shaggy head from the front page of the day's
+_Herald_, as I entered. "Sit down! Sit down--I want to talk with you."
+
+But for a moment he failed to talk. He looked me over quizzically,
+then turned to his desk and drew a yellow envelope from a pigeonhole.
+It was a telegram. I opened it wonderingly.
+
+"Pauline Calhoun met with a serious motor-car accident yesterday and
+will be compelled to cancel her contract with you." I read. I looked
+at the old man.
+
+"To go abroad this summer for the _Herald_?" I asked.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"We've _advertised_ her going," he said mournfully. "And the
+transportation is here."
+
+"She was to have sailed Saturday week?" I asked, wondering at the
+cunning machinery of my own brain, which could keep on working after
+it was cold and dead! Every inch of my body was paralyzed.
+
+"On the _Luxuria_," he said cheeringly, as he saw my expression. "The
+_Luxuria_, mind you, young lady!"
+
+"And to miss it? How tragic!" I kept on absently, wishing that the
+whole Cunard Line was at the bottom of the sea if he meant to keep me
+there chattering about it all day.
+
+"But it's tragic for the _Herald_," he snapped. "Don't you see we're
+up against it? Here, every paper in the South is doing stunts like
+this--getting out special stuff with its individual brand--and Pauline
+Calhoun can deliver the goods."
+
+"Not with her arm broken," I mused aloud.
+
+He looked at me impatiently.
+
+"The thing is, we've got to send _somebody_ abroad next week--somebody
+whose leg is not broken!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"And Hudson and I have been discussing you. This job you roped in
+last night was more than we'd given you credit for, and--so--well,
+can't you speak?"
+
+I couldn't speak, but I could laugh. I felt as if my fairy godmother
+had taken me to a moving-picture show--where one scene was from
+Dante's _Inferno_ and the next one was from a novel by the Duchess.
+
+"There'd be Italy----" Captain Macauley began, but I shrank back.
+
+"Not Italy!" I begged. "I couldn't go to Italy now."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you'd want me to write a lot of sentimental stuff from
+there--and I'm not sentimental--now."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Italy is the land of lovers," he whispered, his eyes twinkling over
+some 1870 recollection. "You must be in love with _somebody_ when
+you're in Italy--and you can no more hide it than you can hide
+nettle-rash."
+
+"I don't want to go there," I said stiffly.
+
+  [Illustration: "Well, can't you speak?"]
+
+"Well, you wouldn't have to!" he answered readily. "This steamer
+ticket reads from New York to Liverpool."
+
+"Liverpool?" I repeated, as blankly as if geography hadn't been my
+favorite book at school--to eat apples behind.
+
+"And Hudson suggested, since you showed last night that you were keen
+on getting the news of the hour, that you'd likely succeed in a new
+line in England. We've been surfeited on Westminster Abbey and the
+lakes, so we want _news_! Coal strikes and suffragettes--and other
+curses!"
+
+"News?"
+
+"Instead of mooning around Hampstead Heath listening to the newest
+scandal about George Romney and his lady friend, stay strictly in the
+twentieth century and get in line with the militants. Describe how
+they address crowds from cart-tails."
+
+"I see," I said slowly.
+
+But in my attempts to see I think I must have passed my left hand
+across my forehead. At all events, he caught sight of its ringless
+state.
+
+"Grace!" he exclaimed, catching my fingers roughly and scrutinizing
+the little pallid circle left by the ring's long contact--sometimes
+the healthiest, sometimes the deadliest pallor that female flesh is
+heir to! "Does this mean that you've broken off with Guilford Blake?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His face grew grave.
+
+"Then, child, I beg your pardon for talking so glibly about your going
+away!--I didn't know."
+
+"But it isn't that--it's not that I'm worrying over now," I explained
+forlornly. "And Guilford's not hurt! Please don't waste sympathy on
+him. He'll be glad, when the first shock gets over, for I've tormented
+him unmercifully."
+
+"Then--what is it?" he asked, very gently.
+
+I drew away my hand.
+
+"It's--something _else_! And please don't change your mind about
+sending me abroad! I'd like very much to go away from here. Anywhere
+except to Italy."
+
+He reached over and patted my bereft hand affectionately.
+
+"So the something else is the same sort of something, after all?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Then run along and begin getting ready," he said. "Get clothes in
+your head--and salt-sprayed decks on moonlight nights, and wild
+adventures."
+
+I smiled.
+
+"That's right! Smile! I _can't_ send out a representative with a
+broken leg--and I'd prefer not sending out one with a broken heart."
+
+I turned away then, struggling fiercely with something in my throat,
+but just for an instant.
+
+"Broken heart!" I repeated scornfully. "It's not that bad. You mustn't
+think I'm such a fool."
+
+"Well," he said briskly, "whatever it is, cut it out! And, believe me,
+my dear, a steamer trunk is the best possible grave for unrequited
+love."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE JOURNEY
+
+
+Personally, I am of such an impatient disposition that I can't bear to
+read a chapter in a book which begins: "Meanwhile----" Life is too
+short for meanwhiles! But, since the Oldburgh epoch of my career has
+passed, and the brilliant new epoch has a sea-voyage before it--and
+crossing the ocean is distinctly a "meanwhile" occupation--I have
+decided to mark time by taking extracts from my green leather voyage
+book, with the solid gold clasp and the pencil that won't write. (The
+city editor gave me the book.)
+
+The first entry was made at the breakfast table in an unnecessarily
+smart New York hotel. That's one bad feature about having a newspaper
+pay your traveling expenses! You can't have the pleasure of indulging
+the vagabondage of your nature--as you can when you're traveling on
+your hook. The lonely little entry says:
+
+      "_Hate_ New York! Always feel countrified and unpopular
+      here!"
+
+But the next one was much better. It reads:
+
+      "_Love_ the sea, whose principal charm is the sky above it!
+      The one acceptable fact about orthodox Heaven is that it's up
+      in the sky. You couldn't endure it if it were in any closer
+      quarters."
+
+Yet between New York and Heaven there lay several unappreciated
+days--days when I sat for long hours facing strange faces and hearing
+a jumbled jargon about "barth" hours, deck chairs and miscarried
+roses. By the way, a strange trick of fate had filled my own bare
+little stateroom with flowers. I say a trick of fate, because some of
+them were for Pauline Calhoun, whose New York friends had heard of her
+proposed journey, but not of her accident, and some of them were
+addressed to me. I could understand the Pauline blossoms, but those
+directed to Miss Grace Christie were mystifying--very. But I accepted
+them with hearty thanks, and the time I spent wondering over them kept
+me from grieving over the fact that the Statue of Liberty was the only
+person on the horizon whose face I had ever seen before; and they kept
+me feeling like a prima donna for half a week.
+
+"Henry Walker couldn't have sent them," I pondered the first day, as
+the big, big box was deposited inside my door. "He's not such a close
+friend, even though he is the Hiram Walkers' son--and then, New York
+law students never have any money left over for orchids."
+
+I enumerated all the other people I happened to know in New York at
+that time, all of them there for the purpose of "studying" something,
+and not for the purpose of buying vast quantities of the
+highest-priced flower blown, and the mystery only loomed larger.
+
+Still, the question could not keep me entirely occupied between meals,
+and on the very day we sailed, before we had got into the space where
+the union of the sea and sky seem to shut out all pettiness, I got to
+feeling very sorry for myself. Thinking to get rid of this by mingling
+with humanity, I went down into the lounge, where I was amazed to find
+dozens of other women sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. It
+was not an inspiring sight, so after a vain attempt to read, I curled
+my arms round a sofa cushion in the corner of the big room and turned
+my face away from the world in general. The next communication I
+received was rather unexpected. I heard a brisk voice, close beside me
+exclaim:
+
+"My word! A great big girl like you crying!"
+
+It was an English voice--a woman's, or rather a girl's, and as I
+braced up indignantly I met the blue-gray eyes of a fresh-faced young
+Amazon bent toward my corner sympathetically.
+
+"I'm not crying," I denied.
+
+She turned directly toward me then, and I saw a surprised smile come
+over her face.
+
+"Oh, _you_! No--I supposed that you were ill; but the little kid over
+there----"
+
+I saw then that there was a tiny girl tucked farther away into the
+corner, her shoulders heaving between the conflict of pride and grief.
+
+"Cheer up, and I'll tell you a story," the English girl encouraged,
+and after a few minutes the small flushed face came out of its
+hiding-place.
+
+"So you thought I was talking to _you_?"
+
+She turned to me laughingly after the smaller bunch of loneliness had
+been soothed and sent away.
+
+"I was--mistaken----"
+
+"But I'm sure I should have offered to tell you a story--if I had
+supposed that it would do you any good," she continued.
+
+"Almost anything--any sound of a human voice would do me good now," I
+answered desperately, and with that sky-rocket sort of spontaneity
+which you feel you can afford once or twice in a lifetime.
+
+"You're alone?"
+
+"Yes--and miserable."
+
+Her blue eyes were very frank and friendly, and I immediately
+straightened up with a hope that we might discover some mutual
+interest nearer and dearer than the Boston Tea-Party.
+
+That's one good thing about a seafaring life--the preliminaries that
+you are able to do without in making friends. If you meet a nice woman
+who discovers that her son went to Princeton with your father's
+friend's nephew you at once take it for granted that you may tell her
+many things about yourself that are not noted down in your passport.
+
+"You're American--of course?" this English girl asked next.
+
+I acquiesced patriotically, but not arrogantly.
+
+"Yes--I'm American! My name's Grace Christie, and I'm a newspaper
+woman from--from----"
+
+I hesitated, and she looked at me inquiringly.
+
+"I didn't understand the name of the state?" she said.
+
+"Because I haven't told you yet!" I laughed. "I remember other
+experiences in mentioning my native place to you English. You always
+say, 'Oh, the place where the negro minstrels come from!'"
+
+She smiled, and her face brightened suddenly.
+
+"The South! How nice! I _love_ Americans!" she exclaimed, confiding
+the clause about her affection for my countrymen in a lowered voice,
+and looking around to make sure that no one heard.
+
+Then, after this, it took her about half a minute to invite me out of
+my corner and to propose that I go and meet her father and mother.
+
+"We'll find them in the library," she ventured, and we did.
+
+"The South! How nice! We _love_ Americans!" they both exclaimed, as we
+unearthed them a little while later in a corner of the reading-room.
+And before they had confided to me their affection for my countrymen
+they lowered their voices and glanced at their daughter to make sure
+that she was not listening. They made their observations in precisely
+the same tone and they looked precisely alike, except that the father
+had side-whiskers. They were both small and slight and very durably
+dressed.
+
+"Miss Christie is a newspaper woman--traveling alone!"
+
+The daughter, whom they addressed as "Hilda" made the announcement
+promptly, and her manner seemed to warn them that if they found this
+any just cause or impediment they were to speak now or else hereafter
+forever hold their peace.
+
+"Indeed?" said the mother, looking over my clothes with a questioning
+air, which, however, did not disapprove. "Indeed?"
+
+"My word!" said the father, also taking stock of me, but his glance
+got no further than my homesick face. "My _word_!"
+
+But you are not to suppose from the tone that anything had gone
+seriously wrong with his word. He said it in a gently searching way,
+as an old grandfather, seeking about blindly on the mantlepiece might
+say, "My spectacles!"
+
+So realistic was the impression of his peering around mildly in
+search of something that I almost jumped up from my chair to see if I
+could, by mistake, be sitting on his word.
+
+"Isn't she young?"
+
+His twinkling little gray eyes sought his wife's as if for
+corroboration, and she nodded vigorously.
+
+"Indeed, yes, Herbert! But they shed their pinafores long before our
+girls do, remember!"
+
+Then he turned to his daughter.
+
+"My dear, the American women _are_ so capable!" he said, and she threw
+him a smile which would have been regarded as impertinent--on English
+soil.
+
+"Well, I'm sure I've no objections to being an American woman myself,"
+she said.
+
+"And you do not mind the loneliness of the trip you're taking?" the
+mother put in hastily, as if to cover her daughter's remark.
+
+"I didn't--until to-day."
+
+"But we must see to it now that you're not too lonely," she hastened
+to assure me. "Where have they put you in the dining-room, my dear?"
+
+I mentioned my table's location.
+
+"Oh, but we'll get the steward to change you at once!" they chorused,
+when it had been pointed out to them that my position in the salon was
+isolated and far away from the music of the orchestra.
+
+"We're just next the captain's table," Hilda explained. "We happened
+to know him and----"
+
+"And it's inspiring to watch the liberties he takes with the menu,"
+the father said. "I'd best write down our number, though I'll see the
+steward myself."
+
+From his pocketbook he produced a card, scribbling their table number
+upon the back and handing it to me.
+
+I took it and glanced at the legend the face of it bore, first of all,
+for figures are just figures, even though they do radiate out from the
+captain's table.
+
+"Mr. Herbert Montgomery, Bannerley Hall, Bannerley, Lancashire," was
+the way it read.
+
+"Lancashire?" I asked, looking up so quickly that Hilda mistook my
+emotion for dismay.
+
+"Yes, we live in Lancashire, but----"
+
+"But we're going on to London first," Mrs. Montgomery assured me.
+
+"We'll see to it that you're put down, safe and sound, at Charing
+Cross," Mr. Herbert Montgomery finished up.
+
+I looked up again, this time in sheer bewilderment.
+
+"Liverpool's in Lancashire," Hilda explained. "I thought perhaps you
+were afraid we would desert you as soon as we docked."
+
+I laughed in some embarrassment.
+
+"I'm sure I never before heard that Liverpool had any connection with
+Lancashire," I explained. "But I was thinking of--something else."
+
+"Something else--how curious! Why, what else is Lancashire noted for
+in America, pray?"
+
+They were all three looking at me in some excitement, for my eyes were
+betraying the palpitations I was experiencing.
+
+"Do you--does it happen that you have ever heard of Colmere Abbey?" I
+asked.
+
+They drew a deep breath, evidently relieved.
+
+"Do we!" they chorused again, as they had a habit of doing, I learned,
+whenever they were surprised or amused. "Well, _rather_!"
+
+"Surely you don't mean to tell me that it's your own home?" I
+demanded, wondering if coincidence had gone so far, but they shook
+their heads.
+
+"No! Just next-door neighbors."
+
+"Next-door neighbors to the place, my dear young lady," Mr. Montgomery
+modified, glancing at his wife rather reproachfully. "Not to
+the--owner of Colmere!"
+
+But I scarcely heard him. I was trying to place an ancient memory in
+my mind.
+
+"'Bannerley Hall!'"
+
+"That's our place."
+
+"But I'm trying to remember where I have heard of it," I explained.
+"Of course! They all mentioned it at one time or another."
+
+"They?--Who, my dear? Why Herbert--isn't this interesting?"
+
+"Why, Washington Irving--and Lady Frances Webb--and Uncle James
+Christie."
+
+Their questions and my half-dazed answers were tumbling over one
+another.
+
+"James Christie--Grace Christie?" Mrs. Montgomery asked, connecting
+our names with a delighted opening of her eyes. "Why, my _dear_!"
+
+"How fortunate I was!" observed Hilda. "I knew, though, from the
+moment I saw the back of your head that you were no ordinary American
+tourist!"
+
+"They all 'rode over to Bannerley Hall--the day being fine!'" I
+quoted, from one of the letters written by Lady Frances Webb.
+
+"That was in my great-grandfather's time," Mr. Montgomery elucidated.
+"And James Christie was your----"
+
+"Uncle--with several 'greats' between."
+
+"He was even more famous in England than in his own country," Mrs.
+Montgomery threw in hastily, as she saw her husband's eyes
+twinkling--a sure sign, I afterward learned, that he was going to say
+something wicked. "He painted all the notable people of the age."
+
+"He made many pictures of the Lady Frances Webb," Mr. Montgomery
+succeeded in saying, after a while. "I don't know whether it's well
+known in America or not, but--there was--_talk_!"
+
+"Herbert!"
+
+He stiffened.
+
+"It's true, my dear."
+
+"We don't know whether it's true or not!" she contended.
+
+"Well, it's tradition! I'm sure Miss Christie wouldn't want to come to
+England and not learn all the old legends she might."
+
+Then, partly because I was bubbling over with excitement, and partly
+because I wished to ease Mrs. Montgomery's mind on the subject, I
+began telling them my story--from the day of Aunt Patricia's sudden
+whim, three days before her death, down to the packet of faded letters
+lying at that moment in the bottom of my steamer trunk.
+
+"I thought perhaps the present owner of Colmere might let me burn them
+there!" I explained. "I have pictured her as a dear and somewhat
+lonely old dowager who would take a great deal of interest in this
+ancient affair."
+
+The three looked at me intently for an instant, but not one of them
+laughed.
+
+"And you're carrying them back to Colmere--instead of selling them!"
+Mrs. Montgomery finally uttered in a little awed voice, as I finished
+my story. "How extraordinary!"
+
+"Very," said Hilda.
+
+"Most un-American--if you'll not be offended with me for saying so,
+Miss Christie," Mr. Montgomery observed. Then he turned to his wife.
+"My dear, only _think_ of Lord Erskine!" he said.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"But I mustn't!" she answered, with a sad little smile. "I really
+couldn't think of Lord Erskine while listening to anything so
+pretty."
+
+I caught at the name, curiously.
+
+"Lord Erskine?"
+
+"Yes--the present owner of the abbey."
+
+"But--what a beautiful-sounding name! Lord Erskine!"
+
+I looked at them encouragingly, but a hush seemed to have fallen over
+their audible enthusiasm. Mrs. Montgomery's lips presently primped
+themselves up into a signal for me to come closer to her side--where
+her husband might not hear her.
+
+"Lord Erskine is, my dear--the most--notorious old man in _England_!"
+she pronounced--so terribly that "And may the Lord have mercy on his
+soul" naturally followed. Her verdict was final.
+
+"But what has he done?" I started to inquire, the journalistic
+tendency for the moment uppermost, but her lips showed white lines of
+repression.
+
+"He is never _mentioned_!" she warned briefly, and I felt constrained
+to wish that the same punishment could be applied to America's
+ancient sinners.
+
+"Oh, so bad as that?"
+
+She leaned closer.
+
+"My dear Miss Christie, it would be impossible--quite impossible--to
+enumerate the peccadillos of that wretched old creature!"
+
+"Yet you women are always ready to attempt the impossible!" her
+husband interposed, after his noisy attempt at lighting a cigarette
+had failed to drown out our voices.
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"Herbert, I don't understand you, I'm sure."
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Well, I don't understand you, either!" he replied. "For twenty years
+now I have noticed that when two or three women in our part of the
+country are gathered together the first thing they say to each other
+before the men have come into the room is that Lord Erskine's recent
+escapades are positively unmentionable--then they fly at each other's
+throats for the privilege of retailing them."
+
+She continued to stare at him, steadily and with no especial
+unfriendliness in her gaze.
+
+"And the men--over their wine?" she asked casually.
+
+He squared his shoulders.
+
+"That's a very different matter," he declared. "With us he is as
+honest and open a diversion as hunting! The first thing we say in
+greeting, if we meet a neighbor on the road is: 'What's the latest
+news from Lord Erskine?'"
+
+Their eyes challenged each other humorously for another moment, when
+Hilda broke in.
+
+"Don't you think we've given Miss Christie a fairly good idea that she
+mustn't expect to be invited down to Colmere Abbey--and that if she is
+invited, she mustn't go?" she inquired, with gentle sarcasm.
+
+"But, before we get away from the subject--what of the Webb family?" I
+begged forlornly. "Is there no one living who might take an interest
+in the story of Lady Frances?"
+
+I am sure my voice was as sad with disappointment as old Joe
+Jefferson's used to be when he'd plead: "Does _no one_ know Rip Van
+Winkle?"
+
+"Lord Erskine's mother was a Webb," Mrs. Montgomery explained.
+
+"The one fact which can be stated about the old gentleman which need
+not be blushed for," her husband added. "In truth, he has always been
+vastly proud of his lineage."
+
+"About all that he's ever had to be proud of! His own performances in
+social and family life have been--well, what I have outlined to you. I
+happened to know details of some earlier happenings, and all I can say
+is that my own attitude toward Lord Erskine is rather unchristian."
+
+"But I believe Miss Christie was asking about the family history
+further back than the present lord," Hilda reminded them again, and
+her mother took the cue.
+
+"Ah, yes! To be sure! It's the failing of later years, my dear, to
+wish to discuss one's own memories! But of course your interest lies
+in the traditions of the novelist."
+
+"Her history has always held a peculiar interest for me," I replied,
+"first, naturally, on account of the connecting link--then on account
+of the--tragic complication----"
+
+She nodded her head briskly.
+
+"Yes--poor Lady Frances! She was not very happy, if the ancient
+reports be true."
+
+"I judge not--from her letters."
+
+"But her memory is held in great reverence by the educated people
+around in the country," she hastened to assure me. "And there is a
+lovely memorial tablet in the church--quite aside from the tomb! A
+literary club of London had it placed there!"
+
+"And every birthday there are wreaths," Mr. Montgomery threw in,
+evidently hoping to make it up to me for the disheartening gossip of
+the present age; but my dreams were rapidly fading--and I saw my
+chances for having a bonfire on the library hearth at Colmere go up
+in something far more unsubstantial than smoke.
+
+"Well, I'm sure we've told Miss Christie quite enough about our
+neighbors--for a first sitting," Hilda Montgomery broke in at this
+point, as she rose and made a reckless suggestion that we go out and
+walk a little while. "_I_ don't wish to spend the whole afternoon
+talking about a villainous old Englishman!" she confided, when we were
+well out of ear-shot. "One might spend the time talking about
+'Americans--don't you know?'"
+
+"Americans?"
+
+"Yes--charming, handsome, young Americans! You remember the first
+thing I told you was that I loved Americans?"
+
+"Yes--and your father and mother said they did, too--when you weren't
+listening."
+
+She nodded her blond head, in energetic delight.
+
+"They are trying to pretend that it will be a difficult matter to win
+their consent--but it won't."
+
+We steered our course around a group of people who were disputing, in
+Wabash tones, over a game of shuffleboard.
+
+"Consent?" I repeated.
+
+"His name is John McAdoo Carpenter--and he lives at South Bend,
+Indiana--did you ever hear of the place? Did you ever hear of him?"
+
+She caught me by the arm and we walked precipitately over to the
+railing--out of the sound of the Wabash tones.
+
+"If I don't talk to somebody before that sun goes down I'll jump right
+over this railing," she explained. "Here's his picture!"
+
+I took the small blue leather case and looked at the honest, rather
+distinguished face it held.
+
+"But why should your parents disapprove of _him_?" I asked in such
+genuine surprise that she gave me a smile which sealed forever our
+friendship.
+
+"They don't--really! It's just that they like to torment me because he
+happened not to be born in either New York or Kentucky. An
+Englishman's knowledge of America's excellence extends no further
+than that."
+
+Night was coming on--and the sea looked pretty vast and unfriendly. It
+was the lonesome hour, when any feminine thing far away from home has
+to wax either confidential or tearful. Hilda was determined to be
+confidential, and I let her have her say. I went down, after a while,
+and dressed for dinner--listlessly and without heart, but when I went
+into the dining-room a little later and found my place at the table
+next the captain's, the geniality of the family atmosphere I found
+there was vastly cheering.
+
+Mrs. Montgomery was a rather magnificent little gray-haired lady in
+gray satin and diamonds, and her husband had made the evolution from
+the chrysalis state into that of the butterfly by donning his dress
+clothes and putting up a monocle in place of the comfortable reading
+glasses he had worn in the afternoon. Hilda was wholesome and
+sweet-looking but quite secondary to her parents, in a soft blue
+gown.
+
+The subject under discussion when I arrived was evidently the points
+of superiority of one American locality over another and they took me
+into their confidence at once.
+
+"I appeal to you, Miss Christie, as an American," Mr. Montgomery said,
+after the steward who had acted as my pilot was out of hearing.
+"Shouldn't you think now--if you didn't know the difference--_shouldn't_
+you think now that a 'South _Bender'_ was a species of acrobat?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then, try as hard as I might to keep all physical signs of my mental
+infirmity from cropping out in my log-book, the second evening out
+found an entry like this showing itself--written almost entirely
+without effort on my part--like "spirit writing":
+
+      "To-night the orchestra is playing _The Rosary_, and I had to
+      get away from all those people in the lounge!
+
+      "I have come down here--away from it, as I thought, but, no!
+      Those same high, wailing notes that we heard that first
+      day--_that first day_--are ringing in my ears this minute.
+
+      "How they sob--sob--sob! And over the hours they spent
+      together! That's the foolish part of it! I am sobbing over
+      the hours I _might_ have spent with him--and didn't!
+
+      "'Are like a string of pearls to me!'
+
+      "Bah! The hours I spent with him wouldn't make pearls enough
+      for a stick-pin--much less a rosary!
+
+      "To me _Caro Mio Ben_ is a much more sensible little love
+      plaint! I wonder if _he_ knows it? I wonder if he heard that
+      girl singing in the parlor the night of the Kendalls'
+      dance--and if it still rings--rings--rings in his mind every
+      time he thinks of me? Or if he ever thinks of me at all?"
+
+I have inserted this not so much to show you how very critical my case
+was, as to demonstrate how valuable a thing is diversion. Without
+Hilda and the elder Montgomerys I should no doubt have tried to
+emulate Lady Frances Webb in the feat of writing heart-throbs.
+
+The third day's observation was a distinct improvement.
+
+      "The men on shipboard are rather better than the women--just as
+      they are on dry land. True, there are some who have sold
+      Chicago real estate, and are now bent upon spending the rest of
+      their lives running over to Europe to criticize everything that
+      they can not buy. Nothing is sacred to them--until after they
+      have paid duty on it. They revere and caress their own Italian
+      mantlepieces, their cases of majolica, and their collection of
+      Wedgwood--when these are safely decorating their lake-shore
+      homes--but what Europe keeps for herself they scorn.
+
+      "'Bah! I don't see anything so swell about St. Mark's--nor St.
+      Doge's either!' I heard one emit this morning. 'But, old man,
+      you just ought to see the champagne glasses I bought last year
+      in Venice. The governor dined with me the other night, and he
+      said----' etc.
+
+      "Then, there's another sort of Philistine, who goes all over
+      the Old World eating his lunch off places where men have
+      suffered, died, or invented pendulums.
+
+      "'That confounded Leaning Tower _does_ feel like it's wiggling
+      as you go up, but pshaw! it's perfectly safe! Why, I stayed on
+      top long enough to eat three sandwiches and drink a bottle of
+      that red ink you get for half a dollar in Florence!'
+
+      "This doesn't create much of a stir, however, because there's
+      always one better.
+
+      "'Nice little tower down there in Pisa--and you really have to
+      have something like that to relieve your constitution of the
+      pictorial strain in Florence--but you see, after you've eaten
+      hard-boiled eggs on top of _Cheops_, climbing the Leaning Tower
+      is not half so exciting as riding a sapling was when you were a
+      boy!'
+
+      "'And oh, speaking of hard-boiled eggs--have you ever been to
+      Banff, Mr. Smith?' one of the women in the crowd speaks up.
+      'Yes, the scenery in the Canadian Rockies is all right, of
+      course, but just to _think_ of having your eggs perfectly hot
+      and well done in the waters of Banff!'
+
+      "There are other women on board, however, whose thoughts are
+      not on food. They are more amusing by far to watch than the
+      innocent creatures who love Banff. They manage to stay well out
+      of view by strong daylight, then come into the lounge at night,
+      dressed in plumes and diamonds like Cinderella's stepsisters,
+      and select the husbands of sea-sick wives to ask advice about
+      focusing a kodak or going to Gibraltar to buy a mandarin coat!
+
+      "But, as I have said, the men for the greater part are much
+      more interesting than the women--still I have never aspired to
+      a nautical flirtation, for a month after one is past you can't
+      recall the principal's name. You do well if you can remember
+      his nationality."
+
+The entry broke off with this piece of sarcasm, which, after all, is
+actual truth. A friend of mine had such an experience. A month after a
+bitter parting on a moonlit deck one night she came face to face with
+the absent one in a church in Rome--and all she could stammer was:
+"Oh--you _Canadian_!"
+
+The fourth day--after the last vestige of the gulls had been left
+behind--I began to grow impatient. The "meanwhile" aspect of life in
+general was beginning to press down.
+
+      "I wish mother had named me 'Patience,' for I love a joke!" I
+      wrote frantically--with the same feeling of suffocation which
+      caused Lady Frances Webb to rush out to the rose garden where
+      the sun-dial stood, to keep from hearing the clock tick.
+
+      "To me, the inertia which a woman is supposed to exhibit is
+      the hardest part of her whole earthly task! And I don't know
+      what it's for, either, unless to prepare her for a future
+      incarnation into a camel!
+
+      "Yet, if you're a woman, you just must stay still and let
+      your heart's desire slip through your fingers--even if you
+      have to lock yourself up into your bedroom closet to
+      accomplish it!"
+
+And yet, even as I wrote, I wondered what I'd do when I should be back
+in America. Somehow, I didn't exactly fancy myself getting a ticket
+home from New York with stop-over privileges at Pittsburgh--where I
+could spend an exciting time looking up a city directory!
+
+And so the remaining days of the voyage passed. The Montgomery family
+planned to have me go home with them, after a day in London, and
+declared that I could find as much interesting news to write home for
+the _Herald_ from Lancashire as from any other portion of the United
+Kingdom, since one never knew where a fire would be started or a bomb
+discovered through the playful antics of the women who have changed
+the "clinging" sex into the _flinging_ sex; and I had accepted
+fervently--when, on the trip from Liverpool down to London, these
+arrangements were abruptly upset.
+
+We were a little late in landing, and rushed straight to the train,
+where a tea-basket, operated in the compartment which we had to
+ourselves, was giving me the assurance that surely, next to a hayloft
+on a rainy morning, a private compartment in a British train is the
+coziest spot on the face of the earth, when Mr. Montgomery suddenly
+dropped the sheet of newspaper he had been eagerly scanning.
+
+"My _word_!" he said.
+
+His exclamation was so insistent that I immediately felt in my pocket
+to see if I had his word, and his wife glanced up from the lamp which
+she was handling lovingly.
+
+"Yes, Herbert?"
+
+"But I say--Lord Erskine is dead!"
+
+"Herbert!"
+
+Her tone was accusing, but her husband nodded, with a pleased look of
+assurance.
+
+"You may read it for yourself, I'm sure--if you don't believe me!"
+
+He handed the paper over to her, and she received it gingerly, after
+looking to the tea-basket with a housewifely air, and placing the
+lamp quite to one side, out of harm's way. Then she turned to the
+article indicated, reading slowly, while her daughter looked over her
+shoulder.
+
+"Why, he's _been_ dead!"
+
+She glanced up suddenly, toward me, with a shamefaced look.
+
+"He was dead at the very time you were telling Grace all those
+atrocious things about him!" Hilda reminded her, smiling at the look
+of discomfiture which had crept over the kindly, wrinkled little face.
+
+"Yes! It's--extraordinary!"
+
+"And it makes us both feel--a little uncomfortable, eh?"
+
+Her husband's tone was tormenting, but she turned on him seriously.
+
+"I'm sure, Herbert, dear, you said quite as much as I did!" she
+declared, evidently finding relief in the knowledge. "Still--this news
+does rather make one--think."
+
+The girl rattled the sheet of paper excitedly.
+
+"I'm thinking!" she announced, her eyes wide. "I'm thinking of Colmere
+Abbey! What a chance for some rich decent American! Somebody that one
+could easily endure, you understand!"
+
+"Hilda!"
+
+She waved aside the reprimand.
+
+"Grace understands me--and what I think of Americans," she answered
+quickly. "But, mother, this _is_ a problem! What Englishman would buy
+the place--with its haunting tales--and monstrous value? Nobody would
+be rich enough except one of the millionaires who owns a dozen homes
+already. And the next-of-kin will inherit nothing along with the place
+to keep it up!"
+
+"Hilda! This is neither respectful nor neighborly," her mother
+remonstrated again, then she turned to her husband. "Shall you write
+to the new Lord Erskine from London, Herbert?"
+
+Her tone was one of foregone conclusion, conventional enough, but very
+kindly, and her husband nodded obediently.
+
+"Oh, to be sure, my dear," he chirruped in a dutiful way. "I shall
+wire his lawyers immediately and----"
+
+"And ask for the pleasure of putting him up while he's in the
+country?"
+
+"Certainly! Certainly!"
+
+"It will be unpleasant--this period of mourning that we shall have to
+affect--for his sake," she went on, "but it is out of respect for the
+neighborly proprieties, after all."
+
+Mrs. Montgomery was looking at us all in turn, in some little
+perplexity, when a sudden recollection came to me of how difficult it
+is sometimes to amalgamate guests--no matter how many rooms there are
+to one's house.
+
+"And I'll defer my visit until later?" I suggested.
+
+She instantly smiled across at me.
+
+"Just a few days--if you don't mind, dear," she said. "I had planned
+so many delightful things for _your_ stay--and I know that you
+wouldn't enjoy the period of mourning."
+
+"Not so much as you would if you had known Lord Erskine!" her husband
+put in wickedly. "And I'm determined to mourn only the briefest time
+possible."
+
+"Not an hour later than Saturday!" his wife promised generously--and a
+few hours afterward when they put me down at Charing Cross and sent me
+whirling away to a lady-like hotel in Bloomsbury, it was with spoken,
+written and pantomime directions as to which trains, and what-timed
+trains--and _how many_ trains I was to take toward the end of the week
+to get to Bannerley.
+
+In the meanwhile I knuckled down devotedly to London--and sent my
+deductions home across seas, in neatly typed packets, to _The Oldburgh
+Herald_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+LONDON
+
+
+What can't be appreciated can always be ridiculed--whether it's Old
+Masters, new waltzes, or a wife's Easter bonnet--and this is the
+reason we have always had such reams of journalistic "fun" at the
+expense of the broad English "a" and the narrow English view.
+
+For my part, I consider that--next to the French in New Orleans--the
+English in England are the golden-ruliest people to be found in
+profane history.
+
+You'll find that they're "insular" only when they're traveling off
+their dear island--and it's homesickness, after all, which makes them
+so disagreeably arrogant.
+
+To be sure, the Frenchman in New Orleans will, if you ask him for a
+word of direction toward the Old Absinthe House, take you into his
+private office, draw for you a diagram of the whole city, advise you
+at length not to go unescorted into the Market, then follow you to the
+door with the final warning: "And it would be well for you to observe
+a certain degree of caution, my dear young lady, for our city is
+filled with wickedness, and your eyes are--_pardon?_--most charming!"
+
+This is delightful, of course, and by far the most romantic thing in
+the way of adventure America has to offer, but rambling around London
+presents a dearer and more home-like charm.
+
+The Englishman who directs you to a church, or a university square,
+stops to say nothing about your eyes--much less would he mention the
+existence of good and evil--but he points out to you the tomb, or
+chained Bible, or famous man's pew you are seeking, then glides
+modestly away before you've had time to say: "It's awfully good of you
+to take all this trouble for a stranger!"
+
+But the truth of the matter is that you don't in the least feel
+yourself a stranger in London, and you like your kindly Englishman so
+cordially that you secretly resolve to put a muzzle on your own
+particular cannon cracker the next Fourth of July.
+
+The shilling guide-books speak of London as the "gray old grandmother
+of cities," meaning thereby to call attention to her upstart progeny
+across the seas, but to my mind the title of grandmother is much more
+applicable on account of the joyous surprises she has shut away in
+dark closets.
+
+One of the main pleasures of a visit to any grandmother is the gift of
+treasure which she is likely to call forth mysteriously from some
+tightly-closed cupboard and place in your hands for your own exclusive
+possession--and certainly this old dingy city outgrannies granny when
+it comes to that.
+
+In the dingiest little book-stall imaginable, lighted by a candle and
+tended by a ragged-cuffed gentleman with a passion for Keats, you may
+find the very edition of something that college professors in your
+native town are offering half a year's salary for! You buy it for five
+dollars--which seems much more insignificant when spoken of by the
+pound--then run out and hail the nearest cab, offering the chauffeur
+an additional shilling to get you out of the neighborhood in ten
+seconds! Your heart is thumping in guilty fear that the ragged-cuffed
+gentleman with the passion for Keats may discover his mistake and run
+after you to demand his treasure back!
+
+You make a similar escape, a few hours later, with a Wedgwood
+tea-caddy, whose delicate color the pottery has never been able to
+duplicate--and with Sheffield plate your suit-case runneth over!
+
+And your emotions while doing all this? Why, you've never before known
+what "calm content" could mean.
+
+In the first place, you never feel countrified and unpopular in
+London, as you do in New York. Your clothes have a way of brightening
+up and looking noticeably smart as if they'd just enjoyed a sojourn
+at the dry cleaner's--and everybody you meet seems to care
+particularly for Americans. You are at home there--not merely with the
+at-home feeling which a good hotel and agreeable society give--but
+there's a feeling of satisfaction much deeper than this. Something in
+you, which has always known and loved England, is seeing familiar
+faces again--the something which made you strain your eyes over
+_Mother Goose_ by firelight years ago, and thrill over _Ivanhoe_ and
+anything which held the name "Sherwood Forest" on its printed page.
+It's something congenial--or prenatal--who knows?
+
+(Oh yes! I answer very readily "Present!" when any one calls:
+"Anglomaniac!")
+
+It was only natural that I should let my adoration for Great Britain
+show through in the copy I sent home to _The Oldburgh Herald_, and as
+if to prove that honesty is the best policy, I received a letter of
+praise from Captain Macauley.
+
+"Anybody can run a foreign country down," he wrote, "but you've proved
+that you're original by praising one! Stay there as long as you have
+an English adjective left to go upon, then forget your sorrows, chase
+away down to Italy and show us what you can do with 'bellissimo.'"
+
+But I didn't do this, for the letter overtook me only after I had
+reached Bannerley, and was seeing things which I could hope for no
+words, either English or Italian, to describe.
+
+I left London on Friday--which I ought to have had better sense than
+to do, having been properly brought up by a black mammy--hoping to
+reach the home of my shipboard friends early enough Saturday morning
+to hear the pigeons coo under the eaves of Bannerley Hall. All my life
+I had cherished an ambition to hear pigeons coo under eaves of an
+ancestral place, and with this thought uppermost in my heart, I packed
+my suit-case and drove to Paddington Station. I received my first
+damper at the ticket window.
+
+"Bannerley?" the agent repeated, looking at me with a shade of pity,
+as I mentioned my destination. "Bannerley?"
+
+"Certainly, Bannerley!" I insisted, with some effort toward a
+dignified bearing, but the first glance at his doubtful face caused my
+spirits to sink. Being by nature an extremist, they sank to the
+bottom. All in a twinkling the cooing of pigeons in my mental picture
+was changed to the croaking of ravens. "It's not so very difficult to
+get to Bannerley, is it?"
+
+He scratched his head.
+
+"No-o--not in a general way, miss, but there ain't no telling _when_
+you'll get there."
+
+I drew back, more hurt than angry.
+
+"But my friends have already warned me that I shall have to change at
+Leamington--and Manchester--and Oldham--and----"
+
+"Can't help that!" he exclaimed heartlessly, looking over my shoulder
+at the line of waiting tourists. "Since the coal strike, trains on
+them side-lines has been as scarce and irregular as a youngster's
+teeth at shedding time."
+
+I tried to smile politely, but another glance at his face showed me
+that he wasn't expecting such an act of supererogation.
+
+"Getting off into the unbeaten paths sounds pretty enough in a
+guide-book," he kept on hastily, "but the first thing you do when you
+meet an unbeaten path is to want to beat it!"
+
+I faded out of the line and let my successor take my place.
+
+"He's just an old grouch!" I told myself consolingly, as I got a seat
+next a window. "Nothing really terrible can befall you when
+traveling--if you've got a Masonic pin on your coat!"
+
+(One of my Christie relations had thus decorated me and assured me.)
+
+Then I forgot all about his gloomy warnings, for the train rumbled
+across a thousand street crossings--then out into all the sheep
+pastures in the civilized world, and--it was summer!
+
+"This country _must_ be Kent!" I mused, not geographically, but
+esthetically certain--as soft feathery green broke off occasionally
+into a pollard-trimmed swamp--then came up again a little later into a
+gentle, sheep-dotted rise. And I remembered the Duchess once more--"A
+stalwart, fair-haired lover, and a dozen Kentish lanes!"
+
+I have lived to learn that this is common to Americans who have been
+brought up to understand that Kent is the garden-spot of England. No
+matter at which point along the entire coastline they may board a
+train, their first conviction upon seeing suburban scenery is that it
+_must_ be Kent! (I say "suburban" advisedly, for none of it is far
+enough away from the other to be rural.)
+
+So my journey through an elongated and rather circuitous Kent kept my
+mind away from the croakings of the ticket seller at Paddington--until
+the next morning at daybreak, when I found myself put down with
+mournful ceremony at a little wayside station which ought to have
+been labeled "St. Helena."
+
+"Just as sorry as you are, miss, but this is your nearest hope for a
+train to Bannerley!" the guard said, by way of an appropriate
+farewell, so off I got.
+
+"But this place is surely named St. Helena," I groaned, as I looked
+about me, yet the only actual similarity was in the matter of its
+being entirely surrounded. The island entirely surrounded by water, of
+course--this station entirely surrounded by land. I believe that I had
+never before in my life seen such a stretch of unimproved property!
+
+"'The woods and I--and their infinite call,'" I quoted, as I looked
+out somewhat shamefacedly across the acres. For it was exactly the
+kind of place I had always longed to possess for my very own--yet here
+I had arrived at it, and might, for all I knew to the contrary, take
+possession of it by right of discovery--yet I was feeling lonely and
+resentful at the very start.
+
+Then I remembered Robinson Crusoe and took heart, straining my eyes in
+hope of a sail, but nowhere was there a human face to be seen, nor
+sign of life. Not even a freight car stood drearily on a
+side-track--and, as you know, you have to be very far away from the
+center of things not to find a freight car! None was here, however,
+for there wasn't a side-track for it to stand upon--the main line
+running in two shining threads far away toward Ireland.
+
+The only moving bodies visible were a paper sack being blown gently
+down the track, a blue fly buzzing around a blackened banana peeling
+and a rook cawing overhead. I looked up at the rook and smiled
+philosophically.
+
+"I anticipated a 'coo,' then apprehended a 'croak'--what I get is a
+happy compromise, a 'caw,'" I said, and I find that things usually
+turn out this way in the great journey of life. Nothing is ever so
+good, nor so bad, as you think it's going to be when you're standing
+at the ticket window. The great anticipator is also a great
+apprehender--therefore realization is bound to be a relief.
+
+Then, as if in reward of my optimism, I began to scent the odor of
+escaping coffee.
+
+"It _is_ inhabited!" I cried.
+
+Springing up, I darted around to the other side of the station, and
+there, in a clump of trees, lying snug and humane-looking in the
+morning light, was a tiny cottage. I waited, and presently there
+issued from the doorway a man--wiping his mouth reminiscently.
+
+He espied me at once and came up, cap in hand.
+
+"Was you wanting something, miss?" he asked.
+
+"A train," I replied, trying to sound inconsequential with the
+lordliness that comes of intense disgust. "I have a ticket to
+Bannerley--and I have friends there _waiting_!"
+
+The man dared to smile.
+
+"Since the coal strike that's mostly what folks does, miss," he
+explained.
+
+There was a moment of strained silence, which was broken by the
+appearance of a young boy--an eerie creature who had seemed to glide
+straight out of the eastern horizon on a bicycle. The station-master
+turned to him.
+
+"Take this here parcel up to Lord Erskine--and be quicker than you was
+yesterday!" he said.
+
+The boy's face and mine changed simultaneously, his brightening, mine
+paling.
+
+"Lord Erskine!" I cried, a little ghostly feeling of fear stealing
+over me--for my American instincts failed to grasp the rapidity with
+which dead men's shoes can be snatched off and fitted with new rubber
+heels in England--"Lord Erskine is dead."
+
+The little messenger boy looked at me pityingly.
+
+"'E _wuz_," he explained, "but 'e ain't now!"
+
+"And--and do you mean to tell me that this is the station for Colmere
+Abbey?" I demanded, turning again to the man.
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+He tried hard not to look supercilious, but there, six feet above my
+head, was the name "Colmere" in faded yellow letters against the
+black background of the sign-board. And I had always believed in
+psychic warnings!
+
+"I--I hadn't thought to look at the sign-board," I endeavored to
+explain. "It seems that it doesn't matter what your station is, for
+you're as far away from your destination at one place as at
+another--during the coal strike! You think I can't get a train to
+Bannerley until----"
+
+"Perhaps to-night--perhaps not until to-morrow morning," he answered
+with cruel frankness, and I knew from heresay that trains did
+occasionally wander, comet-fashion, out of their orbit, and come
+through stations at unexpected moments. "Still, there's a railroad
+hotel about a mile down the track."
+
+"A railroad hotel?"
+
+"Where the men get their meals--the guards and porters!"
+
+My spirits sank.
+
+"That old kill-joy at Paddington knew what he was talking about!" I
+said to myself--then aloud: "But, couldn't I get a carriage, or
+a----"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"We mostly uses bicycles around here--when we don't walk," he
+explained.
+
+"But I must get to Bannerley!" I burst out in desperation. "And I am a
+first-rate walker! How far is it?"
+
+I was beginning to realize that the adventure might make good copy,
+headed: "Wonderful Pedestrian Journey through Historic Lancashire."
+Many a slighter incident has called forth heavier head-lines.
+
+"Walk?"
+
+"Certainly--then take up the matter with the railroad company in
+Glasgow, just before I sail for home!"
+
+My terrible manner caused him to look me over, quickly.
+
+"Was you wanting to get to the village--or the hall?" he asked,
+evidently impressed by my severity, and my heart softened.
+
+"To the hall," I answered. "Mrs. Montgomery is expecting me."
+
+He tried hard not to show that he was impressed, but he failed.
+Evidently Mrs. Montgomery was a great personage, and I took on a tinge
+of reflected glory not to be entirely ignored.
+
+"The hall is a mile from the village--and the village is three miles
+from here," he explained gently. "Of course, there's short cuts, if a
+body knows 'em--but for a lady like you----"
+
+The click of the telegraph instrument clamored for his attention, so
+he reluctantly left me. I remained outside, listening to the caw of
+the rook. Presently he came out again.
+
+"There will be a train through here pretty soon--but it's coming from
+the direction of Bannerley instead of going toward there--still----"
+
+"Still, it will give us occasion to hope for better things later on,"
+I answered cheerfully. "And it has occurred to me that I might while
+away a portion of the morning by walking up to the gates of Colmere
+Abbey. That boy went in this direction, didn't he?"
+
+"Not a quarter of a mile, miss--down in this direction," he assured
+me. "Just follow this road, and you'll find the lodge in a clump of
+trees."
+
+The "May" hedges were glistening with the early sunbeams, and as I
+walked down the railroad track the distance seemed quite a good deal
+short of the quarter of a mile mentioned. I found the clump of trees
+indicated--then a small gray building. My heart bounded, and I rubbed
+my eyes to make sure that I was awake.
+
+"Is this the entrance to Colmere Abbey?" I asked of the boy on the
+bicycle, who was turning out of the gate at that moment.
+
+"This is one of the lodges--but not the grand one, madam!" he answered
+anxiously.
+
+"Oh, indeed? But one can get to the park through this gate?" I
+persisted.
+
+"Oh, yes, madam."
+
+He showed an inclination to act as my esquire, but I got rid of him by
+promising him sixpence if he would take care of my bag until I
+returned to the station--then I crossed the greasy railroad track and
+entered the shade of the trees. It was far from being my ideal entrée
+into the old house of my heart's desire, but it was something of an
+adventure--until I reached the gates. There I was halted.
+
+"Yes, miss--if you please?"
+
+It was an acid voice, and I looked at the doorway of the house, out of
+which an old woman was issuing. She was garbed in profound black.
+
+"I want to get in--to see the grounds of the abbey," I explained
+casually, but she was not to be overwhelmed by any airy nonchalance.
+She shook her head.
+
+"But that can't be!"
+
+The smile which accompanied this information was almost gleeful.
+
+"No? But why not?"
+
+She looked at me pityingly.
+
+"Didn't you know we was in mourning?" she demanded, bristling with
+importance.
+
+I instantly made a penitent face, then glanced appreciatively at her
+gown, but she gave no evidence of being a physiognomist. She failed
+to take note of my contrite expression.
+
+"You can't go sight-seeing in here!" she said.
+
+"Not even a little way?"
+
+I accompanied this plea by the display of a shining half-crown, which
+I carried in my glove for emergency. That's one good thing about being
+away from the United States--you don't have to regard money so
+tenderly. You realize that shillings and francs and lire were made to
+spend for souvenirs and service, but dollars--ugh! They were made to
+put in the bank! So I twinkled this ever-ready half-crown temptingly
+in the morning light, but she shook her head again.
+
+"While we was in mourning?" she demanded, with a gasp of outraged
+propriety. "Why--_wha'ud the minister say?_"
+
+At this I turned away sadly--for I had been in England long enough to
+know there's never any use trying to surmise _what_ the minister 'ud
+say!
+
+"Just the same, you'd make a dandy old servant--and I'm a great mind
+to buy you and put you in my suit-case, along with the Sheffield
+candlesticks," I thought, as I made my way back to the station.
+
+During my absence a train had come clattering in--and it stood
+stock-still now, while the engineer and the station-master held a long
+conversation over a basket of homing pigeons which had been deposited
+upon the platform. I viewed the locomotive listlessly enough--the walk
+having taken some of my former impatient energy away, but my interest
+was aroused as I came upon the platform by the appearance of a servant
+in livery, disentangling from one of the compartments a suit-case and
+leather hat-box.
+
+The man's back was toward me, as he struggled to lift his burden high
+above the precious basket of pigeons which was usurping place and
+attention, but the look of the traveling paraphernalia held my eye for
+a moment.
+
+"Could it belong to an American?" I mused.
+
+The servant deposited the cases on the platform, then turned, still
+with his back toward me, and took part in the lively pigeon argument.
+I looked at the beautiful smoothness of the leather.
+
+"Of course they're American!" I decided, for you must know that nearly
+any Englishman's luggage would compare unfavorably with the bags Aunt
+Jemima brings with her when she comes up to the city for a week's
+mortification to her nephews.
+
+"Never judge an Englishman by the luggage he lugs!" is only a fair act
+of discretion.
+
+I crossed the platform, partly to get away from the mournful sounds
+emanating from the wicker basket, and then, at the door of the little
+station I was arrested by another sound. It was a sound which had
+certainly not been there when I had left, half an hour before! I
+halted--wondering if there really could be anything in psychic
+warnings!
+
+Inside the dingy little room some one was whistling! The melody was
+falling upon the air with a certain softness which, however, did not
+conceal its suppressed vehemence--and the tune was _Caro Mio Ben!_
+
+"Anybody has a right to whistle it!" I told myself savagely, but I
+still hesitated--my heart standing still from the mere force of the
+hypothesis. After a moment it began beating again, as if to make up
+for lost time.
+
+The whistling man inside left off his music--then I heard his
+footsteps tramping impatiently across the bare wooden floor. He
+finally came to the door and looked out. I glanced up, and our eyes
+met! It _was Caro Mio Ben! It was Caro Mio Ben!_
+
+"Well?" he said.
+
+He stood perfectly still for half a minute it seemed--making no effort
+toward a civilized greeting.
+
+"Well!" I responded--as soon as I could.
+
+"This is queer, isn't it?"
+
+I looked at him.
+
+"'Queer?'" I managed to repeat--that is, I heard the word escaping
+past the tightening muscles of my throat. "_Queer!_"
+
+"Most extraordinary!"
+
+"I should--I think I should like to sit down!" I decided, as he
+continued to stand staring at me, and I suddenly realized that I was
+very tired.
+
+He moved aside.
+
+"By all means! Come in and sit down, Miss Christie. This station
+fellow here tells me that you have been disappointed in your train."
+
+"I have," I answered.
+
+I might have added that I had been disappointed in everything most
+important in life, as well--but his own face was wearing such an
+expression of calm serenity that I was soothed as I looked at it.
+
+"That's quite a problem here in England just now," he observed
+politely.
+
+"So I have been informed."
+
+After this, conversation flagged, until the silence made me nervous.
+
+"I should think we ought to be asking each other--questions!" I
+suggested, trying to bring him to a realization of the necessary
+formalities, but he only turned and looked down at me, with a slightly
+amused, slightly superior smile.
+
+"Questions?"
+
+"About _ships_--and how long we intend staying--and what travelers
+usually ask!" I said.
+
+He shook his head, as if the subjects held little interest for him.
+
+"Why should I ask that--when I happen to know?" he inquired.
+
+"You know--what?"
+
+"That you came over on the _Luxuria_."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And that _The Oldburgh Herald_ sent you--to write up the coal
+strike."
+
+"Yes--it did."
+
+"And that you are going to stay--some time."
+
+I was decidedly uncomfortable.
+
+"Will you please explain how you knew all this?" I asked.
+
+His smile died away.
+
+"Mrs. Hiram Walker wrote her son to call on me while I was in New
+York," he explained in his serious lawyer-like manner, "and he
+happened to leave a copy of _The Oldburgh Herald_ in my rooms."
+
+"Oh! That was quite simple, wasn't it?"
+
+"Quite!"
+
+It occurred to me then that there was no use trying to keep fate's
+name out of this conversation--and also it came to me that the orchids
+were no longer a mystery--but before I could make up my mind to
+mention this he turned to me ferociously.
+
+"You _did_ make a fool of me!" he accused.
+
+My heart began thumping again.
+
+"What do you mean?" I began, but he cut me short.
+
+"It is this that I can not get over! The thought has come to me that
+perhaps if I might hear you acknowledge it, I might be able to forgive
+you better."
+
+"Forgive me?"
+
+He leaned toward me.
+
+"If you don't mind, I should like to hear you say: 'Maitland Tait, I
+did make a fool of you!'"
+
+"But I didn't!" I denied stoutly, while my face flushed, and all the
+fighting blood in me seemed to send forth a challenge from my cheeks.
+"I'll say what I _do_ think, however, if you wish to hear it!"
+
+"And that is----?"
+
+"Maitland Tait, you made a fool of yourself!"
+
+He looked disappointed.
+
+"Oh, I know that!" he replied.
+
+"You do? Since when, please?"
+
+"Why, I knew it before I crossed the Ohio River!" he acknowledged,
+seeming to take some pride in the fact. "I--I intended to
+apologize--or something--when I got to Pittsburgh, but when I reached
+New York, on my way here, I saw that you were coming to England,
+too----"
+
+"So you thought the matter could easily wait--I see!" I observed,
+then, to change the subject, I asked: "Have you been here long?"
+
+"Two weeks! I knew that I should get news of you in _this_
+neighborhood, sooner or later."
+
+I instantly smiled.
+
+"I have come here for my first Sunday, you see, but----"
+
+"But you haven't been to the abbey yet, have you?" he asked.
+
+The boyish anxiety in his tone gave me a thrill. Something in the
+thought of his remembering my romantic whim touched me.
+
+"No. I have just come from there--the lodge--but the old woman at the
+gates wouldn't let me in."
+
+He looked interested.
+
+"No? But why not?"
+
+"The master of the house has just died," I explained. "It would be a
+terrible breach of etiquette to go sight-seeing over the mourning
+acres."
+
+His lips closed firmly.
+
+"Nonsense! I'll venture that's just a servant's whim." He slipped out
+his watch. "Shall I go over and try to beg or bribe permission for
+you? I'm not easily daunted by their refusals, and--I'll have a little
+time to spare this morning, if you'd care to put your marooned period
+to such a use."
+
+"I _am_ marooned," I told him, wondering for a moment what the
+Montgomerys would think of my delay, "and I should like this, of
+course, above anything else that England has to offer, but----"
+
+Then, after his precipitate fashion, he waited for no more. He paused
+at the edge of the platform for a low-toned colloquy with Collins--I
+could easily distinguish now that the liveried creature was
+Collins--and the two disappeared down the car track. After the
+briefest delay he returned.
+
+"What can't be cured must be ignored," he said with a shrug, as he
+came up. "The poor old devil evidently regards us as very impious
+and--American, but I made everything all right with her."
+
+"But how----?" I started to inquire, also at the same moment starting
+down the track toward the lodge house, when he stopped both my
+question and my progress.
+
+"Let us wait here--I have sent Collins to get a car for us from the
+garage not far away."
+
+He led the way out to a drive, sheltered with trees, on the other side
+of the track, and we awaited the coming of Collins--neither showing
+any disposition to talk.
+
+"Is this _your_ car?" I presently asked, as the servant driving a
+gleaming black machine drew up in front of us. "I hadn't imagined that
+you would have your own car down in the country with you."
+
+"I've had experience with these trains," he explained briefly, then he
+looked the car over with a masterful eye. "Yes, it's mine."
+
+"I really shouldn't have needed to ask--there's so strong a family
+resemblance to the other one--the limousine you had in Oldburgh."
+
+He looked pleased.
+
+"I hope you'll like this one--it's a Blanton Six, you see," he
+explained with a pat of affectionate pride upon the door-handle as he
+helped me in.
+
+Collins climbed to his place at the wheel, and without another
+word--without one backward look--I was whirled away into the Land of
+Long Ago--the period where I had always belonged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the second lodge--the grand one--I pinched myself. I had to, to see
+whether I was awake--or dreaming a Jane Austen dream. Maitland Tait,
+watching me closely, saw the act.
+
+"You're quite awake," he assured me gravely.
+
+"But--what are you?" I inquired. "Are you yourself--or Aladdin,
+or----"
+
+I broke off abruptly, for the car was gliding over a bridge, and
+underneath was a silvery, glinting ribbon, that might, in fairy-land,
+pass for a river.
+
+"Shall I stop the car and let you dabble the toe of your shoe in the
+water?" my guide asked.
+
+I looked at him in bewilderment.
+
+"I shan't be able to believe it's just water--unless you do," I
+explained. He had seen the look I let fall upon the shining breast of
+the stream.
+
+"And I'll send Collins away."
+
+"Of course! It's sacrilegious to let any wooden-faced human look
+upon--all this!"
+
+The car obediently let us out, then steamed softly away, up the road
+and out of sight.
+
+Mr. Tait held out his hand to me and helped me down the steep little
+river bank. I dabbled the toe of my shoe in the water, and as he
+finally drew me away, with the suggestion of further delights, I
+caught sight of a tiny fish, lying whitely upward in a tangle of
+weeds.
+
+"How _could_ he die?" I asked mournfully, as we walked away and
+climbed back to the level of the park. "It seems so unappreciative."
+
+The man beside me laughed.
+
+"_Things_--even the most beautiful things on earth--don't keep
+people--or fish alive," he said. "They can't even make people want to
+stay alive--if this is all they have, and after all, the river is
+just a thing--and the park is a thing--and the house is a thing!"
+
+We had walked on rapidly, and at that moment the house itself became
+apparent. I clutched his arm.
+
+"A thing!" I denied, looking at it in a dazed fashion. "Why, it's the
+House of a Hundred Dreams! It's all the dreams of April mornings--and
+Christmas nights--and----"
+
+"And what?" he asked gravely. But my eyes were still intoxicated.
+
+"Why, it's Religion--and Art--and _Love_--and Comfort!"
+
+He looked at it wonderingly, as if he expected to see statues
+representing these chapters in the book of Life.
+
+What he saw was a tangle of gravel walks, gray as the desert, drawing
+away from grassy places and coming up sharply against the house.
+_Such_ a house! A church--a tomb--a fluttering-curtained
+living-hall--all stretched out in one long chain of battlemented
+stone. Where the church began and the living-hall ended no one could
+say, for there were trees everywhere.
+
+"The lower part of the abbey is in good condition, it seems," my
+conductor remarked, as we approached.
+
+"Good condition!" I echoed. "Why, those doorways are as realistic
+as--Sunday morning! I feel that I ought to have on a silk dress--and
+hold the corners of my prayer-book with a handkerchief--to keep from
+soiling my white gloves."
+
+"If you listen perhaps you can hear the choir-boys," he said, after a
+pause, and without smiling.
+
+"But there might be a sermon, too!" I objected.
+
+High above the doors was a great open space of a missing window; then,
+over this, smaller spaces for smaller windows; and--in a niched
+pinnacle--the Virgin.
+
+"How can she--a woman in love--endure all this beauty?" I asked, my
+voice hushed with awe.
+
+"She's endured it for many centuries, it seems," he answered.
+
+But we came closer then.
+
+"Why, she hasn't even seen it--not once!" I cried, for I saw then that
+she was not looking up, but down--at the burden in her arms.
+
+Instinctively Maitland Tait bared his head as we crossed the
+threshold.
+
+"Shall we try to find a way through here into the gardens?" he asked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HOUSE OF A HUNDRED DREAMS
+
+
+The shadows inside the roofless old abbey were warm and friendly. The
+sunlight gleamed against the tombs with a cheer which always falls
+over very old grief spots.
+
+"This quietude--this sense of all rightness--makes you feel that nothing
+really matters, doesn't it?" I asked, looking around with a sort of
+awed delight as we paused to read one or two inscriptions--voluminous
+in length and medieval in spelling.
+
+The man at my side was less awed.
+
+"Shall we go on to the gardens, then?" he asked. "You'll not think so
+little of temporal pleasures there, perhaps."
+
+I looked up at him.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Well, because these gardens are usually filled with suggestions of
+living joys--for one thing. There are millions of forget-me-nots,
+which always give a cheering aspect to the landscape--and there are
+frequently the flowers mentioned in Shakespeare's plays."
+
+With a sigh of regret we left the sanctuary. Then, turning a corner of
+the old stone wall we came full upon a side of the house which was
+receiving shamelessly the biggest sun-kiss I had ever seen. But then,
+it was the biggest house I had ever seen. It was the gladdest sun--and
+it was the warmest blending. Between house and sun--as if they were
+the love children of this union--lay thousands of brilliant flowers.
+
+When I could get my breath I made a quick suggestion that we go
+closer.
+
+"I want to know which is rosemary--and which is rue!" I told him. But
+he stopped a moment and detained me.
+
+We halted beside a fallen stone, at a point slightly separated from
+the walls of the house--a sort of half-way ground, where the shadow of
+the Greek cross on an isolated pinnacle seemed still to claim the
+ground for religion, against the encroachments of the work-a-day
+world. Maitland Tait's sudden smile was a mixture of amusement and
+tenderness.
+
+"I've recently heard a story about this spot--this identical
+stone--which will interest you," he said. "A monk comes here at
+night--one of those old fellows buried in there."
+
+I smiled.
+
+"It's quite true!" he insisted. "People have seen him."
+
+"I know it," I avowed seriously. "I was not smiling out of unbelief,
+but out of sheer joy at beholding with mine own eyes the 'Norman
+stone!'
+
+     "'He mutters his prayers on the midnight air,
+     And his mass of the days that are gone.'"
+
+Maitland Tait looked at me in surprise.
+
+"Do you know all the legends of the place?" he asked.
+
+I shook my head sorrowfully.
+
+"I wish I did," I replied. "For so many years this has been my House
+of a Hundred Dreams!"
+
+We both fell into a moment's dreamy thoughtfulness, which I was first
+to cast aside.
+
+"Come and tell me about the plants, if you can!" I begged. "Which _is_
+rosemary, and which is rue?"
+
+We walked down a flight of worn steps, and came upon prim gravel
+pathways.
+
+"This is rosemary," he said, "and here, by the sun-dial, is rue."
+
+Then, even when I realized that this was the place where Lady Frances
+Webb had spent her wearisome days, to keep from hearing the clock
+chime in the hall, I could not be sad. The sun-dial was another grief
+spot, it was true, but it was an ancient grief spot--and it was
+located in a golden sea of sunshine, under a sky that was the
+reflection of forget-me-nots.
+
+"She could gather the rue while the sun-dial told, all silently, of
+the day's wearing on," I said.
+
+He looked at me uncertainly.
+
+"Did she say that in her letters?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. She had sent her lover away, you see, and--there was nothing
+else in life."
+
+"And she longed for the days to pass silently?"
+
+"She stayed out here as much as she could--to keep from hearing the
+clock in the hall," I told him. "The chime shamed the unholy prayer on
+her lips, she said--and the sound of the ticking reminded her of her
+heart's wearying beats."
+
+"Of _their_ hearts' wearying beats, you mean," he exclaimed, and a
+quick look of pain which darted into his face showed me that he
+comprehended. Then, for the first time, I began to grasp what a lover
+he would make! Before this time I had been absorbed with thoughts of
+him as a beloved.
+
+Suddenly my hat began to feel intolerably heavy, and my gloves
+intolerably hot. I tampered fumblingly with the pearl clasp at my left
+wrist, and drew that glove off first. Maitland Tait was watching me.
+He saw my hand--my bare ringless hand. He stared at it as if it might
+have been a ghost, although it looked fairly pink and healthy in the
+warm glow of the noonday sun. Even the little pallid circle on the
+third finger was quite gone.
+
+"Grace----" he said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Does this mean that you're--you're----"
+
+A discreet cough--a still distant, but distinctly warning
+cough--interrupted for a moment. Collins was coming toward us, from
+the ruins of the old abbey. Maitland Tait looked up and saw him
+coming, but he did not stop. On the other hand, the sight of his
+servant seemed to goad him into a hasty precipitation.
+
+"Grace, will you marry me?" he asked.
+
+"Of _course_!" I managed to say, but not too energetically, for the
+muscles of my throat were giving me trouble again.
+
+"Soon?" he asked hungrily.
+
+I felt very reckless and--American.
+
+"Before the shadows pass round this dial again, if you _insist_," I
+smiled.
+
+But his eyes were very grave.
+
+"Without knowing anything more about me than you know now?"
+
+"Why, I know everything about you," I replied, in some astonishment.
+"I know that you are the biggest, and the best-looking, and the
+dearest----"
+
+"You know nothing about me," he interrupted softly, "except what I
+have told you. I am a working man! I have always had the mass hatred
+for class, and--and my grandfather was a coal-digger in Wales."
+
+I was silent.
+
+"Yet, you are willing to marry me?" he asked.
+
+"Of course! Coal is--very warming," I answered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Collins descended the flight of stone steps and came slowly along the
+gravel walk. When he had come to the respectful distance he stopped.
+No English servant ever approaches very close--as if there were a
+quarantine around the sacred person of the served.
+
+"My Lord," he said, but stammeringly, as a man halts over a
+newly-acquired language--"My Lord, Mrs. Carr wishes to know if you
+will have lunch served in the oak room, or in the----"
+
+"In the oak room," the man standing beside me answered readily enough.
+"And have the old wing opened and lighted, Collins. We want to see the
+pictures in there."
+
+The servant breathed the inevitable "Thank you," and turned away.
+
+I seemed suddenly to feel that the golden sea of sunlight was sweeping
+me away--up into the blue, which was the reflection of forget-me-nots.
+And there loomed big on my horizon a house that was a home!
+
+"My _Lord_?" I demanded, as soon as I could speak.
+
+Maitland Tait nodded reassuringly.
+
+"My father died two weeks ago," he said. "And I _had_ to come into the
+title."
+
+"And this place is _yours_!" I sang out, feeling that all the years of
+my life I had been destiny's love-child. "This old abbey is yours! The
+park is yours! The garden is yours! The sun-dial is yours!"
+
+"And the girl is mine!" he said, with a grave smile. "I am careless of
+all the other."
+
+His gravity sobered my wild spirits.
+
+"And your father was--Lord Erskine?" I finally asked.
+
+"He _was_--Lord Erskine," he answered. "He married out of his
+station--far, far above his station, _I_ think----"
+
+His big beautiful mouth set grimly, but he said nothing more, and I
+knew that this was as heavily as he would ever tread upon the ashes of
+the dead. Gradually, bit by bit, I learned the history of the muddy
+pool of mistake and fault, out of which the tender blossom of his
+boyhood had been dragged. His father had never seen him, but a
+certain stiff-necked family pride had caused him to provide material
+bounty for his child. The combination of a good education and rugged
+plebeian industry had made him what he was.
+
+"But why didn't you tell me--that day when you first came to see me
+and we talked about this place--why didn't you tell me that it was
+_your_ ancestral home?"
+
+He looked at me in surprise.
+
+"Why, because I had made up my mind to marry you!" he said. "You told
+me that this old place was a sort of dreamland of yours--and I didn't
+want to complicate matters. I wanted your love for me to be a
+reality."
+
+"Well, it--it is!" I confessed.
+
+After a long while--that is, the sun-dial said it was a long
+while--spent this way a sudden thought of my waiting hosts at
+Bannerley came over me. I sprang up from the step of the pedestal
+where we had been sitting.
+
+"I _must_ get some word to Mrs. Montgomery!" I said. "They will be
+thinking that my rash American ways have got me into some dreadful
+scrape, I'm afraid."
+
+But the serene man at my side was still serene. His face looked as if
+nothing on earth could ever cause him a pang again. He caught my hand
+and drew me gently, but rather steadfastly back to my place.
+
+"Mrs. Montgomery knows everything--except that we are going to be
+married--when did you say, to-morrow?" he smiled. "I've been staying
+with them, and they told me about you, and I told them about you--and
+we had rather a satisfactory adjustment of neighborly relations."
+
+I looked at him in awe. I could not quite shake off the idea that he
+had a miraculous lamp hidden about somewhere in his pockets. Things
+seemed to _happen_ when he wished them to happen.
+
+"Did you chance to know that I would take a bad train and be delayed
+here this morning at sunrise?" I asked, trying to look dignified and
+unawed. "Did you know that I should be compelled to waste precious
+morning hours pacing up and down a railway station platform?"
+
+"Why, of course," he answered imperturbably. "Mrs. Montgomery sent me
+over to meet you."
+
+I sprang up again, more energetically this time.
+
+"Then why didn't you meet me?" I asked, with the horror of shocking
+English propriety overwhelming me. "Come! We must go to Bannerley at
+once."
+
+He rose and followed me toward the main garden path. Then he pointed
+the way to the house door.
+
+"I've had Collins telephone that your train was very, very late," he
+explained. "She'll not be surprised--nor too inquisitive. She even
+suggested this morning that if you shouldn't get in until evening--the
+drive to Bannerley is very fine by moonlight."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the late afternoon the chilly dusk sent little forerunners ahead,
+which caused the old wing of the house to be lighted from within,
+instead of opened to the cool dying sunset. A cheery fire was kindled
+in the room which had once been the library of Lady Frances Webb.
+
+The dampness and air of disuse disappeared, and it seemed as if
+personalities came forth from the shadowy corners and sat beside the
+fire with Maitland Tait and me.
+
+"This was her own desk, they tell me," he said, as he was showing the
+ancient treasures to me, yet still looking at them himself with
+half-awed, almost unbelieving eyes. "This was where all her famous
+books were written."
+
+I crossed the room to where the little locked secretary stood. Its
+polished surface was sending back the firelight's glow and seemed to
+proclaim that its own mahogany was imprisoned sunshine.
+
+"And she wrote those letters here," I said in a hushed voice. "Do you
+suppose she has some of his letters locked away somewhere?"
+
+He nodded, fitting the key to its lock very carefully.
+
+  [Illustration: He drew me to a corner of the room]
+
+"All of them! All the letters written her by--Uncle James."
+
+"And we are going to look over them together--you and I are going to
+read these love-letters--before we burn them?" I asked, quick joy
+making my voice tremulous.
+
+For a moment there was silence in the old room, then he turned away
+from the secretary, and came very close.
+
+"Why burn them--now?" he asked, his own strong voice of a sudden more
+tremulous than mine. "Why burn them, now, darling? Why not--hand--
+them--down?"
+
+Then--in that instant--I knew what life was going to mean to me. And I
+felt as if I had the great joy of the world--hugged close--in a circle
+of radiance--like the _Madonna della Sedia_!
+
+"I can be good--a very good woman--if I have your face before me," I
+told him.
+
+After a while he smiled, then took my hand and drew me to a shadowy
+corner of the room.
+
+"You haven't seen this yet," he said.
+
+There was a crimson velvet curtain hanging before a picture, and he
+drew aside the folds.
+
+"This is--Uncle James,"
+
+The candlelight shone against the canvas, and glittered in dancing
+little waves over the name-plate on the frame.
+
+"_Portrait of the Artist, by Himself._"
+
+"Was it a comfort to her, I wonder?" my lover said, his thoughts only
+half with the past.
+
+"A torturing comfort--the kind a woman like her demands," I answered.
+"She had to go to it every hour in every day--and look at it--to make
+her heart ache, because it was only a picture. She was a human
+being--as well as a novelist, so that such as this could only add to
+her anguish. She wanted a _living_ face----"
+
+"She wanted--this?"
+
+He set the candlestick down and put both arms round me.
+
+"She wanted--_this_?" he breathed.
+
+His face was close above mine-waiting for the first kiss. A moment
+later it came--descending gently, like some blessed holy thing. And
+it was that.
+
+"You are like him," I whispered. "Your face can make me good."
+
+His arms tightened, and a smile escaped.
+
+"And yours? What will you be like to me?" he asked.
+
+I looked up, remembering.
+
+"Like--just an American woman--a tormenting side-issue in your busy
+life?"
+
+But he shook his head gravely.
+
+"No--not that."
+
+A casement was open near by, and he drew me toward the shaft of
+radiance which fell into the shadowed room.
+
+Across the courtyard, white now with moonlight, were the ruins of the
+abbey. There shone a softened luster through the space of the absent
+window, and above, resplendent in her niche, stood the Virgin. Her
+head was bowed above the burden in her arms.
+
+"Like that--_like that_!" he whispered.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Amazing Grace, by Kate Trimble Sharber
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41581 ***