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-Project Gutenberg's Whom The Gods Destroyed, by Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
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-Title: Whom The Gods Destroyed
-
-Author: Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
-
-Release Date: October 15, 2019 [EBook #60496]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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-BOOKS BY MISS DASKAM
-
-
-WHOM THE GODS DESTROYED. $1.50.
-
-THE IMP AND THE ANGEL. Illustrated. _Net_, $1.25.
-
-FABLES FOR THE FAIR. _Net_, $1.00.
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-
-                             WHOM THE GODS
-                               DESTROYED
-
-                                  BY
-                        JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM
-
-
-                            [Illustration]
-
-
-                               NEW YORK
-                        CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
-                               MDCCCCII
-
-
-
-
-             _Copyright, 1902, by Charles Scribner's Sons_
-
-                       Published, October, 1902
-
-
-                            TROW DIRECTORY
-                   PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
-                               NEW YORK
-
-
-
-
-                                  To
-
-                                 K. W.
-
-                        WITH THE FRIENDSHIP OF
-                              MANY YEARS
-
-                               J. D. D.
-
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-     _I. Whom the Gods Destroyed_                 1
-
-    _II. A Wind Flower_                          29
-
-   _III. When Pippa Passed_                      67
-
-    _IV. The Backsliding of Harriet Blake_      101
-
-     _V. A Bayard of Broadway_                  127
-
-    _VI. A Little Brother of the Books_         157
-
-   _VII. The Maid of the Mill_                  189
-
-  _VIII. The Twilight Guests_                   219
-
-
-
-
-WHOM THE GODS DESTROYED
-
-
-I
-
-The most high gods have decided that too much power over the hearts of
-men shall not be given to other men, for then the givers are forgotten
-in the gift and the smoke dies away from the altars. So they kill the
-men who play with souls. According to an ancient saying, before they
-destroy the victim they make him mad. There are, however, modifications
-of the process. Occasionally they make him drunk.
-
-As I came down the board-walk that leads to the ocean, I saw by his
-staggering and swaying gait that the man was not only very drunk
-indeed, but that he gloried in the fact. This was shown by his
-brandishing arms and tossing head and the defiant air with which he
-regarded the cottages, before one of which he paused, leaned forward,
-placing one hand dramatically at his ear, and presently executed a
-wild dance of what was apparently derision. A timid woman would have
-retreated, but I am not timid, except when I am alone in the dark. Also
-I have what my brother-in-law calls Bohemian tastes. As nearly as I
-have been able to understand that phrase, it signifies a great interest
-in people, especially when they are at all odd. And this solitary,
-scornful dance of a ragged man before the Averys' cottage was odd in
-the extreme.
-
-So I walked quietly along. When I reached the man I heard him muttering
-rapidly to himself, while he rested from the exertion of his late
-performance. What did dancing drunken men talk about? I walked
-slower. My brother-in-law says that a woman with any respect for the
-proprieties, to say nothing of the conventions, would never have done
-this. I have observed, however, that his feelings for the proprieties
-and the conventions, both of them, have on occasion suffered relapse,
-more especially at those times, prior to his marriage to my sister,
-when I, although supposed to be walking and riding and rowing and
-naphtha-launching with them, was frequently and inexcusably absent. So
-I gather that the proprieties and the conventions, like many other
-things, are relative.
-
-As I passed the man he turned and looked crossly at me and spoke
-apparently to some one far away behind me, for he spoke with much force.
-
-"Did you ever hear such damn foolishness?" he demanded. Now there was
-nothing to hear but Miss Kitty Avery playing Chopin's Fourth Ballade
-in F minor. She played it badly, of course, but nobody who knew Kitty
-Avery would have imagined that she would play otherwise than badly,
-and I have heard so much bad playing that I didn't notice it very much
-anyway. I thought it hardly probable that the man should know how
-unfortunate Kitty's method and selection were, so I passed directly by.
-Soon I heard his steps, and I knew he was coming after me. While he was
-yet some distance behind me he spoke again.
-
-"I suppose that fool of a woman thinks she can play," he growled as he
-lurched against a lamp-post. Then I did the unpardonable deed. I turned
-and answered him.
-
-"How do you know it's a woman?" I asked.
-
-"Huh! Take me for a fool, don't you?" he said scornfully, scuffling
-along unsteadily. "I'm drunk as an owl, but I'm no fool! No. I know
-it's a woman from the pawin' 'round she does. Bah! Thinks she's
-playin'. Damn nonsense!" He sat down carefully on the sand by the side
-of the walk and wagged his head knowingly. I looked cautiously about.
-No one was in sight. I bent down and untied my shoe.
-
-"Perhaps you could play it better?" I suggested sweetly. His jaw
-dropped with consternation.
-
-"Play it better! Oh, Lord! She says can I play it better!
-Can-I-play-it-better? Well, I'll tell you one thing. If I couldn't play
-it better, d'ye know what I'd do? Do you?"
-
-"No," said I, and tied my shoe. He didn't talk thickly as they do in
-books. On the contrary, he brought out each word with a particularly
-clear and final utterance.
-
-"Well, I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go off and drown my sorrers in
-drink! Yes, I would. Although I'm so drunk that I wouldn't know when I
-was getting drunk on principle and when I was just plain drunk. Le'
-me tell you somethin': _I'm drunk now!_" He announced the fact with
-a gravity so colossal as to render laughter impossible. I untied the
-other shoe.
-
-"Can you really play Chopin?" I said. He shook his fist at the Avery
-cottage.
-
-"What I can't play of Chopin you never heard played! So that's the end
-o' that," he said. The folly of the situation suddenly became clear
-to me. I hastily tied my shoe and turned to go. He half rose from the
-sand, but sank helplessly back.
-
-"Look here," he said confidentially, "I'm tired, and I need m' rest. I
-got to have rest. We all need rest. If you want to hear me play, you
-come to the old hulk of a barn that's got the piano in it. They call
-it the auditorium--au-di-to-ri-um." He pronounced the syllables as if
-to a child of three. "I'll be there. You come before supper. I'll be
-rested then. I'd like to shoot that woman--thinks she can play--damn
-nonsense--" I went on to the beach.
-
-
-II
-
-My brother-in-law came down on the afternoon boat, and of course
-he occupied our attention. His theories, though often absurd, are
-certainly well sustained. For instance, his ideas as to the connection
-between genius and insanity. He says--but I don't know why I speak of
-it. I defeated him utterly. At length I left the room. I hate a man who
-won't give up when he's beaten. I found the Nice Boy on the piazza, and
-we sat and talked. Really a charming fellow. And not so very young,
-either. He told fascinating tales of a shipwreck he'd experienced,
-where they sat on the bow as the boat went down and traded sandwiches.
-
-"I gave Hunter two hams for a chicken, and it was a mean swindle!" he
-said reminiscently. "Speaking of sandwiches, I gave a chap ten cents to
-buy one this afternoon. Awfully seedy looking. Shabby clothes, stubbly
-beard, dirty hands, not half sober, and what do you think he said?" I
-remembered and blushed.
-
-"I don't know," I murmured.
-
-"He invited me to a recital--a piano recital! He said he was going to
-play at five-thirty in the auditorium, and I might come if I liked,
-though it was a private affair! How is that for nerve? He didn't look
-up to a hand organ."
-
-My curiosity grew. And then, I had a great consciousness of not liking
-to disappoint even a drunken man. He evidently thought I was coming.
-I sketched lightly to the Nice Boy the affair of the morning. He was
-not shocked. He was amused. But my brother-in-law says that nothing I
-could say could shock the Nice Boy. In fact, he says, that if I mean
-nothing serious, I have no business to let the Nice Boy think--but that
-is a digression. It is one of my brother-in-law's prerogatives to be as
-impertinent as he cares to be.
-
-"Shall we go over?" said I. "He is very probably an accompanist,
-stranded here, with his engagement ended. Perhaps he even plays well.
-These things happen in books." The Nice Boy shook his head.
-
-"We'll go, by all means," he said, "but don't hope. He's not touched a
-piano this long time."
-
-So we gathered some shawls and cushions and went over. The building was
-all dusty and smelled of pine. As we stumbled in, the sound of a piano
-met us. I own I was a bit excited. For one doubtful second I listened,
-ready to adore. Then I laughed nervously. We were not people in a book.
-It was Mendelssohn's "Spring Song," played rather slowly and with a
-mournful correctness. I could feel the player's fingers thudding down
-on the keys--one played it so when it was necessary to use the notes.
-The Nice Boy smiled consolingly.
-
-"Too bad," he whispered. "Shall we go out now?"
-
-"I should like to view the fragments of the idol!" I whispered back.
-"Let's end the illusion by seeing him!"
-
-So we tip-toed up to the benches, and looked at the platform where the
-Steinway stood. Twirling on the stool sat a girl of seventeen or so,
-peering out into the gloom at us. It was very startling. Now I felt
-that the strain was yet to come. As I sank into one of the chairs a
-man rose slowly from a seat under the platform. It was the stranger.
-He nodded jauntily at us.
-
-"Good thing you come," he announced cheerfully. "I don't know how
-long I could stand that girl. I guess she's related to the other,"
-and he shambled up the steps. His unsteady walk, his shaking hand, as
-he clumsily pushed the chairs out of the way, told their disagreeable
-story. He walked straight up to the girl, and looking beyond her, said
-easily, "Excuse me, miss, but I'm goin' to play a little for some
-friends o' mine, an' I'll have to ask you to quit for a while." The
-girl looked undecidedly from him to us, but we had nothing to say.
-
-"Come, come," he added impatiently, "you can bang all you want in a few
-minutes, with nobody to disturb you. Jus' now I'm goin' to do my own
-turn."
-
-His assurance was so perfect, his intention to command obedience so
-evident, that the child got up and went slowly down the stairs, more
-curious than angry. The man swept the music from the rack, and lifted
-the top of the piano to its full height. Then with an impatient twitch
-he spun the music-stool a few inches lower, and pulled it out. The Nice
-Boy leaned over to me.
-
-"The preparations are imposing, anyhow," he whispered. But I did not
-laugh. I felt nervous. To be disappointed again would be too cruel! I
-watched the soiled, untidy figure collapse onto the stool. Then I shut
-my eyes, to hear without prejudice of sight the opening triple-octave
-scale of the professional pianist. For with such assurance as he showed
-he should at least be able to play the scales.
-
-The hall seemed so large and dim, I was so alone--I was glad of the
-Nice Boy. Suppose it should all be a horrible plot, and the tramp
-should rush down with a revolver? Suppose--and then I stopped thinking.
-For from far-away somewhere came the softest, sweetest song. A woman
-was singing. Nearer and nearer she came, over the hills, in the lovely
-early morning; louder and louder she sang--and it was the "Spring
-Song"! Now she was with us--young, clear-eyed, happy, bursting into
-delicious flights of laughter between the bars. Her eyes, I know, were
-grey. She did not run or leap--she came steadily on, with a swift,
-strong, swaying, lilting motion. She was all odorous of the morning,
-all vocal with the spring. Her voice laughed even while she sang, and
-the perfect, smooth succession of the separate sounds was unlike any
-effect I have ever heard. Now she passed--she was gone by. Softer,
-fainter, ah, she was gone! No, she turned her head, tossed us flowers,
-and sang again, turned, and singing, left us. One moment of soft
-echo--and then it was still.
-
-I breathed--for the first time since I heard her, I thought. I opened
-my eyes. It was all black before them, they had been closed so long.
-I did not dare look at the Nice Boy. There was absolutely nothing for
-him to say, but I was afraid he would try to say it. He was staring at
-the platform. His mouth was open, his eyes very large. Without turning
-his face towards me, he said solemnly, "And I gave him ten cents for a
-sandwich! Ten cents for a sandwich!"
-
-Suddenly I heard sobs--heavy, awkward sobs. I looked behind me. The
-girl had dropped forward on to the chair in front and was hysterically
-chattering into her handkerchief.
-
-"_I_ played that! _I_ played that!" she wailed. "Oh, he heard me! he
-did, he did!" I felt horribly ashamed for her. How she must feel! A
-child can suffer so.
-
-But the man at the piano gave a little chuckle of satisfaction,
-and ran his hands up and down the keys in a delirium of scales and
-arpeggios. Then he hit heavily a deep, low note. It was like a great,
-bass trumpet. A crashing chord: and then the love-song of Germany and
-musicians caught me up to heaven, or wherever people go who love that
-tune--perhaps it is to Germany--and I heard a great, magnificent man
-singing in a great, magnificent baritone, the song that won Clara
-Schumann's heart.
-
-Schubert sang sweetly, wonderfully. I cry like a baby when one sings
-the Serenade even fairly well. And dear Franz Abt has made most loving
-melodies. But they were musicians singing, this was a man. "_Du meine
-Liebe, du!_"--that was no piano; it was a voice. And yet no human
-voice could be at once so limpid and so rich, so thrilling and so
-clear. And now it crashed out in chords--heavy, broken harmony. All the
-rapture of possession, the very absolute of human joy were there--but
-these are words, and that was love and music.
-
-I don't in the least know how long it lasted. There was no time for me.
-The god at the piano repeated it again and again, I think, as it is
-never repeated in the singing, and always should be. I know that the
-tears rolled over my cheeks and dropped into my lap. I have a vague
-remembrance of the Nice Boy's enthusiastically and brokenly begging
-me to marry him to-night and go to Venice with him to-morrow, and my
-ecstatically consenting to that or anything else. I am sure he held
-my hand during that period, for the rings cut in so the next day.
-And I think--indeed I am quite certain--but why consider one's self
-responsible for such things? At any rate, it has never happened since.
-
-And when it was over we went up hand in hand, and the Nice Boy said,
-"What--what is your--your name?" And I stared at him, expecting to
-see his dirty clothes drop off, and his trailing clouds of glory wrap
-him 'round before he vanished from our eyes. His heavy eyebrows bent
-together. His knees shook the piano-stool. He was labouring under an
-intense excitement. But I think he was pleased at our faces.
-
-"What--what the devil does it matter to you what I'm named?" he said
-roughly.
-
-"Oh, it doesn't matter at all, not at all," I said meekly; "only we
-wanted, we wanted----" And then, like that chit of seventeen, I cried,
-too. I am such a fool about music.
-
-"Now you know what I mean when I say I can play," he growled savagely.
-He seemed really terribly excited, even angry. "I'll play one thing
-more. Then you go home. When I think o' what I might have done, great
-God, I can't die till I've shown 'em! Can I? Can I die? You hear me!
-You see"--his face was livid. His eyes gleamed like coals. I ought to
-have been afraid, but I wasn't.
-
-"You shall show them!" I gasped. "You shall! Will you play for the
-hotel? We can fill this place for you. We can----"
-
-"Oh, you shut up!" he snarled. "You! I've played to thousands, I have.
-You don't know anything about it. It's this devil's drink that's
-killin' me. It ruined me in Vienna. It spoiled the whole thing in
-Paris. It's goin' to kill me." His voice rose to a shriek. He dropped
-from the stool, and from his pocket fell a bottle. The Nice Boy gave a
-queer little sob.
-
-"Oh, it's dreadful, dreadful!" he whispered to himself. He jumped up on
-the platform and seized the man's shoulder.
-
-"Come, come," he said. "We'll help you. Come, be a man! You stay here
-with us, and we'll take care of you. Such a gift as yours shall not go
-for nothing. Come over to the hotel, and I'll get you a bed."
-
-The man staggered up. He was much older than I had thought. There were
-deep, disagreeable lines in his face. There was a coarseness, too--but,
-oh, that "Spring Song"! Now, how can that be? My brother-in-law
-says--but this is not his story. The man got onto the seat somehow.
-
-"You're a decent fellow," he said. "When I've done playing, you
-go out. Right straight out. D'ye hear? I'll come see you to-morrow
-morning."
-
-Then he shut his eyes and felt for the keys, and played the Chopin
-Berceuse. And it is an actual fact that I wanted to die then. Not
-suddenly--but just to be rocked into rest, rocked into rest, and not
-wake up any more. It was the purest, sweetest, most inexpressibly
-touching thing I ever heard. I felt so young--so trustful, somehow. I
-knew that no harm would come. And then it sang itself to sleep, and we
-went away and left him, with his head resting on his hands that still
-pressed the keys. And we never spoke. I think the girl came out with
-us, but I'm not sure.
-
-At the door the Nice Boy gulped, and said in a queer, shaky voice, "I'm
-not nearly good enough to have sat by you--I know that--you seem so
-far away--but I want to tell you." And I said that he was much better
-than I--that none of us were good--that I thought it would be all right
-in the end--that after all it was being managed better than we could
-arrange it--that perhaps heaven was more like what we used to think
-than what we think now. There is no knowing what we might have said if
-my brother-in-law had not come down to see where I was. And then I went
-to sleep like a baby.
-
-
-III
-
-I should like to end the story here. I should like to leave him bowed
-over the keys and remember only the most exquisite experience of my
-life in connection with him. But there is the rest of the tale, and it
-really needs telling.
-
-I didn't see the end. The Nice Boy and my brother-in-law saw that, and
-I only know as much as they will tell me. The Nice Boy went over and
-got him the next morning. He said his name was Decker. He said that
-he had spent the night in the solemnest watching and praying, and he
-had held the bottle in his hands and never touched a drop of it. They
-gave him a bath and clothes, and fed him steadily for two days. He
-grew fat before our eyes. He looked nicer, more respectable, but more
-commonplace. He refused to touch the piano, because it gave him such a
-craving for drink.
-
-He hated to talk about himself. But he let slip occasional remarks
-about London and Paris and Vienna and Leipsic that took away one's
-breath. He must have known strange people. Once he told me a little
-story about Clara Schumann that implied more than acquaintance, and he
-quoted Liszt constantly. He was an American beyond a doubt, we thought.
-He spoke vaguely of a secret that even Liszt had missed. I guessed
-it was connected with that wonderful singing quality that made the
-instrument a human voice under his fingers. When I asked him about it
-he laughed.
-
-"You wait," he said confidently. "You just wait. I'll show you people
-something to make you open your eyes. I know. You're a good audience,
-you and your friend. You make a good air to play in. You just wait."
-
-And I have waited. But never again shall I hear that lovely girl sing
-across the hills. Never again will my heart grow big, and ache and
-melt, and slip away to that song, "Du, Meine Leibe, Du." Oh, it was
-not of this earth, that music. Perhaps when I die I shall hear the
-Berceuse echo--I think it may be so.
-
-Well, we got them all together. There must have been a thousand.
-They came from across the bay and all along the inlet. The piano
-was tuned, and the people were seated, and I was just where we were
-that night, and Mr. Decker was walking behind the little curtain in
-a new dress-suit. He had shaken hands with me just before. His hands
-were cold as ice and they trembled in mine. I congratulated him on
-the presence of Herr H---- from Leipsic, who had been miraculously
-discovered just across the bay; and Mr. J---- of New York, who could
-place him musically in the most desirable fashion; and asked him not to
-forget me, his first audience, and his most sincere friend and admirer.
-
-In his eyes I could swear I saw fright. Not nervousness, not stage
-fear, but sheer, appalling terror. It could not be, I thought, and my
-brother-in-law told me to go down. Then he stepped to the front and
-told them all how pleased, how proud and delighted he was to be the
-means of introducing to them one whom he confidently trusted would
-leave this stage to-night one of the recognised pianists of the world.
-He described briefly the man's extraordinary effect upon two of his
-friends, who were not, he was good enough to say, likely to be mistaken
-in their musical estimates. He hoped that they all appreciated their
-good fortune in being the first people in this part of the world to
-hear Mr. Decker, and he took great pleasure in introducing him.
-
-At this point Mr. Decker should have come forward. As he did not, my
-brother-in-law stepped back to get him. He found the Nice Boy alone in
-the room behind the stage, looking distinctly nervous. He explained
-that Mr. Decker had gone out for a moment to get the air--he was
-naturally a bit excited, and the room was close. My brother-in-law said
-nothing, and they waited a few minutes in strained silence. Finally
-they walked about the room looking at each other.
-
-"Do you think it was quite wise to let him go?" said my
-brother-in-law, with compressed lips. The Nice Boy is horribly afraid
-of my brother-in-law.
-
-"I'll--I'll go out and--and get him," he gasped, and dashed out into
-the dark, cursing himself for a fool. This was unfortunate, for in five
-seconds more Mr. Decker had reeled into the room. He explained in a
-very thick voice that he had never been able to play without the drink;
-that a little brandy set his fingers free, but that he had taken too
-much and must rest.
-
-When the Nice Boy got back--he had brought two great pails of cold
-water and a fresh dress-shirt--it was too late. The man lay in a heap
-on the floor, and my brother-in-law stood, white and raging, talking to
-the heap. The man was drunkenly, horribly asleep. The Boy said that the
-worst five minutes he ever spent were those in which he poured water
-over the heap on the floor and shook it, my brother-in-law watching
-with an absolutely indescribable expression!
-
-Then he got out on the platform and said something. Mr. Decker had met
-with an accident--would some one get a doctor?--was there perhaps a
-doctor in the audience?--they could realise his position--and more of
-that sort.
-
-I knew well enough. When the doctor went in he found the Boy shaking
-the drunken brute on the floor, and they told the doctor all about it,
-and then went out by the other door. And they got a carriage and took
-Decker to the hotel.
-
-I don't know--it seemed not wholly his fault. And his face showed
-that he had suffered. But the men would hear nothing of that. My
-brother-in-law says that for a woman who is really as hard as nails I
-have more apparent and æsthetic sympathy than any one he ever knew. And
-that may be so.
-
-The people took it very nicely. They cleared the floor, and the younger
-ones danced and the older ones talked, and the manager sent over ices
-and coffee, and it turned out the affair of the season. And they were
-all very grateful to my brother-in-law and his friend, and quite forgot
-about the strange artist.
-
-Whether he ever fully realised what the evening had been we never knew,
-because when they went in the next morning to see how he was, they
-found him dead. The doctor said that the excitement, the terror, the
-sudden cutting off of liquor, with the sudden wild drinking, were too
-much for an overstrained heart, and that he had probably died soon
-after he was carried to his room.
-
-It seemed to me a little sad that while they were dancing, the man whom
-they had come to see----. But my brother-in-law says that I turn to
-the morbid view of things, and that that was the very blessing of the
-whole affair--that the crowd should have been so pleased, and that the
-horrible situation should have ended so smoothly. Because such a man is
-better dead, he says. And of course he is right. Life would be horrible
-to him, one can see.
-
-But I have noticed that the Nice Boy and the girl who heard him play do
-not feel so sure that his death was best. For myself, I shall always
-feel that the world has lost its musical master. I have heard the
-music-makers of two generations, and not one of them has excelled his
-exquisite lightness and force of touch, and that wonderful singing
-stress--oh! I could cry to think of it! And when we go abroad next I
-shall find out the name of the man who played in Leipsic and Paris
-and Vienna--for he must have played there once; he said he had played
-to thousands--and see if any one there has heard of his secret, his
-wonderful singing through the keys.
-
-For, though my brother-in-law says that the musical temperament in
-combination with a Bohemian tendency gives an emotional basis which is
-absolutely unsafe and therefore untrustworthy in its reports of actual
-facts, I know that the most glorious music of my life gained nothing
-from my imagination. For there were three of us who saw the spring come
-over the hills that night. Three of us heard the triumph-song of love
-incarnate, and thrilled to it. Three of us knew for once a peace that
-passed our understanding, and had the comfort of little children in
-their mother's arms.
-
-And though it is not true, as my brother-in-law insinuates, that a man
-need only be able to play my soul away in order to be ranked by me
-among the angels, I shall continue to insist that somewhere, somehow,
-the beautiful sounds he made are accounted to him for just a little
-righteousness!
-
-
-
-
-A WIND FLOWER
-
-
-I
-
-Willard's landlady smiled sympathetically across the narrow
-breakfast-table. "I guess you've got to stay in this mornin', Mr.
-Willard," she said. "It's a good deal too raw and cold for you to be
-out around, paintin', to-day."
-
-Willard nodded. "Quite right, Mrs. Storrs," he returned, and he smiled
-at his landlady's daughter, who sat opposite. But she did not smile at
-him. She continued her silent meal, looking for the most part at her
-plate, and replying to direct questions only by monosyllables.
-
-She must be nineteen or twenty, he decided, but her slender, curveless
-figure might have been that of a girl several years younger. Her face
-was absolutely without character to the casual glance--pale, slightly
-freckled, lighted by grey-green, half-closed eyes, and framed in light
-brown hair. Her lips were thin, and her rare smile did not disclose
-her teeth. Even her direct look, when he compelled it, was quite
-uninterested.
-
-Her mother chattered with volubility of a woman left much alone,
-and glad of an appreciative listener, but the girl had not, of her
-own accord, spoken a word during his week's stay. He wondered as he
-thought of it why he had not noticed it before, and decided that her
-silence was not obtrusive, but only the outcome of her colourless
-personality--like the silence of the prim New England house itself.
-
-He groaned inwardly. "What in time _can_ I do? Nothing to read within
-five miles: my last cigar gone yesterday: this beastly weather driving
-me to melancholia! If she weren't such a stick--heavens! I never knew a
-girl could be so thin!"
-
-The girl in question rose and began clearing the table. Her mother
-bustled out of the room, and left Willard in the old-fashioned
-arm-chair by the window, almost interested, as he wondered what the
-girl would do or say now. After five minutes of silence he realised
-the strange impression, or rather the lack of impression, she made on
-him. He was hardly conscious of a woman's presence. The intangible
-atmosphere of femininity that wraps around a _tête-à-tête_ with even
-the most unattractive woman was wholly lacking. She seemed simply a
-more or less intelligent human being.
-
-Given greatly to analysis, he grew interested. Why was this? She was
-not wanting intellectually, he was sure. Such remarks as she had
-made in answer to his own were not noticeable for stupidity or even
-stolidity of thought. He broke the silence.
-
-"What do you do with yourself, these days?" he suggested. "I don't see
-you about at all. Are you reading, or walking about these fascinating
-Maine beaches?"
-
-She did not even look up at him as she replied. "I don't know as I do
-very much of anything. I'm not very fond of reading--at least, not
-these books."
-
-Remembering the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Book of Martyrs," "Mrs. Heman's
-Poems," and the "Adventures of Rev. James Hogan, Missionary to the
-Heathen of Africa," that adorned the marble-topped table in the
-parlour, he shuddered sympathetically.
-
-"But I walk a good deal," she volunteered. "I've been all over that
-ledge you're painting."
-
-"Isn't it beautiful?" he said. "It reminds me of a poem I read
-somewhere about the beauty of Appledore--that's on this coast
-somewhere, too, isn't it? You'd appreciate the poem, I'm sure--do you
-care for poetry?"
-
-She piled the dishes on a tray, and carried it through the door before
-he had time to take it from her.
-
-"No," she replied over her shoulder, "no, I don't care for it. It seems
-so--so smooth and shiny, somehow."
-
-"Smooth? shiny?" he smiled as she came back, "I don't see."
-
-Her high, rather indifferent voice fell in a slight embarrassment, as
-she explained: "Oh, I mean the rhymes and the verses--they're so even
-and like a clock ticking."
-
-He took from his pocket a little red book. "Let me read you this," he
-said eagerly, "and see if you think it smooth and shiny. You must have
-heard and seen what this man tries to tell."
-
-She stood awkwardly by the table, her scant, shapeless dress
-accentuating the straight lines of her slim figure, her hands clasped
-loosely before her, her face turned toward the window, which rattled
-now and then at the gusts of the rising wind. Willard held the little
-book easily between thumb and finger, and read in clear, pleasant
-tones, looking at her occasionally with interest:
-
-    "_Fresh from his fastnesses, wholesome and spacious,
-    The north wind, the mad huntsman, halloos on his white hounds
-    Over the gray, roaring reaches and ridges,
-    The forest of Ocean, the chase of the world.
-    Hark to the peal of the pack in full cry,
-    As he thongs them before him, swarming voluminous,
-    Weltering, wide-wallowing, till in a ruining
-    Chaos of energy, hurled on their quarry,
-    They crash into foam!_"
-
-"There! is that smooth and shiny?" he demanded. She had moved nearer,
-to catch more certainly his least intonation.
-
-Her hands twisted nervously, and to his surprise she smiled with
-unmistakable pleasure.
-
-"Oh, no!" she half whispered, eyeing the book in his hand wistfully.
-"Oh, no! That makes me feel different. I--I love the wind."
-
-"What's that?" Mrs. Storrs entered quickly. "Now, Sarah, you just stop
-that nonsense! Mr. Willard, has she been tellin' you any foolishness?"
-
-"Miss Storrs had only told me that she liked the wind," he replied,
-hoping that the woman would go, and let him develop at leisure what
-promised to be a most interesting situation. She had really very
-pretty, even teeth, and when she smiled her lips curved pleasantly.
-
-But Mrs. Storrs was not to be evaded. She had evidently a grievance to
-set forth, and looking reproachfully at her daughter, continued:
-
-"Ever since Sarah was five or six years old she's had that crazy likin'
-for the wind. 'Tain't natural, I say, and when the gales that we hev up
-here strike us, the least anybody can do 's to stay in the house and
-thank Providence they've got a house to stay in! Why, Mr. Willard,
-you'd never think it to look at her, for she's a real quiet girl--too
-quiet, seems to me, sometimes, when I'm just put to it for somebody
-to be social with--but in thet big gale of eighty-eight she was out
-all night in it, and me and her father--that was before Mr. Storrs
-died--nearly crazy with fearin' she was lost for good. And when she was
-six years old, she got up from her crib and went out on the beach in
-her little nightgown, and nothin' else, and it's a miracle she didn't
-die of pneumonia, if not of bein' blown to death."
-
-Mrs. Storrs stopped for breath, and Willard glanced at the girl,
-wondering if she would appear disconcerted or angry at such
-unlooked-for revelation of her eccentricity; but her face had settled
-into its usual impassive lines, and she dusted the chairs serenely,
-turning now and then to look fixedly through the window at the swaying
-elm whose boughs leaned to the ground under the still rising wind.
-
-Her mother was evidently relieving the strain of an enforced silence,
-and sitting stiffly in her chair, as one not accustomed to the luxury
-of idle conversation, she continued:
-
-"And even now, when she's old enough to know better, you'd think, she
-acts possessed. Any wind-storm 'll set her off, but when the spring
-gales come, she'll just roam 'round the house, back and forth, staring
-out of doors, and me as nervous as a cat all the while. Just because
-I won't let her go out she acts like a child. Why, last year I had to
-go out and drag her in by main force; I was nearly blown off the cliff
-gettin' her home. And she was singin', calm, as if she was in her bed
-like any decent person! It's the most unnatural thing I ever heard
-of! Now, Sarah Storrs," as the girl was slipping from the room, "you
-remember you promised me not to go out this year after supper, if the
-wind was high. You mind, now! It's comin' up an awful blow."
-
-The girl turned abruptly. "I never promised you that, mother," she said
-quickly. "I said I wouldn't if I could help it, and if I can't help it,
-I can't, and that's all there is to it." The door closed behind her,
-and shortly afterwards Willard left Mrs. Storrs in possession of the
-room.
-
-The day affected him strangely. The steady low moan of the wind was by
-this time very noticeable. It was not cold, only clear and rather keen,
-and the scurrying grey clouds looked chillier than one found the air on
-going out. The boom of the surf carried a sinister threat with it, and
-the birds drove helplessly with the wind-current, as if escaping some
-dreaded thing behind them.
-
-Indoors, the state of affairs was not much better: Mrs. Storrs looked
-injured; her sister, a lady of uncertain years and temper, talked of
-sudden deaths, and the probability of premature burial, pointed by the
-relation of actual occurrences of that nature; Sarah was not to be
-seen. At last he could bear idleness no longer, and opening the dusty
-melodeon, tried to drown the dreary minor music of the wind by some
-cheerful selection from the hymn-book Mrs. Storrs brought him, having
-a vague idea that secular music was out of keeping with the character
-of that instrument. After a few moments' aimless fingering the keys he
-found himself pedalling a laborious accompaniment to the "Dead March"
-from Saul, and closed the wheezy little organ in despair.
-
-The long day dragged somehow by, and at supper Sarah appeared, if
-anything, whiter and more uninteresting than ever, only to retire
-immediately when the meal was over.
-
-"I might's well tell you, Mr. Willard, that you c'n give up all hope of
-paintin' any more this week," announced Mrs. Storrs, as the door closed
-behind her daughter. "This wind's good for a week, I guess. I'm sorry
-to have you go, but I shouldn't feel honest not to tell you." Mentally
-vowing to leave the next morning, Willard thanked her, and explained
-that the study was far enough advanced to be completed at his studio in
-the city, and that he had intended leaving very shortly.
-
-
-II
-
-A few moments later, as he stood at the window in the parlour, looking
-at the waving elm-boughs and lazily wondering how the moon could be so
-bright when there were so many clouds, the soft swish of a woman's
-skirt sounded close to his ear. As he turned, the frightened "Oh!"
-and the little gasp of surprised femininity revealed Sarah, standing
-near the table in the centre of the room. Even at that distance and
-in the dark he was aware of a difference in her, a subtle element of
-personality not present before.
-
-"Did I frighten you?" he asked, coming nearer.
-
-"No, not very much. Only I thought nobody would be here. I--I--wanted
-some place to breathe in; it seems so tight and close in the house." As
-she spoke, a violent blast of wind drove the shutters against the side
-of the house and rubbed together the branches of the elm until they
-creaked dismally. She pressed her face against the glass and stared out
-into the dark.
-
-"Don't you love it?" she questioned, almost eagerly.
-
-Willard shook his head dubiously. "Don't know. Looks pretty cool. If it
-gets much higher, I shouldn't care to walk far."
-
-She took her old place by the table again, but soon left it, and
-wandered restlessly about the room. As she passed him he was conscious
-of a distinct physical impression--a kind of electric presence. She
-seemed to gather and hold about her all the faint light of the cold
-room, and the sweep of her skirt against his foot seemed to draw him
-toward her. Suddenly she stopped her irregular march.
-
-"Hear it sing!" she whispered.
-
-The now distinct voice of the wind grew to a long, minor wail, that
-rose and fell with rhythmic regularity. As she paused with uplifted
-finger near him, Willard felt with amazement a compelling force,
-a personality more intense, for the time, than his own. Then, as
-the blast, with a shriek that echoed for a moment with startling
-distinctness from every side, dashed the elm branches against the house
-itself, she turned abruptly and left the room. "Stay here!" she said
-shortly, and, resisting the impulse to follow her, he obeyed. In a
-few moments she returned with a heavy shawl wrapped over her head and
-shoulders.
-
-"Hold the window open for me," she said, "I'm going out." He attempted
-remonstrance, but she waved him impatiently away. "I can't get out of
-the door--mother's locked it and taken the key, but you can hold up the
-window while I get out. Oh, come yourself, if you like! But nothing can
-happen to me."
-
-Mechanically he held open the window as she slipped out, and, dragging
-his overcoat after him, scrambled through himself. She was waiting for
-him at the corner of the house, and as he stumbled in the unfamiliar
-shadows, held out her hand.
-
-"Here, take hold of my hand," she commanded. Her cool, slim grasp was
-strangely pleasant, as she hurried along with a smooth, gliding motion,
-wholly unlike her indifferent gait of the day before.
-
-Once out of the shelter of the house, the storm struck them with full
-force, and Willard realised that he was well-nigh strangled in the
-clutches of a genuine Maine gale.
-
-"What folly!" he gasped, crowding his hat over his eyes and struggling
-to gain his wonted consciousness of superiority. "Come back instantly,
-Miss Storrs! Your mother----"
-
-"Come! come!" she interrupted, pulling him along.
-
-He stared at her in amazement. Her eyes were wide open and almost
-black with excitement. Her face gleamed like ivory in the cold light.
-Her lips were parted and curved in a happy smile. Her slender body
-swayed easily with the wind that nearly bent Willard double. She seemed
-unreal--a phantom of the storm, a veritable wind-spirit. Her loosened
-hair flew across his face, and its touch completed the strange thrill
-that her hand-clasp brought. He followed unresistingly.
-
-"Aren't--you--afraid--of--the--woods?" he gasped, the gusts tearing the
-words from his lips, as he saw that she was making for the thick growth
-of trees that bordered the cliff. Her high, light laughter almost
-frightened him, so weird and unhuman it came to him on the wind.
-
-"Why should I be afraid? The woods are so beautiful in a storm! They
-bow and nod and throw their branches about--oh, they're best of all,
-then!"
-
-A sweeping blast nearly threw him down, and he instinctively dropped
-her hand, since there was no possible feeling of protection for her,
-her footing was so sure, her balance so perfect. As he righted himself
-and staggered to the shelter of the tree under which she was standing,
-he stopped, lost in wonder and admiration. She had impatiently thrown
-off the shawl and stood in a gleam of moonlight under the tree. Her
-long, straight hair flew out in two fluttering wisps at either side;
-her straight, fine brows, her dark, long lashes, her slender, curved
-mouth were painted against her pale face in clear relief. Her eyes were
-widely open, the pupils dark and gleaming. It seemed to his excited
-glance that rays of light streamed from them to him. "Heavens! she's a
-beauty! If only I could catch that pose!" he said under his breath.
-
-"Come!" she called to him again, "we're wasting time! I want to get to
-the cliff!" He pressed on to her, but she slipped around the tree and
-eluded him, keeping a little in advance as he panted on, fighting with
-all the force of a fairly powerful man against the gale that seemed
-to offer her no resistance. It occurred to him, as he watched with
-a greedy artist's eye the almost unnatural ease and lightness of her
-walk, that she caught intuitively the turns of the wind, guiding along
-currents and channels unknown to him, for she seemed with it always,
-never against it. Once she threw out both her arms in an abandon of
-delight, and actually leaned on the gust that tossed him against a
-tree, baffled and wearied with his efforts to keep pace with her, and
-confusedly wondering if he would wake soon from this improbable dream.
-
-Speech was impossible. The whistling of the wind alone was deafening,
-and his voice was blown in twenty directions when he attempted to call
-her. Small twigs lashed his face, slippery boughs glided from his
-grasp, and the trees fled by in a thick-grown crowd to his dazed eyes.
-To his right, a birch suddenly fell with a snapping crash. He leaped
-to one side, only to feel about his face a blinding storm of pattering
-acorns from the great oak that with a rending sigh and swish tottered
-through the air at his left.
-
-"Good God!" he cried in terror, as he saw her standing apparently
-in its track. A veer in the gale altered the direction of the great
-trunk, that sank to the ground across her path. As it fell, with an
-indescribable, swaying bound she leaped from the ground, and before
-it quite touched the earth she rested lightly upon it. She seemed
-absolutely unreal--a dryad of the windy wood. All fear for her left
-him. As she stood poised on the still trembling trunk, a quick gust
-blew out her skirt to a bubble on one side, and drove it close to her
-slender body on the other, while her loose hair streamed like a banner
-along the wind. She curved her figure towards him and made a cup of
-one hand, laying it beside her opened lips. What she said he did not
-hear. He was rapt in delighted wonder at the consummate grace of her
-attitude, the perfect poise of her body. She was a figure in a Greek
-frieze--a bas-relief--a breathing statue.
-
-Unable to make him hear, she turned slightly and pointed ahead. He
-realised the effect of the Wingless Victory in its unbroken beauty. She
-was not a woman, but an incarnate art, a miracle of changing line and
-curve, a ceaseless inspiration.
-
-Suddenly he heard the pound and boom of the surf. In an ecstasy
-of impatience she hurried back, seized his hand, and fairly
-dragged him on. The crash of the waves and the wind together
-took from him all power of connected thought. He clung to her
-hand like a child, and when she threw herself down on her
-face to breathe, he grasped her dress and panted in her ear:
-"We--can't--get--much--farther--unless--you--can--walk--the--Atlantic!"
-She smiled happily back at him, and the thickness of her hair, blown
-by the wind from the ocean about his face, brought him a strange,
-unspeakable content.
-
-"Shall we ever go back?" he whispered, half to himself. "Or will you
-float down the cliff and wake me by your going?"
-
-Her wide, dark eyes answered him silently. "It is like a dream,
-though," her high, sweet voice added. And then he realised that she had
-hardly spoken since they left the house. The house? As in a dream he
-tried vaguely to connect this Undine of the wood with the girl whose
-body she had stolen for this night's pranks. As in a dream he rose
-and followed her back, through the howling, sweeping wind. Her cold,
-slim hand held his; her light, shrill voice sang little snatches of
-songs--hymns, he remembered afterward. As the moonlight fell on her, he
-wondered dreamily why he had thought her too thin. And all the while he
-fought, half-unconsciously, the resistless gale, that spared him only
-when he yielded utterly.
-
-The house gleamed white and square before them. Silently he raised the
-window for her. He had no thought of lifting her in. That she should
-slip lightly through was of course. The house was still lighted, and he
-heard the creaking of her mother's rocking-chair in the bedroom over
-his head. He looked at his watch. "Does her mother rock all night?" he
-thought dully, for it was nearly twelve. She read his question from the
-perplexed glance he threw at her.
-
-"She's sitting up to watch the door so that I sha'n't get out," she
-whispered quietly, without a smile. "Good-bye." And he stood alone in
-the room.
-
-Until late the next morning he wandered in strange, wearied, yet
-fascinating dreams with her. Vague sounds, as of high-pitched
-reproaches and quiet sobbing, mingled with his morning dreams, and
-when, with aching head and thoroughly bewildered brain, he went to
-his late breakfast, Mrs. Storrs served him; only as he left for the
-train, possessed by a longing for the great, busy city of his daily
-work, did he see her daughter, walking listlessly about the house. Her
-freckled face was paler than ever, her half-closed eyes reddened, and
-her slight, awkward bow in recognition of his puzzled salute might have
-been directed to some one behind him. Only his aching head and wearied
-feet assured him that the strangest night of his life had been no dream.
-
-
-III
-
-That his studio should seem bare and uninteresting as he threw open the
-door, and tried to kindle a fire in the dusty stove, did not surprise
-him. That the sketches and studies in colour should look tame and flat
-to the eye that had been fed for two weeks with Maine surf, angry
-clouds, and swaying branches, was perhaps only natural. But as the days
-went on and he failed to get in train for work a puzzled wonder slowly
-grew in him. Why was it that the picture dragged so? He remembered
-perfectly the look of the beach, the feel of the cold, hungry water,
-the heavy, grey clouds, the primitive, forbidding austerity that a
-while ago he had been so confidently eager to put on the canvas. Why
-was it that he sat for hours together helplessly staring at it? His
-friends supposed him wrapped in his subject, working under a high
-pressure, and considerately left him alone; they would have marvelled
-greatly had they seen him glowering moodily at the merest study of the
-subject he had described so vividly to them, smoking countless packages
-of cigarettes, hardly lifting his hand from his chair-arm.
-
-Once he threw down a handful of brushes and started out for a tramp. It
-occurred to him that the city sights and smells, the endless hum and
-roar, the rapid pace of the crowded streets would tone him up and set
-his thoughts in a new line; he was tired of the whistling gales and
-tossing trunks and booming surf that haunted his nights and confused
-his days. A block away from the studio a flower-woman met him with a
-tray of daffodils and late crocuses. A sudden puff of wind blew out her
-scant, thin skirt; a tree in the centre of the park they were crossing
-bent to it, the branches creaked faintly. The fresh, earthy odour of
-the flowers moved him strangely. He bought a bunch, turned, and went
-back to the studio, to sit for an hour gazing sightlessly ahead of him.
-
-Suddenly he started up and approached the sketch.
-
-"It wants wind," he muttered, half unconsciously, and fell to work. An
-hour passed, two, three--he still painted rapidly. Just as the light
-was fading a thunderous knock at the door ushered in the two men he
-knew best. He nodded vaguely, and they crossed the room in silence
-and looked at the picture. For a few moments no one spoke. Presently
-Willard took a brush from his mouth and faced them.
-
-"Well?" he said.
-
-The older man shook his head. "Queer sky!" he answered briefly.
-
-The younger looked questioningly at Willard. "You'll have to get a gait
-on you if you hope to beat Morris with that," he said. "What's up,
-Willard? Don't you want that prize?"
-
-"Of course I do." His voice sounded dull, even to himself. "You aren't
-any too sympathetic, you fellows----" he tried to feel injured.
-
-The older man came nearer. "What's that white thing there? Good Lord,
-Will, you're not going to try a figure----"
-
-Willard brushed rapidly over the shadowy outline. "No--that was just a
-sketch. The whole thing's just a sort of----"
-
-"The whole thing's just a bluff!" interrupted the younger man,
-decidedly. "It's not what you told us about at all--and it's not good,
-anyway. It looks as if a tornado had struck it! You said it was to be
-late afternoon--it's nearer midnight, as far as I can see! What's that
-tree lying around for?"
-
-His tone was abusive, but a genuine concern and surprise was underneath
-it. He looked furtively at his older friend behind Willard's back. The
-other shook his head expressively.
-
-Willard bit his lip. "I only wanted to try--it won't necessarily stay
-that way," he explained. He wished he cared more for what they said. He
-wished they did not bore him so unspeakably. More than all, he wished
-they would go.
-
-The younger one whistled softly. "Pretty late in the day to be making
-up your mind, I should say," he remarked. "When's it going to dry in?
-Morris has been working like a horse on his for six weeks. He's coming
-on, too--splendid colour!"
-
-Willard lit a cigarette. "Damn Morris!" he said casually. The older man
-drew on his glove and turned to go.
-
-"Oh, certainly!" he replied cheerfully. "By all means! No, we can't
-stay--we only dropped in. We just thought we'd see how you were
-getting along. If I were you, Will, I'd make up my mind about that
-intoxicated tree and set it up straight--good-bye!"
-
-They went out cheerfully enough, but he knew they were disappointed
-and hurt--they had expected so much from that picture. And he wished
-he cared more. He looked at it critically. Of course it was bad, but
-how could they tell what he had been doing? It was the plan of months
-changed utterly in three hours. The result was ridiculous, but he
-needed it no longer--he knew what he wanted now, what he had been
-fighting against all these days. He would paint it if he could--and
-till he could. The insistent artist-passion to express even bunglingly
-something of the unendurable beauty of that strange night was on him,
-and before the echo of his guests' departure had died away he was
-working as he had never worked before, the old picture lying unnoticed
-in the corner where he had thrown it.
-
-He needed no models, he did not use his studies. Was it not printed
-on his brain, was it not etched into his heart, that weird vision of
-the storm, with the floating fairy creature that hardly touched the
-earth? Was there a lovely curve in all her melting postures, which
-slipped like water circles into new shapes, that he did not know? That
-haunting, elf-like look, that ineffably exquisite _abandon_, had he
-not studied it greedily then in the wood, and later, in his restless
-dreams? The trees were sentient, the bushes put out clasping fingers to
-detain him, the wind shrieked out its angry soul at him; and she, the
-white wonder with her floating wisps of stinging hair, had joined with
-them to mock at him, the startled witness of that mad revel of all the
-elements. He knew all this--he was drunk with it: could he paint it? Or
-would people see only a strange-eyed girl dancing in a wood?
-
-He did not know how many days he had been at work on it; he ate what
-the cleaning-woman brought him; his face was bristled with a stubby
-growth; the cigarette boxes strewed the floor. Men appeared at the
-door, and he urged them peevishly to go away; people brought messages,
-and he said he was not in town, and returned the notes unread. In the
-morning he smiled and breathed hard and patted the easel; at night he
-bit his nails and cursed himself for a colour-blind fool.
-
-There was a white birch, strained and bent in the wind, that troubled
-him still, and as he was giving it the last touches, in the cold,
-strong afternoon light, the door burst open.
-
-"Look here, the thing closes at six! Are you crazy?" they called to
-him, exasperatedly. "Aren't you going to send it?"
-
-"That's all right, that's all right," he muttered vaguely, "shut up,
-can't you?"
-
-They stood over behind him, and there was a stillness in the room. He
-laid down his palette carefully and turned to them, a worried look on
-his drawn, bristled face.
-
-"That's meant to be the ocean beyond the cliff there," he said, an
-almost childlike fear in his eyes, "did--did you know it?"
-
-The older man drew in a long breath.
-
-"Lord, yes! I hear it!" he returned, "do you think we're deaf?"
-
-The younger one squinted at various distances, muttering to himself.
-
-"Dryad? Undine? No, she frightens you, but she's sweet! George! He's
-painted the wind! He's actually drawn a wind! My, but it's stunning!
-My!"
-
-Willard sank into a chair. He was flushed and his legs shook. He patted
-the terrier unsteadily and talked to her. "Well, then! Well, then! So
-she was, iss, so she was!"
-
-The older man snapped his watch. "Five-thirty," he said. "Put something
-'round it, and whistle a cab--we'll have to hurry!"
-
-Willard fingered some dead crocuses on the stand beside him. "Look out,
-you fool, it's wet!" he growled. The older man patted his shoulder.
-
-"All right, boy, all right!" he said soothingly. "It's all done,
-now--never mind!"
-
-They shouldered it out of the door while he pulled the terrier's ears.
-
-"Where you going?" they called.
-
-"Turkish bath. Restaurant. Vaudeville," he answered, and they nodded.
-
-"All alone?"
-
-"Yes, thanks. Drop in to-morrow!"
-
-"----And drive like thunder!" he heard them through the open window.
-
-A week later he was walking up Broadway between them, sniffing the
-fresh, sweet air comfortably, the terrier at his heels. At intervals
-they read him bits from the enthusiastic comments of the critics.
-
-"Mr. Willard, whose 'Windflower' distanced all competitors and won
-the Minot prize by a unanimous verdict of the judges, has displayed,
-aside from his thorough master of technic, a breadth of atmosphere, an
-imaginative range rarely if ever equalled by an American. Nothing but
-the work itself, so manifestly idealistic in subject and treatment,
-could convince us that it is not a study from life, so keen, so
-haunting is the impression produced by the remarkable figure of the
-Spirit of the Gale, who seems to sink before our eyes on the falling
-trunk, literally riding the storm. In direct contrast to this abandon
-of the figure is the admirable reticence of the background which is
-keyed so low----"
-
-Willard stopped abruptly before the window of a large art
-establishment where a photograph of the picture was already displayed.
-"I want one of those," he said, "and I'm going out into the country for
-a bit before I sail, I think."
-
-"Oh, back there?" they asked, comprehensively.
-
-"Yes, back there!"
-
-
-IV
-
-As the train rushed along he explained to himself why he was going--why
-he had not merely sent the photograph. He wanted to see her, to brush
-away the cloud of illusion that the weeks had spun around her. He
-wanted to realise definitely the difference between the pale, silent,
-unformed New England girl and the fascinating personality of his
-picture. Ever since he left her they had grown confused, these two
-that his common sense told him were so different, and he was beginning
-to dread the unavowed hope that for him, at least, they might be some
-day one. The same passionate power that had thrown mystery and beauty
-into colour on the canvas wove sweet, wild dreams around what he
-contemptuously told himself was little better than a lay figure, but he
-yielded to it now as he had then.
-
-When he told himself that he was going purposely to hear her talk, to
-see her flat, unlovely figure, to appreciate her utter lack of charm,
-of all vitality, he realised that it was a cruel errand. But when he
-felt the sharp thrill that he suffered even in anticipation as his
-quick imagination pictured the dream-cloud dropping off from her,
-actually before his eyes, he believed the journey more than ever a
-necessary one.
-
-As he walked up the little country street his heart beat fast; the
-greening lawns, the fresh, faint odours, the ageless, unnamable appeal
-of the spring stirred his blood and thrilled him inexpressibly. He was
-yet in the first flush of his success; his whole nature was relaxed
-and sensitive to every joy; he let himself drift on the sweet confused
-expectancy, the delicious folly, the hope that he was to find his
-dream, his inspiration, his spirit of the wind and wood.
-
-A child passed him with a great bunch of daffodils and stopped to
-watch him long after he had passed, wondering at the silver in her hand.
-
-At the familiar gate a tall, thin woman's figure stopped his heart a
-second, and as a fitful gust blew out her apron and tossed her shawl
-over her head, he felt his breath come more quickly.
-
-"Good heavens!" he muttered, "what folly! Am I never to see a woman's
-skirt blown without----"
-
-She put the shawl back as he neared her--it was Mrs. Storrs's sister.
-She met his outstretched hand with a blank stare. Suddenly her face
-twitched convulsively.
-
-"O Mr. Willard! O Mr. Willard!" she cried, and burst into tears.
-
-The wind blew sharper, the elm tree near the window creaked, a dull
-pain grew in him.
-
-"What is it? What's the matter?" he said brusquely.
-
-"I suppose you ain't heard--you wouldn't be apt to!" she sobbed, and
-pushing back the locks the wind drove into her reddened eyes, she broke
-into incoherent sentences: he heard her as one in a dream.
-
-"And she would go--'twas the twenty-fifth--there was dozens o' trees
-blown down--'twas just before dark--her mother, she ran out after her
-as soon's she knew--she called, but she didn't hear--she saw her on the
-edge o' the rocks, an' she almost got up to her an' screamed, an' it
-scared her, we think--she turned 'round quick, an' she went right off
-the cliff an' her mother saw her go--'twas awful!"
-
-Willard's eyes went beyond her to the woods; the woman's voice, with
-its high, flat intonation, brought the past so vividly before him that
-he was unconscious of the actual scene--he lived through the quick,
-terrible drama with the intensity of a witness of it.
-
-"No, they haven't found her yet--the surf's too high. We always had a
-feeling she wouldn't live--she wasn't like other girls----"
-
-Half unconsciously he unwrapped the photograph.
-
-"I--I brought this," he said dully. The woman blanched and clutched the
-gate-post.
-
-"Oh, take it away! Take it away!" she gasped, a real terror in her
-eyes. "O Mr. Willard, how could you--it's awful! I--I wouldn't have her
-mother see it for all the world!" Her sobs grew uncontrollable.
-
-He bent it slowly across and thrust it in his pocket.
-
-"No, no," he said soothingly, "of course not, of course not. I only
-wanted to tell--you all--that it took the prize I told you about
-and--and was a good thing for me. I hoped--I hoped----"
-
-He saw that she was trembling in the sudden cold wind, and held out his
-hand.
-
-"This has been a great shock to me," he said quietly, his eyes still on
-the woods. "Please tell Mrs. Storrs how I sympathise--how startled I
-was. I am going abroad in a few days. I will send you my address, and
-if there is ever anything I can do, you will gratify me more than you
-can know by letting me help you in any way. Give her these," and he
-thrust out the great bunch of daffodils to her. She took them, still
-crying softly, and turned towards the house.
-
-Later he found himself in the woods near the great oak that lay just
-as it had fallen that night. Beneath all the confused tumult of his
-thoughts one clear truth rang like a bell, one bitter-sweet certainty
-that caught him smiling strangely as he realised it! "She's won! She's
-won!"
-
-There, while the branches swayed above him, and the surf, sinister and
-monotonous, pounded below, the vision that had made them both famous
-melted into the elusive reality, and he lived again with absolute
-abandonment that sweet mad night, he felt again her hair blown about
-his face as he lay on the windy cliff with the lady of his dreams.
-
-For him her fate was not dreadful--she could not have died like other
-women. There was an intoxication in her sudden taking away: she was
-rapt out of life as she would have wished, he knew.
-
-Slowly there grew upon him a frightened wonder if she had lived for
-this. Her actual life had been so empty, so unreal, so concentrated in
-those piercing stolen moments; she had ended it, once the heart of it
-had been caught and fixed to give to others faint thrills of all she
-had felt so utterly.
-
-"She died for it!" he felt, with a kind of awe that was far from all
-personal vanity--the blameless egoism of the artist.
-
-He left the little town hardly consciously. On his outward voyage, when
-the gale beat the vessel and the wind howled to the thundering waves,
-he came to know that though a love more real, a passion less elusive,
-might one day hold him, there would rest always in his heart and brain
-one ceaseless inspiration, one strange, sweet memory that nothing could
-efface.
-
-
-
-
-WHEN PIPPA PASSED
-
-
-Mr. Delafield, stepping comfortably forth from his club, had dined
-especially well, and was in a correspondingly good humour. As the brisk
-March wind swept across the corner just in front of him, he meanwhile
-settling his glossy hat more firmly on a fine, close-clipped grey head,
-a sudden kindly impulse, not entirely usual with him, sent him bending
-to his knee to pick up the fugitive slip of white, scribbled foolscap
-that fluttered by him, hotly pursued by a slender young man.
-
-"Thanks. Oh, thanks!" murmured the pursuer, as Delafield, with a
-courteous inclination of the head, tendered the captured slip.
-
-"Not at all." A consciousness of the boy's quick panting, his anxious
-tug at the paper, actually an almost audible beating of the heart, drew
-the older man to look carefully at him. A white, oval face, drooping
-mouth, black, deep-set eyes that fairly burned into his, compelled
-attention.
-
-"Important paper, I suppose?" he inquired lightly. "Wouldn't want to
-lose it."
-
-"No--oh, no!"
-
-"Get a wigging at the office?"
-
-"It--it's not--they are my own--it is a poem!" stammered the young man.
-
-Delafield chuckled involuntarily, and then, as a quick red poured over
-the other's cheeks, he made a hasty gesture of apology.
-
-"No offence--none at all, I assure you, Mr.--Mr. Poet! I was only taken
-by surprise. One doesn't often assist a poet in catching his works!" He
-laughed again, a contented after-dinner laugh.
-
-Then, as the young man fell behind him quietly, the incident being
-over, an idle desire for company prompted him to delay his own pace.
-
-"Do you write much? Get it printed? Good publisher?" he inquired
-genially. Few persons could resist Lester Delafield's smile: his very
-butler warmed to it, and the woman who retained her reserve under it he
-had never met.
-
-Again the young man blushed. "Published? No, sir; I never dared to
-see--I don't know if it's worth being printed," he said.
-
-"But you think it's pretty good, eh? I'll bet you do. I used to. Let me
-see it. I'll tell you if it's worth anything."
-
-They had turned into a quieter cross-street; the wind had passed them
-by. Standing under a street-light, benevolently amused at his impulse,
-Delafield tucked his stick under his arm, uncreased the paper, and
-noted the title of the poem aloud: _To the Moon in a Stormy Night._
-His eyebrows lifted; he glanced quizzically at the young man, but met
-such an earnest, searching look, so restrained, yet so quivering, so
-terrified, yet so brave, that his heart softened and he read on in
-silence.
-
-A minute passed, two, three, and four. The man read silently, the boy
-waited breathless in suspense. The noisy, crowding city seemed to sweep
-by them, leaving them stranded on this little point of time.
-
-Mr. Delafield raised his eyes and regarded the boy thoughtfully.
-
-"You say you wrote this?" he demanded.
-
-"Yes, sir."
-
-"When did you write it?"
-
-"Last night."
-
-"Have you any more like it?"
-
-"I don't know if it's like it. I've got quite a good deal more. What do
-you----" He could get no further. Drops of perspiration started from
-his forehead. His mouth was drawn flat with anxiety.
-
-"This poetry," said Delafield, with a carefully impersonal calm, "is
-very good. It is remarkably good. It is stunning, in fact. '_And moored
-at last in some pale bay of dawn_'--why did you stop there? Isn't that
-rather abrupt?"
-
-"That was when it ended. Do you really think----"
-
-"I don't think anything about it. I know. You have a future before you,
-my young friend. I should like to see--Good Lord, what is it?"
-
-For the boy had twined his arms around the lamp-post and was slowly
-sinking to the pavement. His face was ghastly white. Delafield grasped
-his arm, and as their eyes met, the older man drew a quick breath and
-scowled.
-
-"It's not because--you're not--when did you have your lunch?" he
-demanded shortly.
-
-The boy smiled weakly.
-
-"And your breakfast?"
-
-"Oh, I had _that_--quite a little--really I did!" he half whispered.
-
-Delafield got him on his feet and around the corner to a restaurant.
-As they entered, the smell of the food weakened him again, and he
-staggered against his friend, begging his pardon helplessly.
-
-"Soup--and hurry it up, it's immaterial what kind," the host commanded.
-
-As the boy gulped it down he made out a further order, and while the
-hot meat, vegetables, and bread vanished and the strong, brown coffee
-lowered in the cup, he lighted a long cigar and talked with a quiet
-insistence. Later, when his guest blinked drowsily behind a cloud of
-cigarette smoke, he asked questions, marvelling at the simple replies.
-
-The boy's name was Henry West; it was twenty-two years since he had
-made his appearance in a family already large enough to regard his
-advent with a stoical endurance. His people all worked in the mills
-in Lowell; he, too, till the noise and jar gave him racking headaches.
-He made his first verses in the mill. He had come to New York to learn
-to be a clerk in a corner drug-store kept by a distant cousin, but he
-couldn't seem to learn the business. The names of the things were hard
-to remember. His cousin said he was absent-minded.
-
-And he had to read everything that was in sight: if a thing was
-printed he seemed to have to read it. He read books from the library
-and the night-school when his cousin thought he was polishing the
-soda-fountain. Of all the things he hated--and they were many--the
-soda-fountain was the worst. He wanted to study a great deal, but only
-the studies he liked. Not algebra and geometry, nor chemistry that
-made his head ache, but history and poetry and French. He thought he
-would like to know Italian, too. The family supposed he was still in
-the drug-store, but he had quarrelled with his cousin and left it a
-month ago. He stayed mostly in the library and helped the janitor with
-sweeping and airing the rooms. The janitor paid him a little to ease
-his own hours of night-watching, and often asked him to supper. He read
-nearly all day and wrote at night. It was better than the mills or the
-drug-store. He supposed he was lazy--his family always said he was.
-
-"Come to this address to-morrow afternoon and bring the rest of your
-poetry with you," said Delafield, "I have an engagement at nine. May I
-keep this one till you come?"--he shook the foolscap significantly. The
-boy hesitated, almost imperceptibly, then nodded. As Delafield left the
-little table he did not rise with him, but sat with his eyes fixed on
-the smoke-rings.
-
-"They do not teach courtesy in the night-schools, evidently," mused
-the older man, peering for a cab; "but one can't have everything. My
-manners have been on occasion commended--but I can't write poetry like
-that."
-
-He tasted in advance the pleasure of reading the poem to Anne: how her
-brown eyes would dilate and glow, how eagerly her long, slender fingers
-would clasp and unclasp. People called her cold, they told him; for
-his part he never could see why. True, she was not kittenish, like the
-other nieces; she didn't try to flirt with her old uncle, as Ellen's
-girls did; but what an enthusiasm for fine things, what a quick, keen
-mind the child had! Child--Anne was twenty-five by now. Was it true
-that she might never marry? Ellen said--but then Ellen was always
-a little jealous of poor Anne's money. The girl couldn't help her
-legacies. Still, at twenty-five--perhaps it was true that she expected
-too much, thought too seriously, reasoned morbidly that they were after
-her money.
-
-Seated opposite her in his favourite oak chair, looking with a sudden
-impersonal appraisal at the slender figure in clinging black lace, the
-cool pallor of the face under the smooth dark hair, the rope of pearls
-that hung from her firm, girlish shoulders, it dawned on him that there
-was something wanting in this not quite sufficiently charming piece of
-womanhood. She was too black-and-white, too unswerving, too unflushed
-by life. Humanity, with its countless moulding and colouring touches,
-seemed to slip away from either side of her, like the waves from some
-proud young prow, and fall behind.
-
-"Yet she's not unsympathetic--I swear she's not!" he thought, as her
-eyes glowed to the poem and her lips parted delightedly.
-
-"'_And moored at last in some pale bay_'--Uncle Les, isn't that
-beautiful! Not that it's really so fine as the first part, but it's
-easier to remember. And he was hungry? Oh, oh! And you discovered him,
-didn't you?"
-
-He nodded complacently.
-
-"I'll bring you around the rest of the things to-morrow. I knew you'd
-enjoy this, Anne. You love--really love--this sort of thing, don't you?"
-
-She nodded eagerly.
-
-"But nothing else? Nobody--you don't think that perhaps you're
-letting--after all, my dear, life is something more than the beautiful
-things you surround yourself with--pictures and music and poetry, and
-all that. It really is. There is so much----"
-
-"There is one's religion," she said quietly and not uncordially. But
-she had retreated intangibly from him. She sat there, remote as her
-cold pearls, as far from the rough, sweet uses of the world as the
-priceless china in her cabinets.
-
-"Oh, yes, of course, there is religion," he answered listlessly.
-
-Two days later they sat, all three, in her library, while West read
-them his poems. The two looked at each other in amazement. Where had
-this untrained factory boy got it all? What wonderful voices had sung
-to him above the whirring of the wheels; what delicate visions had
-risen through the smoky pall of his sordid days? He wrote only of
-Nature: the brown brook water in spring; the pale, hurrying leaves of
-November; a bird glimpsed through pink apple-blossoms; the full river
-encircling a bending elm. In the vivid swiftness of effect, the simple
-subtlety of treatment, there was a recalling of the Japanese witchery
-of suggestion; the faint tinge of sadness in every poem left in the
-mind precisely the sweet regret that the beauty of the world must
-always leave. At the "Clearing Shower," perhaps the most compelling of
-all his work, quick drops started to the girl's eyes, so intense was
-the vision of the moist, green-breathing earth, the torn fleece of the
-clouds, the broken chirping of frightened birds, the softened, yellow
-light that reassures and saddens at once. His art was not Wordsworth's
-nor Shelley's; it was as if Keats had turned from human passion and
-consecrated the beauty of his verse to the beauty of Nature--but
-simply, sadly, and through a veil of Heine's tears.
-
-Delafield nodded mutely to his niece, then walked over to the boy.
-
-"There will be plenty of people to tell you later," he said, holding
-out his hand, "but let me be the first. You are a genius, Mr. West, and
-your country will be proud of your work some day. There is no American
-to-day writing such poetry."
-
-West took his hand awkwardly, not rising from his chair. He fingered
-his manuscript nervously.
-
-"I--I wouldn't want to be laughed at," he demurred. "Other folks
-mightn't be so kind as you. If anybody laughed--I--it would just about
-kill me!" he concluded, passionately. They smiled sympathetically at
-each other.
-
-"But no one would laugh, I assure you, Mr. West," Anne murmured,
-stooping to pick up a scattered sheet.
-
-He hardly noticed her. His eyes were fixed constantly on Delafield: the
-girl had made no impression upon him whatever. Nor did the elegance of
-the furnishings, the evidences of great wealth everywhere arouse in him
-the least apparent curiosity. Having no knowledge of the many grades
-of material prosperity between his own meagre surroundings and Anne
-Delafield's luxury, he accepted the one as he had endured the other,
-his mind quite removed from either, his eyes looking beyond.
-
-Anne had supposed that her uncle would carry the poems to one of the
-leading magazines, but he pooh-poohed the idea.
-
-"I think not. We're not going to have the boy mixed up with the hacks
-that turn out two or three inches of rhymes to fill up a page in a
-magazine," he declared. "We'll have D---- drop in some night and
-West shall read 'em to him. Then we'll bring out a book. Here and in
-England--they'll like him there, or I'm much mistaken."
-
-In a month it seemed that they had always known him. Intimacy was
-so impossible with his inturned, elusive nature, that to have him
-sitting through hours of silence by the birch fire, abstracted, dreamy,
-inattentive, except to some chance word that stirred his fancy, was
-to know him well, to all intents. His nerves, dulled to all great
-torments like poverty, hunger, obscurity, quivered like violin strings
-under little unaccustomed jarrings. If interrupted in the reading of
-his verses he would lose his control beyond belief; a chance cough,
-the falling of an ember, put him out of tune for hours. He possessed
-little sense of humour, and the lightest satire turned him sulky. A
-child might have teased him to madness; it was evident to them that
-his utterly lonely life had preserved him from constant torture at the
-hands of associates.
-
-Until the book was complete he refused to have the great publisher
-brought to hear it read. Sometimes for days they would not see him,
-then on some rainy evening he would appear, lonely and hungry, eager
-for the praise and warmth of Anne's library, an exquisite poem in his
-pocket. Served to repletion by the secretly scornful butler, he would
-smoke a while, then draw out the sheet of foolscap, and read in his
-nervous yet musical voice the latest page of the book that was to bring
-him fame.
-
-On one such night--it was when he brought them "Dawn on the River,"
-the only poem of which Anne had a copy, and the one which a well-known
-firm afterward printed under his photograph and sold by thousands at
-Easter-tide--he broke through the mist--it was too impalpable to be
-called a wall of reserve--that held his personality apart from them,
-and talked wonderfully for an hour. They seemed to see the clear soul
-of some gentle, strayed fawn; his thoughts were like summer clouds
-mirrored in a placid brook. All the crowding, sweating humanity of his
-stunted boyhood had flowed through his youth like an ugly drain laid
-through a fresh mountain stream. He seemed to have lived all his years
-with young David on the hillside, and wealth and poverty, crowds and
-loneliness, love and death were as far from his life as if the vast
-procession of them all that swept by him daily through the great city
-had never been.
-
-As he talked, Delafield found his eyes drawn from the boy's face to
-Anne's. Never before had he seen just that faint, steady rose in her
-cheeks, that sweet glow in her eyes. As she leaned forward, her very
-pearls seemed to catch a red tinge from the fire: it occurred to him
-for the first time that she looked like Ellen's girls--there was a
-suggestion of Kitty in the curve of her cheek.
-
-Was it possible that Anne--no, it could not be. To think of the men
-that had tried to come into her life and failed--such men! And this
-boy, this elf, to whom no woman was so real or so dear as a tree in the
-glen!
-
-For two weeks after that night he did not come. Anne never mentioned
-his name, and Delafield, doubtful of what that might portend, tried to
-believe that she had forgotten him. Toward the end of the second week
-she spoke of the completion of his book, and suggested that her uncle
-should invite Mr. D----: "Urge Henry to consent to it," she added, "he
-will do anything for you, Uncle Les."
-
-"More than for you?" he asked.
-
-"For me?" She flushed a little. "I doubt if he distinguishes me from my
-portrait over the mantel!"
-
-"And you wish that he would," Delafield wanted to reply, trying to
-remember if she had ever called him "Henry" before.
-
-On a warm April evening, when the windows were open to catch the
-setting sun and the odour of the blossoming window-boxes, he came at
-last. As he stepped into the room, head erect, eyes wide and bright,
-they became aware immediately of a change in him. His glance was more
-conscious, more alert, his hand-grasp more assured.
-
-"You are in time to dine with us," Anne said, with her grave smile, "we
-are all alone. Will you stay?"
-
-"Thanks, I can't stay, I'm going somewhere else," he answered quickly.
-
-"And the new poem?" Delafield inquired, "did you get it done? That was
-to be the last, wasn't it?"
-
-"Oh! I haven't been writing lately," he explained, blushing a little.
-"I've been too busy--that is, I've been too--I've been thinking of
-something else." He stood before them in the full light of the late
-day; every expression in his sensitive, mobile face showed clear.
-
-"A perfectly wonderful thing has happened," he burst out, "you couldn't
-understand. Nobody can understand but me, and--and----"
-
-"Who is she?" said Delafield bluntly.
-
-"How did you know?" cried the boy, "have you seen--did she tell----"
-
-"Of course not. When did it happen?"
-
-Delafield kept his face persistently from Anne's. For the world he
-could not have looked at her.
-
-"It was last week." West was smiling eagerly at him, ignoring the
-woman's presence.
-
-"I went into the grocer's to do an errand for Mr. Swazey, and she was
-behind the little grating--you pay her. She is the cashier. I didn't
-take my change, and she had to call me back, and we dropped it all
-over the floor. She helped me pick it up. Oh, if you could see her, Mr.
-Delafield!"
-
-"Is she handsome?"
-
-"She is a perfectly beautiful woman," said the boy.
-
-"Dear, dear!" murmured the older man.
-
-"We are engaged, but her mother objects to me. In fact--in fact, her
-mother doesn't know that she is engaged. She has been engaged before.
-But she never really loved the man. Her mother doesn't care for
-poetry----"
-
-At that word, Delafield, with a distinct effort, connected this
-babbling druggist's clerk with his poet of "The Clearing Shower." There
-could be no doubt that they were the same person. As in a dream he
-listened to the boy.
-
-"And that's what I dropped in to see about. I told her mother all you
-said about me being sure to be well-off some day, and about the book
-being published soon, and her brother, that's Pippa's uncle----"
-
-"What name did you say?"
-
-"Pippa. That's her name. Philippa it is really; she was named after
-the daughter of a lady her mother nursed when she was sick, and so she
-named her after this lady's daughter. But she couldn't say it plain,
-you see, so she always called herself Pippa for short, and so they all
-call her that still. I suppose you never heard it before--I never did."
-
-"It is a strange name--for a cashier," said Mr. Delafield.
-
-"Yes, indeed. Well, her Uncle Joseph is a stenographer in a newspaper
-office, and he knows a good deal about this sort of thing, and he says
-not to publish with the D----s. He says they're a poky firm and don't
-advertise enough. If I gave the book to the L----s they'd push it
-along, he says. He says they'd make anything sell. The D----s wouldn't
-put up posters on bill-boards, now, would they?"
-
-"I suppose not," said Delafield. He felt unaccountably tired. He had
-not realised till now how much his mind had been filled with Henry West
-and his poetry, how much he had anticipated introducing his rare young
-protegé.
-
-"And of course I want to do the best for myself----"
-
-"Of course, beyond a doubt."
-
-How could a person change so in two weeks? What had turned that
-sensitive dreamer into this bustling young lover?
-
-"You see, sir, I've got a good many things to consider," he smiled
-happily.
-
-"Certainly, West, I appreciate that. At the same time I doubt if you
-will do better with anybody than you can with Mr. D----. It may be the
-L----s wouldn't want your book. It is not what is known as a popular
-book, you know. Poetry appeals to a limited public, and----"
-
-"Oh, well, it's all right. Only I thought you might want to know what
-Uncle Joseph said, that's all. I must go now," and he turned.
-
-"Miss Delafield is still here," said her uncle, coldly.
-
-"Oh, good-night," West murmured, and left the room.
-
-"Is it really he?" Delafield hazarded, hardly glancing at her. She met
-his look calmly.
-
-"At any rate the book is ready, which is the principal thing, I
-suppose," she said.
-
-He found himself illogically wishing she had resented it more. "It was
-a mistake," he thought, "she has no feeling for him."
-
-Through the weeks that followed they avoided mentioning his name, and
-each, trusting that the other would forget, thought of him in puzzled
-silence.
-
-When he came to them next, toward the end of May, it seemed for a
-moment, as he flung himself into a chair and stared moodily at the
-empty fireplace, that his old self had returned. Thin and shabby, with
-dark rings under his eyes, he looked like the boy Delafield had warmed
-and fed that cold March night. But his words undeceived them.
-
-"I shall shoot myself if this doesn't stop," he said bitterly. Anne
-started.
-
-"Here, here, West, none of that," the older man corrected, sharply.
-"That's no thing to say--what is the matter?"
-
-"It's Pippa," he returned, simply. "She won't marry me. I'll kill
-myself if she don't. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't think. It
-cuts into me night and day. You don't know how it kills me--you don't
-know!"
-
-He writhed like a child in physical pain. His face was distorted: he
-made no more effort to conceal his misery than his delight of weeks
-ago. Delafield showed a little of his disgust.
-
-"Come, come, West," he said, "control yourself. This is no killing
-matter. Better men than you have been thrown over before this. If she
-won't have you, take it like a man, and get to work. It's time your
-book was under way."
-
-West stared dully at him.
-
-"Book? book?" he repeated. "Oh, damn the book! I'd throw it away this
-minute to feel her arms around me! When I think of how we used to sit
-in Uncle Joseph's hammock--Oh, I can't endure it, I can't!"
-
-He leaned his head on his arms and rocked to and fro in abject misery.
-
-"She laughs at me--just laughs at me!" he moaned. "I'm ashamed to go
-near them."
-
-"Keep away, then," said Delafield shortly.
-
-"I can't!" he fairly sobbed.
-
-Anne spoke softly from a dim corner:
-
-"Does she know about the book?"
-
-"She doesn't care anything about it. She says I better be getting a job
-somewhere. I--I would, if she'd marry me. I'd go to the drug-store!"
-
-"Oh, no!" she breathed.
-
-"If only she'd be engaged again," he muttered, half to himself, "I'd
-finish the book, and then, perhaps----" He began to rock again. "But
-she won't, she won't!" he wailed.
-
-"If you will tell me where she lives," said Anne quietly, and as if the
-conversation were to the last degree conventional, "I will go to see
-her and talk the matter over. Perhaps she doesn't understand----"
-
-"My dear Anne! Are you mad?"
-
-As Delafield spoke, West interrupted:
-
-"I'd rather Mr. Delafield would go," he said quickly, "if--if he would.
-Maybe she'd listen to you."
-
-"I will do nothing of the sort," Delafield returned angrily. "As if
-anything I could say could compare with Miss Delafield's words! You
-are an ungrateful little beast, West. A woman, like Pippa herself, is
-the best person to understand the matter."
-
-"All right," the boy assented wearily, "only she isn't like Pippa, not
-a bit. Pippa's different."
-
-Anne coloured deeply, and Delafield cursed the day he met the boy. His
-niece he did not pretend to understand.
-
-The next afternoon, as he chafed in the stuffy dining-room-parlour
-of the flat that was Pippa's home, listening to the quarrelling of a
-half dozen children on the dreary little roof-garden below him as to
-who should swing in Uncle Joseph's hammock, he understood her less and
-less. What did she expect to gain from this visit? Was she satisfying
-her idea of duty or her curiosity? How much did she care, anyhow?
-
-A steady murmur of voices came from a room behind the one he occupied.
-The afternoon wore on. He began to grow sleepy.
-
-At last the door was flung open. Anne, looking pale and tired, entered
-the room, followed by a large, handsome girl with a heavy rope of
-auburn hair twisted low over her forehead. She had a frank, vulgar
-smile, and shallow, red-brown eyes. In her plump, large-limbed beauty
-she was like a well-kept cat. The day was damp and hot, and her mussed
-white shirt-waist clung to her broad curve of shoulder and breast.
-In her eyes, as she smiled at him, was the quiet ease of a conscious
-beauty. Beside her Anne seemed unimportant.
-
-"I'm sorry about the book, Mr. Delafield," she said, with a slow smile.
-"But I guess you don't know Henry very well if you think any reasonable
-girl would think of marrying him for a minute. The gentleman I've been
-keeping company with some time had a little misunderstanding with me,
-and 'twas more or less to spite him, I guess, that I got engaged to
-Henry. It never seemed to me it mattered much either way."
-
-"You have broken his heart," said Delafield stiffly.
-
-She looked vaguely at her short, fat fingers: her hands were like a
-baby's in shape.
-
-"Oh, I don't know," she said. "He's an awful unreasonable fellow,
-Henry is. He gets into such tantrums--I don't dare tell him about
-Mr. Winch--that's the gentleman I was speaking of. We're going to be
-married in the fall. He's in a livery-stable: I guess you probably
-noticed it as you came along Sixth Avenue--Judd and Winch. He's only
-junior partner, but he knows as much about running a real swell funeral
-as any of the uptown men--Mr. Judd says so. Henry's afraid of a horse,
-you know. It don't seem quite natural for a man not to know about
-horses, does it, now?"
-
-"If you had only waited till his book came out," said Delafield
-tentatively. As he looked at her he was conscious of a ridiculous
-satisfaction that such a fine woman should know her own mind so
-perfectly. She was a very complete creature, in her way. He realised
-that in this strangely assorted quartette he and she were involuntarily
-on one side of an intangible line, his niece and their unintelligible
-protegé on the other.
-
-"Wait? But I did wait. I waited over a week," she explained, "and
-then I couldn't stand it any longer. He'd drive me to drink. For one
-thing, Henry's changed so. When we first knew him he was really as
-entertaining a gentleman as I ever saw--and I've had a great deal of
-attention. Why, we'd sit around and laugh till we nearly died, he'd say
-such ridiculous things. He was so different. Ma used to say if he was
-much funnier she'd think he'd ought to have a keeper! The way he'd go
-on----!"
-
-Anne had turned her back and was looking steadily at the room they had
-left. Pippa and Delafield might have been alone.
-
-"But when we got engaged, he seemed to change, somehow. I don't know if
-you've noticed it----"
-
-Delafield nodded.
-
-"Well, that's what I mean. I didn't care any more about him, then. I
-guess I sort of woke up," she laughed into his eyes. "He tires me to
-death with how he'll shoot himself," she added; "they always say that,
-you know, but they never do."
-
-Anne moved toward the door and Delafield followed her.
-
-"I must say that I appreciate your position, Miss--Miss--" he stopped,
-inquiringly.
-
-"Cooley--Miss Philippa Cooley," she supplied. "Of course you do. Ma
-said she hoped I'd have too much sense to stand up with a little radish
-of a man like that, even if he could support me!"
-
-"But I think it was rather hard on all of us that you should have
-engaged yourself to him at all. You must have known how it would end."
-He tried to speak reprovingly.
-
-She threw him a rich glance.
-
-"Oh, you can't help it sometimes," she murmured. "He teased so
-hard--you don't want to be disagreeable. As I was telling Miss
-Delafield----"
-
-"We must go," said Anne, briefly.
-
-As they drove home, an inexplicable desire to provoke her, to rouse
-some warm feeling in her, mastered him.
-
-"Your Aunt Ellen would enjoy this deep interest in the love affairs of
-an ex-druggist's clerk and a grocer's cashier," he said lightly.
-
-"Would she?" Anne returned quietly, and was ashamed of his freakish
-impulse.
-
-When they told him that evening that they had been able to accomplish
-nothing he only stared at them gloomily.
-
-"I knew it--I knew it," he muttered. "I did a poem last night--it's the
-last I shall ever do. You can put it in the book. It's the best I've
-done yet."
-
-Delafield hardly noticed his words as he seized the poem. What if
-from this sordid little tragedy had sprung the very flower of the
-poet's genius? He read eagerly. In a moment his face fell. He stared
-doubtfully at the boy.
-
-"Well," said West irritably, "can't you read it? Give it here--I'll
-read it to you."
-
-"You needn't, I can read it well enough."
-
-"What do you think of it?"
-
-"I think it's rot," Delafield returned curtly. He was bitterly
-disappointed.
-
-"Rot?" the boy's eyes narrowed. "What d'you mean?"
-
-"I mean that this doggerel is utterly unworthy of you, West, and that
-you certainly cannot include it in your book. It is the cheapest
-sentimentalism--good heavens, can't you see it? Have you no critical
-faculty whatever?"
-
-"Oh, Uncle Lester, _don't_!" Anne implored. "Let me see it," and she
-put out her hand. The young man struck it away and seized the paper.
-
-"I won't trouble you with my 'rot' any more, Mr. Delafield," he said,
-with a boyish grandiloquence, "we'll see what other people have to say
-about it."
-
-"Here, West, don't go away angry!" the older man urged, "I shouldn't
-have been so harsh. You've done such fine work that I couldn't bear----"
-
-"Oh, hush your noise!" West interrupted, brutally, "neither can I bear!
-You've driven me to death between you all--you'll never see me again!"
-and he flung out of the room.
-
-Delafield set his teeth. "This is too much," he said slowly. "The
-vulgar little cad! No, I won't go after him, Anne; let him fume it out
-himself. I'll try to ask D---- over next week, just the same."
-
-But when Mr. D---- came over, full of pleasant anticipation, it was
-only to hear of the shocking death of the boy, whose photograph, taken
-from a cheap gilt locket of Pippa's, he afterward used over the popular
-gift-card, "Dawn on the River."
-
-"Couldn't even shoot himself like a gentleman," said Delafield roughly.
-"Jumping seven stories--pah!"
-
-"But the poems--the poems?" urged the publisher, "surely they----"
-
-Anne took from the table an oblong tin biscuit-box and softly lifted
-the cover.
-
-"Here are the poems," she said, pointing to a mass of fine, grey
-paper-ashes.
-
-"He sent them to you?"
-
-Mr. D----'s eyes lighted comprehensively; he glanced at the girl's
-white face and inscrutable dark-ringed eyes with a restrained sympathy.
-
-"He sent them to my uncle," she replied quietly.
-
-
-
-
-THE BACKSLIDING OF HARRIET BLAKE
-
-
-The Rev. Mr. Freeland looked down the long, narrow poorhouse table, and
-then glanced inquiringly at the matron.
-
-"What has become of Harriet Blake, Mrs. Markham?" he asked. "I thought
-she sat at this table--I hope she's not ill?"
-
-"Harriet's backslid," announced the Widow Sheldon laconically. She
-was a Baptist, of the variety sometimes known as hard-shelled, and
-made nothing of interrupting the discourse of any representative of a
-denomination unpleasing to her.
-
-"Backslid?" repeated the reverend guest, dropping his napkin.
-
-"She don't believe in----"
-
-"Harriet," interrupted the matron, somewhat crossly, and with an
-unconcealed frown for the Widow Sheldon, "Harriet is taking her dinner
-alone. She--she is not quite well, I think. I will speak to you about
-her later," she added as the pastor's eyes grew round at her. The widow
-Sheldon sniffed loudly.
-
-"A person who has ter have her vittles carried up ter the bed-chamber
-on account o' losing any little faith she might 'a had," she began, but
-old Uncle Peterson broke in with his gentle drawl:
-
-"Oh, come on, Mis' Sheldon, don't go and spile a good biled dinner with
-words o' bitterness," he urged. "Harriet's a good woman, as is known to
-all, and if she's travellin' through dark ways just now----"
-
-The pastor looked puzzled, but he saw that the subject was better left
-alone: previous visits to the poorhouse had led him to dread the Widow
-Sheldon's tongue. He nodded approvingly at Uncle Peterson.
-
-"Quite right, quite right," he said quickly. "That's the spirit for us
-all to have. Shall I ask the blessing, Mrs. Markham?" And the meal went
-on.
-
-But there was something in the air that hot Sunday noon; something that
-lent variety to the usual monotony of the querulous meal-times. There
-was less comment on the food than was usual, and the Widow Sheldon's
-resentful silence was more impressive than her ordinary vindictive
-volubility. It appeared that something had actually happened.
-
-Once in her private sitting-room the matron began, low-voiced, with an
-occasional glance at the closed door, as if to make certain that no
-curious inmate lurked behind it:
-
-"If Harriet Blake doesn't grow more sensible very soon I shall
-certainly go crazy; I invited you, Mr. Freeland, to dinner to-day
-because Harriet used to like your prayers in the afternoon, and it may
-help her to talk to you--but I don't know. She's a very obstinate old
-lady. The whole house talks about nothing else, and she's just morbid
-enough to like it. They gossip about her and fight about her till the
-air is blue with it. It was bad enough at election time, but religion
-is worse than politics."
-
-The pastor made as if he would interrupt, but she overbore him.
-
-"If you can't stop her she must go home to her niece, though she can't
-really afford to keep her and oughtn't to be asked----"
-
-"Do I understand that Harriet is in doubt--has lost her Christian
-faith?"
-
-"Oh, well--no; but in a way I suppose she has. She says that she--she
-can't see--in fact, she doesn't believe any more in the Holy Ghost!"
-
-"Doesn't _believe_ in h--in it?" Mr. Freeland was absolutely unprepared
-for precisely this form of agnosticism, and showed it.
-
-"She says she doesn't see any sense in it," responded Mrs. Markham,
-briefly.
-
-"Oh--ah, yes!" The pastor looked vaguely over her head. There was a
-pause, and then he gathered himself together.
-
-"But this--this is all wrong!" he said forcibly.
-
-"So we tell her," replied the matron.
-
-"It is sinful--it is extremely dangerous!" he repeated, still more
-forcibly.
-
-"That's what the Widow Sheldon says," replied the matron. "She lectures
-her about it every meal, and Harriet can't stand it. She says she
-can't help what she believes, and I can't blame her for that."
-
-"How long----"
-
-"She's been so for two weeks now, and she gets worse and worse. I had
-the Methodist minister--Harriet used to attend that church--up to talk
-to her about it, to see if she'd feel better, and he talked for four
-hours. Harriet sat as still as a stone, he said, and never moved or
-paid the least attention to him. Finally he asked her why she didn't
-answer, and she said he hadn't asked her opinion that she could see. So
-he asked her what it was, and she said that the Lord Almighty created
-the earth and that his Son, the Redeemer, saved it, and she didn't see
-anything more for the Holy Ghost to do. And everything that he told
-her she said one or the other could do perfectly well alone! And the
-angrier Mr. Dent got, the calmer Harriet was, I suppose, for he left in
-a rage, almost--I suppose it was trying, even for a minister--and when
-I went up to Harriet she seemed very calm. She told me triumphantly
-that the last thing she did was to show him that big Bible of hers
-with the picture in the front, where she's crossed out the figure of
-the dove with ink, and to tell him that she was no Papist, to worship
-graven images of birds!"
-
-Mr. Freeland shook his head gravely. "Dear, dear, dear!" he said.
-
-"And then I got Dr. Henshawe from St. Mary's, in the city, you know,
-who's out here this summer, to come in. He's a very fine man, and very
-interesting. He stayed a while with Harriet, and told her not to mind,
-but to go on, and pray, and do the best she could, and she couldn't
-be blamed. He told me afterwards that he was far from considering
-her religious condition a safe one, but that she would soon be ill,
-and was growing morbid, and he tried to soothe her. She fell into a
-dreadful passion, and called him a lukewarm Jesuit, and told him that
-she was going to hell just because she couldn't believe in the Holy
-Ghost! He was very polite and quiet, and picked a rose when he went--he
-complimented the house--but Harriet wouldn't eat any dinner nor tea,
-she was so angry. Of course it excites the others--they haven't much
-to think about, you know--and I'm really growing nervous. Old William
-Peterson, that gentle old man, preached a revivalist sermon day before
-yesterday, and got them all stirred up, so that Mrs. Sheldon groaned
-and cried all night, and kept Sarah Waters awake. And when Sarah stays
-awake all night, there's no living with her--none!"
-
-Mr. Freeland looked frankly puzzled. He was not a particularly able
-man, and very far from originality of any sort. His doctrinal position,
-though always considered very solid, was somewhat stereotyped, and he
-had never happened to run against this peculiar form of apostasy. But
-he was a kindly man, and very honestly convinced of the responsibility
-of his position; moreover, he remembered Harriet pleasantly; he had
-thought her a very nice old lady. So he took his little Bible out of
-his pocket, and hoped that a desire to succeed where Mr. Dent and Dr.
-Henshawe had failed would not be accounted to him for unrighteousness.
-
-Mrs. Markham led the way across the hall and up the stairs. Before a
-door she paused to say, "As long as Harriet is upset in this way she
-has the room alone, because Mary Smith scolds her all night for being
-so sinful, and it makes them both cross. Mary is in the hall-room,
-and talks in her sleep so that nobody can rest very well. It doesn't
-disturb Harriet at all, she's such a sound sleeper, and I wish she
-could go back! You don't know how this disturbs us! Remember that we
-have prayer-meeting at half-past four," and she left him alone before
-the door.
-
-Mr. Freeland knocked loudly and entered. Before him in the clean, bare
-room, with its rag-carpets, mats, and pine furnishings, sat a little
-old woman, her hands folded in her lap, her head erect, her eyes fixed
-uncompromisingly on the door. He started as he saw her face; it was so
-changed from the time, two weeks or more ago, when he had delivered
-that admirable prayer for charity and loving kindness on the occasion
-when the Widow Sheldon had thrown the butter-plate at old Mis' Landers.
-Thin and sunken, with dark serried hollows under her still bright
-eyes--she had aged ten years in those weeks.
-
-"My sister, my poor, suffering, misled sister," began the pastor; but
-Harriet's eyes flashed ominously.
-
-"If you come to talk to me about that Holy Ghost, I ain't got nothin'
-to say," she declared, "an' if you think I'm goin' to say another word
-myself, you're mistaken. I'm a pore sinful woman, but I ain't goin'
-to be pestered t' death! I'm doin' the best I can 'bout it, an' I've
-prayed 'bout it, an' Mr. Dent an' a Papist, they both talked 'bout
-it till I nearly died. I don't see any more sense in it than I did
-before--not a morsel. So if that's what brought you, you might just as
-well start back this minute!"
-
-Her reverend guest stared at her dumfounded. Was this the little woman
-who had pressed his hand at the prayer-meeting and thanked him so
-piously, so meekly, for such "beautiful prayin'?"
-
-"You are greatly changed since I saw you last, Miss Blake," he said
-gravely. "Your spirit was gentler, your mind was more religiously
-inclined. I found you----"
-
-"You didn't find me pestered t' death," said Harriet briefly, somewhat
-mollified by his "Miss Blake."
-
-"I was led to believe that you were suffering, that you were in
-trouble," hazarded the pastor.
-
-Never in his somewhat self-sufficient life had he felt such difficulty
-in giving spiritual advice. Even to his thick-skinned personality it
-was deeply evident that this sharp-tongued little woman was in great
-trouble. Ordinarily, a certain facility for quotation and application
-made him a confident speaker, but to-day he felt impeded, held back
-by the self-control and patience of his listener. For he saw that she
-was patient; that she could say much more if she chose; that she was,
-beneath all her sharpness, alarmed and worried.
-
-His somewhat perplexed air, his evident memory of her earlier estate,
-his startled recognition of her changed appearance had the effect that
-nothing else could have had. Her hands twisted nervously in her lap,
-her mouth twitched, she dropped her eyes, and opened her lips once or
-twice without speaking. Suddenly, with a little gasp, she began:
-
-"If you think I don't care, you're mistaken. I'm just about sick. I
-been a Christian and a good believer all my life, and now I ain't.
-Maybe I don't care about that? They just pester me t' death, and Mis'
-Markham, she can't stop 'em. They'll send me back to Sarah's, that's my
-niece, and they can't keep me there. They ain't good to me there, and
-I get fever 'n ague every day o' my life there. But I can't help it--I
-can't help it! I got ter go!"
-
-Some good angel held Mr. Freeland silent, and after a moment she went
-on.
-
-"I'm sixty-two years old, and I never was anything but a churchgoer an'
-a believer. Two weeks ago to-day I set in this chair an' looked out the
-winder, an' I see the birds pickin' in the front yard."
-
-He followed her eyes and watched for a moment the poor house pigeons
-preening and posing in the noon sun. They whitened the summer grass,
-and their clucking and cooing formed the undertone of the old woman's
-confession.
-
-"I see 'em there, and I got thinkin' about the dove in my Bible an' the
-Holy Ghost. And it just come into my mind like a shot--what's the good
-of it? What'd it ever done for me? What's the sense of a bird, anyhow?
-An' I worked over it, and I worried over it, an' I got to talkin' with
-Mis' Sheldon about it while we was workin' together, and she just made
-me hate it more. She said I'd go to hell--me, a believer for sixty-two
-years! An' I've cried till I can't cry any more, an' I've prayed till
-I'm tired of prayin', and nothin' happens to me exceptin' I hate it
-more. An' if they send me back to Sarah's I'll die, that's the truth.
-But I'll have t' go--I'll have t' go!"
-
-She rocked back and forth, dry-eyed, but in an agony of grief. The
-pastor remembered the time when he had wrestled with certain damnation
-in the form of terrible religious doubt, and experienced again that
-peculiar helplessness, that isolation, that terror of hope gone from
-him that had dignified even his commonplace life. His vocabulary
-forsook him, his periods and phrases receded from his mind like the
-tide from the beach, and left it bare of suggestion. He looked at her
-for a moment, and as she bent her tired old head over her arm and
-sobbed the dry, creaking sob of the ageing spirit that looks forward to
-no long and gayer future, he felt that the time was short and kindness
-not too lenient for the sinner.
-
-"I will send my wife over," he said, suddenly. "Would--would you want
-to see her?"
-
-Harriet had stiffened again and got herself in hand. "I don't want that
-any one should put 'emselves out for me," she said dryly. "I guess I'll
-get along. I'd just as lief see Mis' Freeland if it ain't any trouble
-to any one. But I don't know as anybody c'n do anything. I ain't very
-pleasant comp'ny. An' I dunno as the room's cleared up enough. I ain't
-swept it sence day before yesterday."
-
-Her guest had risen and moved toward the door. He felt curiously cold
-and dull. Was this the help he had come to give? His tongue was tied;
-his lips refused to utter even one text.
-
-"Good-afternoon, Miss Blake," he said.
-
-"Good-afternoon," said Harriet, and he went out.
-
-She shut the door behind him, and stood for a moment looking at the
-pigeons. Emotion had shaken her too often of late, and she was too
-tired to bear more confusion of feeling. She only knew that she was
-very tired, and that she should like to get away from the scene of so
-many struggles. Suddenly she took her gingham sunbonnet from the wall,
-and left the room. She went softly down the hall, and slipping through
-the screen door near the lower end crept down the back stairs and
-through the deserted kitchen.
-
-A Sunday stillness reigned there, and no one was near to see her.
-She got a piece of bread from the large pantry, and noticed with
-disgust that the shelves were dusty and the bread-tin full of pieces
-and crusts. To keep this neat was her work, but she had been excused
-for the last three days, since she was far too weak to manage it.
-Out through the last blind-door, and she was in the field behind the
-barn. She walked feverishly to the little wood close by and sank down
-exhausted under a large chestnut-tree.
-
-"I'm tired--I'm dead tired out!" she whispered to herself. "I'll just
-stay here a minute 'fore I go on."
-
-Had Mr. Freeland seen her then he would have been more startled than
-before, for two red spots burned in her sunken cheeks and her eyes
-glittered unnaturally. She had not eaten since breakfast, for the
-boiled dinner had sickened her, and though she was weak for want of
-food she had not strength to munch the great piece of rye bread. Her
-head swam a little and strange tunes seemed to sound all about her.
-Her mother's voice, almost in her ear, sang her to sleep with the Old
-Hundred Doxology, and for a moment she listened entranced, but as the
-phantom voice reached the last line she opened her eyes.
-
-"No, no!" she screamed. "No, no! I won't sing to a bird! I won't! I'll
-go to Sarah's first!"
-
-A stillness that frightened her followed. Something pattered beside
-her, and she looked apprehensively at the sky through a rift in the
-branches.
-
-"Don't say it's rain!" she whispered, nervously. "I'm fearful scairt o'
-thunder-storms!"
-
-The sky was rapidly clouding over, and a growl of thunder answered her.
-She started up, but fell helplessly back.
-
-"O Lord, I can't move! I can't move a step! I'm too heavy!" she cried
-in terror. The storm came on fast; the branches shook under a sudden
-wind, and the birds grew still. She was too weak to realise fully her
-situation, but what consciousness she owned was swallowed up in terror.
-A sudden flash, and she shrank together with a moan.
-
-"I'm out o' my head--I'm not really here--I'm in the house--I wouldn't
-be here f'r anything!" she whispered. A heavy clap, and she screamed
-with fear. The time when she left the house was far away and misty in
-her mind. She could not remember coming. The drops struck her in quick
-succession and the muttering grew more frequent, the flashes brighter.
-Sick with fright, she cowered under the tree. Her childhood unfolded
-before her, her girlhood; her poor pinched life assumed a glory and
-fulness it had never had. So warm, so sheltered, so contented it seemed
-to her.
-
-A great harsh clap shook the little wood and a vivid glare wrapped her
-about. With a wail she fell back against the tree-trunk. Her mind was
-clear again, she recalled everything. She had been led out here to die.
-She was summoned forth to meet the judgment of God. Heretic, infidel,
-blasphemer that she was, she was to go before Him that day!
-
-Her clothes were soaked with rain, she shivered with cold, she was too
-weak to take a step, but she staggered to her knees and folded her
-hands. The tree swayed above her, the wood was dark as night, the rain
-to her weak nerves was deafening; the powers of darkness raged about
-her. She tried to pray for forgiveness, for peace at the last, but in
-her mind, all too clear, was the remembrance of her life for two weeks
-past. She set her teeth to keep them from chattering so, and shivering
-at each clap and gasping at each flash, she prayed:
-
-"O Lord, if you are sendin' this storm to punish me, I can't help it.
-I've believed in you all my life, and I'm sixty-two and I'm going to
-die in a thunder-storm. If it'll save me to believe in the Holy Ghost,
-then I'll have to be damned eternally as the Widder Sheldon says you'll
-do, for I can't, I can't, I can't! I' been a believer all my life, and
-I' only been this way two weeks, and if that counts against all the
-rest, I'll just haf' to go to hell, that's all. Feelin' as I do, you
-can't expect me to change for a thunder-storm, Lord, scairt as I be. It
-don't make no difference that I'm scairt, I feel just the same. I' been
-a sinful woman, an' I pray to be forgiven, but I can't change, Lord, I
-can't, an' you wouldn't respect me if I was ter. Amen."
-
-A glare that seemed to brighten the wood for minutes and a terrific
-burst of thunder answered her. With a little gasp she fell backward and
-lay unconscious. The storm raged about her, but she knew nothing of it.
-A little withered old woman, she lay in a heap in the lap of all the
-elements, and they beat upon her like a leaf.
-
-If it were hours or minutes she did not know, but she opened her eyes
-with pain upon a quiet world. The storm had passed, the leaves were
-dripping, the sun was just beginning to brighten the blue, the birds
-were twittering again. She got up heavily, but with a certain fitful
-strength. She turned around and dragged herself further into the wood.
-Then, in dread of the thicker foliage, she struck off uncertainly to
-the right. To her the vengeance of God was only delayed; there was only
-a momentary escape, but it was precious. She was confused, terrified,
-beaten. She had no notion in what direction the house lay. She felt her
-legs tottering and reached painfully down to pick up a large, gnarled,
-broken bough. The effort all but stretched her beside it. But she
-leaned on it, and turned her shaking head from one side to another. All
-was thick, wet, glistening, confusing. Only the twitter of the birds
-and the drip, drip of the wet leaves broke the deadly stillness. A
-nameless horror caught her. She felt alone in the world.
-
-"O Lord, O dear Lord, show me the way home!" she prayed. "Let me die at
-home, Lord; don't let me die out here--a poor old woman like me! Sixty
-two, Lord, an' a believer all my life! Send me home!"
-
-There was a little rustling noise in the tree near the tiny clearing
-just before her; a low, soft heavenly sound.
-
-"I know I'm goin' to die, Lord, only let me die at home! Don't do it
-here! I'm scairt, an' I'm weak, an' I'm too old to die in the woods!
-Jus' send me home, Lord; show me where the house is!"
-
-The great sun suddenly sent a long, bright ray down across the open
-space, and as she looked at it, there hovered, full in the brightness,
-a gleaming silver dove. With wings outspread, motionless, too bright
-to look at with steady eyes, it hovered there. It never fluttered
-its wings; it made no sound; in a ray from heaven it held its quiet
-position serenely and glistened from every tiniest feather.
-
-The old woman's knees tottered beneath her. She held with both hands to
-the gnarled staff, and shuddered as she gazed.
-
-"The Holy Ghost! The Holy Ghost!" she panted. The bird's eyes met
-hers, and she could not take her own away. To her blurred, smarting
-vision it seemed that an aureole of glory outlined its head. She had no
-thoughts; only a confused sensation of immediate and inescapable doom.
-Death, death here, with this grave and moveless vision was her part.
-She closed her eyes and waited. A second, and she opened them, to see
-the vision changed; the bird had turned around, and was slowly guiding
-down the little clearing before her. Just above her head it flew, with
-steady pace, and with it went all the brightness of the sun.
-
-Her lips moved. She took a step forward, and the bird advanced. "Glory
-be to God!" she whispered, "It'll show me the way!"
-
-She never took her aching eyes for one second from the wonderful white
-thing. She scorned to watch the ground. With a magnificent faith she
-walked, her head lifted, her heart too full to know if she stumbled. In
-the clear places, always where there were no branches, the white guide
-flew and Harriet walked after with her staff. A few moments took them
-out of the wood, but she never looked for the house. In the full glare
-of day, against the blue, the bird looked only snowier, and to her
-dazzled, burning eyes the aureole grew only brighter and bigger. She
-could not see its wings move; it hovered steadily and floated serenely
-upon the clear air, and the old woman saw it, and it only.
-
-She did not see the anxious crowd on the porch, she did not hear their
-exclamations, she did not know that her lips were moving, that her
-voice, low, husky, but distinguishable, repeated over and over, almost
-mechanically: "Forgive me, Lord! forgive me, Lord! O Lord, forgive me!"
-
-She only followed, followed with all her heart and soul and strength,
-up the little hill, up the path, up to the porch, a strange, shaking
-pilgrim, leaning heavily on her staff, guided by the white pigeon.
-
-On the steps they received her, and as she sank on the lowest, they
-caught her, falling. Her almost sightless eyes were yet uplifted, and
-while to their view the dove dropped down among its mates, a patch
-among the white, to her it was mingled with the summer blue, and
-vanished in the sky whence it came.
-
-Her body was utterly exhausted, but her spirit could not yet lose
-its consciousness. On the wave of her exaltation she rose higher and
-higher. She looked at them with a look they had never seen in any human
-being.
-
-"I'm saved! I'm saved!" she cried.
-
-They watched her, silent, terrified, awed beyond words at this
-redemption they could only feel but could not understand. But as they
-stared, her eyes glazed, her head fell back against the matron's arm.
-
-"Pray! pray!" she whispered. The pastor looked at her and steadied
-himself. Wonder and a sense of strength flowed in on him suddenly. But
-there was scant time for prayer. Though the light in her face had not
-yet died away, her breath was scarcely moving. He came near her and
-repeated gently the hymn she had in the time of her trouble disowned,
-but which she had always loved:
-
-    "_Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
-    Praise Him all creatures here below,
-    Praise Him above ye heavenly host_----"
-
-Her eyes opened and looked wide into the blue; what she saw there they
-did not know, but she smiled faintly.
-
-                "_Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!_"
-
-"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" the matron guessed that she murmured; and with the
-cooing and clucking of pigeons sounding through the summer air, she
-died.
-
-A white, arrow-swift creature whirred through the stillness, up, up,
-and out in a great proud curve; their eyes were too dim to know if it
-turned again to the earth.
-
-
-
-
-A BAYARD OF BROADWAY
-
-
-The younger man--he was only a boy--grinned impishly at the elder,
-bringing out the two dimples in his flushed, girlish cheeks.
-
-"That's all right enough, Dill," he drawled; he always drawled when he
-had been drinking. When he was sober the familiar Huntington staccato
-was very marked in him.
-
-"That's all right, Dilly, my boy, and a grand truth, as old Jim used to
-tell us at chapel, but maybe little Robert doesn't see your game? Oh,
-yes, he sees it, fast enough. Sis hands it out to you, and you recite
-it to Robbie, and Robbie reforms, and you get Sis! How's that for a
-young fellow who flunks his math? Not bad, eh?"
-
-Dillon flushed and set his teeth, mastering an almost irresistible
-longing to slap those red cheeks in vicious alternation. To think that
-this chattering young idiot stood between him and his heart's desire!
-
-Bob drawled on: "Anyhow, Dill, I think it's right queer, you know.
-Why don't she marry you? She can't love you very much, if it depends
-on me. You're a man o' the world, you know, man o' world"--he grew
-absent-minded and stared at the wall. Dillon snapped his fingers
-nervously, and the speaker began again with a start:
-
-"That's what I say--a man o' world. Tell her it's all bosh worryin'
-over me, tell her that, Dill, tell her I say so. No use her tryin'
-to be my mother. Now is there, Dill, as a man, is there? If she got
-married and had some children of her own----"
-
-"Bob," the older man burst out, "for heaven's sake, shut up, will you,
-and listen to me! I'm going to tell you the truth. You've got the whole
-thing in your hands--God knows why, but you have--and I'm going to lay
-it before you once for all. Then do as you please: make us all happy,
-or go to the devil your own way--and I'll go mine," he added, lower and
-quicker.
-
-Bob sat up, blinked rapidly, and smoothed his hair down tight over his
-ears--sure sign that he was nearly himself.
-
-"Go ahead," he said shortly, "I'll come in."
-
-Dillon bit his lip a moment; he would rather have taken a whipping than
-say what he had to say. The clock ticked loud in the pause, and Bob,
-every moment clearer-eyed, heavy sleep a thing of the past, stared at
-him disconcertingly.
-
-"What I'm going to say to you," Dillon began, "isn't very often said by
-one man to another, I imagine. Few men are placed in just my position.
-I've known you all so well, I've seen so much of you all my life----"
-he paused.
-
-"I needn't say how much I thought of your mother. When your father
-was--when he broke down so often at the last, of course I saw a great
-deal of her, and she trusted me a lot--she had to, once she began. When
-she died, and you weren't there, because you----"
-
-"Don't! please don't, Dill!" the boy's lips contracted; his slim body
-twisted with a helpless remorse.
-
-"Well, then, when she died she asked me to look out for you, because
-she knew how I loved her and--and Helena. She knew you had it in you,
-and she didn't blame you--they never do, I suppose, mothers--but she
-asked me if I'd try to look out for you. She knew I wasn't perfect
-myself. That's--that's why she thought I wouldn't do for Helena. Helena
-was always so wonderful, so high above----"
-
-Again he stopped, and the boy's voice broke in:
-
-"Helena's made of snow and ice-water," he said moodily, "she's too good
-for this earth. She doesn't know----"
-
-"She knows what her brother should be, and she knows what her husband
-must be," Dillon interrupted sternly. "No sister could have been more
-of an angel to you, Bob.
-
-"Now I'll go on. It's going to be necessary just here for me to tell
-you that I love your sister. You don't know anything about that, of
-course. You don't for a second of your life realise what it is to love
-a woman as I've loved her for--for five years, we'll say. I put it five
-because, though I loved her long before, things happened in between,
-and I don't count it till five years ago. Heaven knows I'm not worth
-her shoe-laces. Once or twice--before the five years--I've realised
-that a little too much, and then--the things happened. But since then
-I've honestly tried to keep to the mark your mother set me. She said
-to me once, 'If you would only keep as good as you are at your best,
-Lawrence, you'd be good enough for Helena,' and--perhaps because that
-wasn't so very good, after all--I've really been keeping there, after a
-fashion."
-
-Bob stared at him in unaffected amazement. This clubman, this elegant,
-this social arbiter was standing before him with tears in his level
-grey eyes. It dawned upon his reckless young soul that the soul of
-another man was slowly and painfully stripping itself before him.
-
-"We'll let that part of it go," Dillon went on hurriedly, "you couldn't
-see. I--I think I could make her happy, Bob. I know her better than she
-thinks. She almost said she'd have me, and then you went on that spree.
-You nearly broke her heart--I needn't go over it. Only she made a vow,
-then--it was when she went into that convent-place in Holy Week, and
-she's never been the same since--and it was about you."
-
-"About me? What d'you mean?"
-
-"She told me she never could marry till she was certain whether you
-were just obstinate and wild, or--or like your father; and that in that
-case----"
-
-"What, in that case?" Bob muttered through his teeth.
-
-"She was going to devote her life to taking care of you."
-
-There was a silence.
-
-"There's no use in going over all the arguments now, Bob--you know what
-the doctor said. Three months without a drop, and then he'd warrant
-you. Every day that goes by makes it harder for you. And here's your
-Uncle Owen promising that the first month you go without a spree he'll
-send you for a three months' cruise on the yacht with Stebbins--you
-know what a chance that is."
-
-Bob looked fairly up for the first time.
-
-"Stebbins! Would Stebbins go? I don't believe you!" he cried eagerly.
-
-"He told me he would," said Dillon.
-
-"Why on earth should he?"
-
-"He's a friend of mine," the other answered simply.
-
-Bob twisted his lips together a moment, while the muscles around his
-mouth worked. Suddenly he gave way and broke into sobbing speech.
-
-"You're a good fellow, Dill--I'm not worth it--truly, I'm not! I've
-been a beast--and the college and all that--you all despise me--but so
-do I!"
-
-He gripped the chair, turning his handsome, tear-stained face up to his
-friend's. How the straight, thin nose, the black-lashed blue eyes, the
-white forehead reflected Helena! Dillon could have kissed him for the
-likeness.
-
-"Will you, Bob? Will you? We'll all stand by you!"
-
-"I will, Dillon, I will, so help me--Bob!" he smiled through wet
-lashes. "You hang on, and I will! But look out for that rector--he's
-running a close second, and Aunt Sarah's backing him for all she's
-worth!" He was smiling wisely now; the strain was lifted, and he was
-almost himself again. Dillon scowled.
-
-"He takes her slumming, you know, and, say, you ought to hear him give
-it to Aunt Sarah about knowing the condition the poor devils are in
-before you deal out the tracts, you know. He wants the good ladies and
-gentlemen to come and see--that way, you know."
-
-"He's right enough there," Dillon said constrainedly, "and I suppose
-he's better for her than I'd be--no, by George, he's not! Bob, I tell
-you, I know her better than he does--I tell you I've waited five
-years--Oh, Lord, I can't talk any more about it!"
-
-They went out arm in arm, the boy warm and friendly, proud of his
-confidence and full of high resolve, Dillon impassive outwardly, but
-conscious of great stakes. To say, in four short weeks, to those wide,
-blue eyes, a little scornful, perhaps, but with so sweet, so pure a
-scorn! "_The strain is over: he is safe; can you not trust me now?_"
-His heart leaped and grew large at the thought.
-
-It was so like Helena, this service, half-sacred in her mother's trust,
-half-shy in maidenly delaying. "She is afraid of me!" he thought
-exultingly--indeed, she admitted as much.
-
-"You and your set--one knows you, and yet one doesn't," she said to
-him. "You seem so still, so satisfied, so sure about life--there seems
-to be so much you don't tell! Do you see what I mean? It frightens me.
-There is so much we don't think the same about, Lawrence--so much of
-you I don't know! I wanted, when I married, to come into a--a peace.
-I wanted it to be--don't laugh--like my Confirmation: do you think it
-would, if I married you? Do you, Lawrence?"
-
-He turned his head away. A vision of her, those ten short years ago,
-in white procession down the aisle of Easter lilies, rapt and aloof,
-flashed before him. For one sweet second he saw her in fancy, again in
-white, but trembling now, and near him----
-
-"Oh, dearest child," he begged, "I don't know about the peace--how can
-I? The things are so different! But we could be happy--I know we could!
-Is peace all you want, sweetheart, all?"
-
-Caught by his eyes, her own wavered and dropped; a flood of red rose to
-her hair.
-
-"Don't, Lawrence, you frighten me! When you look like that--Oh, wait a
-month, only this month, Lawrence, till Bob has gone and we're sure!"
-
-"You want that more than anything else, don't you? You'd give up
-anything----"
-
-Her eyes grew soft, then stern, and looked clearly into his.
-
-"Anything in the world," she said instantly, "so that mamma could see
-he was--safe. I am all Bob has. Oh, if he can only----"
-
-"He shall," Dillon assured her stoutly, "he shall, this time!"
-
-And indeed it seemed that he would. He seemed awakened to the strongest
-effort they had known him to make. His uncle's offer, grimly set for
-one month from its date, or never, took on for him a superstitious
-colour of finality. He was convinced that it was his last chance.
-
-"If I'm downed this time, Dill, it's all up," he would say, wearily,
-as they paced the endless city blocks together, arm in arm, under the
-night. "If I can keep up till the yacht--how long is it, a week?--then,
-something tells me I'm all right. I swear it's so. I never felt that
-before. But if I don't"--he paused ominously. "There's always one way
-out," he added.
-
-"You will break Helena's heart, then."
-
-"Heart? I don't think she has one. If she had, you'd have had her long
-ago. Oh, no, I sha'n't. She'll go into that beastly retreat for a
-while, and then she'll marry that crazy rector-man and go about saving
-souls. You'll see."
-
-The week was nearly up. The yacht was ready in the harbour. The boy,
-though, showed the strain, and Dillon, fearful of too much dogging him,
-and warned by his furtive eyes and narrowed lips, called in Stebbins to
-the rescue.
-
-"I can't have him hate me, Steb," he explained. "We're both of us worn
-pretty thin. If you could give up to-day and to-night----"
-
-They shook hands.
-
-"It's every minute, practically, you know, Steb," he added doubtfully,
-"it's a good deal."
-
-"Oh, get on!" the other broke in, with a good-natured shoulder clap.
-
-As he swung the glass door of the club behind him, Dillon ran down a
-messenger-boy, bulging with yellow envelopes. The boy glanced at him
-questioningly.
-
-"Mist' Wardwell, Adams, Stebbins, 'r Waite?" he inquired, holding out
-four telegrams as he slipped in.
-
-Dillon shook his head, and walked down the steps.
-
-One more night and she would be all to win, no promise between, no
-scruple that a lover might not smother. Shame on him if he could not
-woo more persuasively than a mystical evangelist! In the evening he
-would see her; the precious little note lay warm over his heart.
-
-He dined alone, he could not have said where, and an idle impulse for
-the lights and bustle of the great thoroughfare sent him strolling
-down Broadway. It was too early for the crowd, and he found himself
-guessing vaguely as to the characteristics of the couples that met and
-passed him. That tall, slender lad, for instance, with such a hint of
-Bob--poor, troublesome Bob!--in his loose, telltale swagger, what had
-led him to the dark-eyed creature that tapped her high heels beside
-him? As she came under the light, one saw better; her flashing smile,
-her careless carriage of the head, her broad sweep of shoulder, had a
-certain charm--great heavens, it was Bob steadying himself on her arm!
-A moment, and the familiar drawl reached his ear:
-
-"An' so you always want to choose mos' prom'nent place, every time, an'
-you're safe's a church. No chance to meet y'r dear frien's----"
-
-Dillon strode to his side, raising his hat to the surprised woman.
-
-"I beg your pardon, Bob, but had you forgotten your engagement this
-evening?" he said smoothly. Bob stopped, glared a moment uncertainly,
-but the scrupulous courtesy of Dillon's bearing had its intended effect.
-
-"What--what engagement?" he inquired suspiciously. "Friend o' mine," he
-added to his companion.
-
-"Haven't you met Stebbins? He--he was expecting you." Lawrence felt
-his heart sink. Where was Stebbins? Oh, fool, to have lost hold at the
-eleventh hour!
-
-"Stebbins? Stebbins?" Bob murmured to himself. "Ah, yes; the beastly
-boat got afire, and he had to go down; I'm going too, after a
-while--too early yet--take a little walk, first, with Miss--Miss----"
-He paused, and stared thoughtfully at the woman. "I don't seem to just
-recall your name," he said pleasantly. "Would you mind telling me, so
-that I can introduce you? Bad form, his poking in, though, terribly bad
-form."
-
-Dillon noted with anger that Bob was at his most argumentative,
-obstinate stage; at this point, if he felt the necessity, he could
-speak most correctly and clearly, by giving some thought to the matter,
-and it was almost impossible to alter his determinations.
-
-"My name is Williams," said the woman. Dillon bowed.
-
-"What have you had, Bob?" he inquired, moving along with them.
-
-"Oh, only a cocktail--here and there--Miss--Miss Willis likes 'em as
-well as anything. About time we had another?" he suggested, eyeing
-Lawrence combatively.
-
-The older man stopped dead. A weary despair of the whole business
-seized him. It was all up, then. Even if he went about with the boy,
-which Bob would hardly allow, his condition next morning would be all
-too apparent. And then Uncle Owen would wash his hands of it all. Aunt
-Sarah would never consent to any institutional cure. Helena would never
-marry while Bob needed her--thank God, she had never suspected the
-woman!
-
-As if in answer to his thoughts, Bob complained loudly:
-
-"I say it's a blamed shame, the first time I go out with a girl to
-enjoy the evening, to have you pokin' in, Dill! Always stuck with the
-fellows before; and now I get a girl, like anybody else, and here you
-come! Why don't you get out? Two's company."
-
-Dillon caught his arm.
-
-"Bob," he said beseechingly, "you don't know what you're doing. Surely
-you know what this means! Don't you remember that the Eider-duck sails
-to-morrow at nine? Don't you realise that by this night's folly you're
-losing your last chance? Your last chance, Bob! Think how you called
-it that yourself! If this lady realised all this meant to you, she'd
-excuse you, I'm sure. Don't be a fool, Bob! Let me put you in a cab
-and go right to Stebbins--old Steb'll put you up, and nobody will ever
-know! You can sleep it off--it's only eight o'clock."
-
-To his unexpected delight Bob yawned sleepily. His eyes were dull, his
-mouth drooped.
-
-"Sleep it off," he murmured. "I wish I was in bed this minute. Lord,
-I'm tired. And I know why, too. I told her bromo-seltzer would settle
-me. Always puts me to sleep--no good at all. Fool to drink it. Told her
-so...."
-
-Dillon's spirits rose.
-
-"That's so," he assented, "it always acts that way with you, doesn't
-it? Especially with cocktails. Now, you be a wise man, Bob," he urged,
-"and get into this cab----"
-
-"And where do I come in?" said the woman sharply. "I call this a little
-queer, if you don't mind my saying so."
-
-Bob roused himself for a moment.
-
-"Just so," he declared heavily, "just so. Where does Miss Willard come
-in? You must think I'm a terrible cad, Dill, to ask a lady out for the
-evening, and leave her like that! Not a bit of it! You go on! Sorry,
-but can't leave the lady."
-
-Lawrence moved toward his pocket involuntarily. The woman struck his
-arm lightly.
-
-"That'll do," she said sullenly. "I don't want your money. You think
-I'm a kind of a bundle, do you? Pick me up and drop me. Well, that's
-where you make a mistake. Why don't you let your friend alone?"
-
-"Helen--she'll know. You say nobody will," Bob broke in suddenly. "She
-won't lie, if you will. She'll tell Uncle Owen. What's the use?"
-
-"I won't tell her," Lawrence returned quickly, "and nobody else knows."
-
-"Well, then," Bob faced him cunningly, walking backwards through the
-comparatively empty cross-street they had turned down, "I think maybe
-I'll do it. I want to go with Stebbins, all right. But"--his obstinacy
-rose again, suddenly--"I swear I won't go back on a lady! Nobody offer
-a lady money in my presence! 'Twon't do, Dill! Get out!"
-
-"Bob," Lawrence urged, despairingly, "if I take Miss Williams wherever
-she wants to go, and she will accept my escort"--he half turned to her,
-but his doubt was not evident, if he had it--"will you go to Stebbins?"
-
-Bob stopped short, nearly falling backwards.
-
-"Great head!" he cried. "Never thought old Dilly had it in him!
-I'll--I'll consider the prop--the prop--the plan." He yawned widely. "I
-certainly am sleepy," he observed, sinking on a convenient step.
-
-Dillon shook him and dragged him up.
-
-"Come," he said, shortly, "will you?"
-
-Bob pointed a theatrical finger at them.
-
-"Do you, Dilly, being of sound mind, body, or estate, give me your
-solemn word of honour as a gentleman to escort Miss Willins wherever
-she wants to go? Do you?"
-
-"And drop me when your back's turned," interposed the woman,
-laconically, but not angrily. Her interest was awakened, perhaps her
-sense of humour, too, and she awaited developments philosophically.
-
-"Never a bit," Bob returned. "You don't know old Dill. If he says it,
-he'll do it, if there were what-do-you-call-'ems in the way."
-
-"I give you my word of honour," said Lawrence, steadily.
-
-"And you'll never tell Helen? Because if you do, she tells Uncle Owen,
-and it's all up with Robbie."
-
-"I will never tell her."
-
-"On your word of honour?"
-
-"On my word of honour."
-
-"Then call your cab and tuck me in my little bed. My eyes will crack if
-I prop 'em up any longer."
-
-"Miss--Miss--I can't recall your name, but you don't object?..."
-
-"Oh, no, I don't object in the least," said Miss Williams satirically,
-with a wondering glance at the tall, immaculate gentleman at her side,
-his face stern in the electric-light, his evening clothes in marked
-contrast to Bob's negligée. "In fact, I rather----"
-
-Dillon whistled a cab and gave the driver whispered directions. A bill
-fluttered as he passed it up. The man nodded, respectful.
-
-"And now I am at your service," said Dillon, standing tall and straight
-before her. "Where did you wish to go?"
-
-Not for one moment did it occur to him to evade his duty, and not for
-one moment did she intend that he should. Where they went, through all
-that nightmare evening, he could never afterward tell. From dance-hall
-to concert-hall they wandered, sat awhile, and departed. Nor were they
-silent on the way. What they spoke of he could not have told for his
-life, but they talked, fairly steadily at first, less and less as the
-night wore on, and the woman grew dreamily content with the lights,
-the warmth, and the liquor. Dillon was imperturbably polite, gravely
-attentive to her wishes, curiously conscious of one life with her and
-another distinct existence at Helena's home. Now he was waiting,
-waiting, waiting in front of the close-shaded windows to see if she had
-left the house or if she still sat in surprised idleness expecting him.
-Now he was at Stebbins's house watching Bob as he lay asleep there.
-
-He remembered afterward thinking that the woman must have been a
-Southerner, for, as she drank, her tongue turned to those softer tones,
-slurred vowels and quaint idioms.
-
-"It seems like you're having a good time, after all," she said once. He
-bowed gravely.
-
-By eleven they were well down-town, he was not quite certain where.
-They stayed but little time in any one place. It seemed as if they had
-been on this endless journey for years. Now and then he saw a man he
-knew. In one place he wakened, with a shock of remembrance, to the fact
-that he had been there before: there, and at the place opposite, too.
-How little it had changed! It was before the five years....
-
-They were at a corner table, he with his back to the room, the woman
-facing it. On a platform opposite a young fellow sat before a piano,
-striking desultory chords. Presently he began to sing, in a sweet,
-piercing tenor:
-
-            "_Oh, promise me that some day you and I_----"
-
-There was a moved silence through the room; his voice had a quality
-that reached for the heart:
-
-           "_Those first sweet violets of early spring_----"
-
-Dillon glanced at the woman; her large, dark eyes were brimmed with
-tears. A great pity surged over him: he would have given anything he
-owned to be able to offer her her life to live again. Tenderly, as
-over a dusty, broken bird, he laid his hand over her clasped ones on
-the table. They sat in awed silence; the song swelled on. He did not
-hear the door open behind him, nor turn as a new party of four entered
-quietly. Directly behind his chair a man's voice spoke softly.
-
-"This is a fair sample. Not very bad, you think? But every man in this
-room is a confirmed opium-eater, and the women----"
-
-The two at the table hardly heard.
-
-"Oh, the women!" said a woman's voice in a rough whisper. "I cannot
-bear to think----"
-
-"Oh, it isn't the women, Aunty! You sha'n't say that--they are
-heart-breaking. It's the men, the men I bl----"
-
-Swiftly, hopelessly, as the steel turns to the magnet, Dillon turned
-and faced Helena Huntington.
-
-As her eyes met his all the rose colour in her soft cheeks seemed to
-sweep into his and burn dully there, leaving her whiter than bone.
-For one fiery second her eyes rested on the table, the half-emptied
-glasses, the clasped hands of the pair, the tear-stained cheeks of
-the handsome girl. For one breath two groups of stone confronted each
-other. Then, with no sign of recognition, she swept from her seat, her
-hand on the rector's arm, her aunt and an older man behind them. Her
-aunt looked at Dillon as if he were the chair he sat in.
-
-The door swung behind them.
-
-    "_No life so perfect as a life with thee,
-    Oh, promise me; oh, promise me!_"
-
-the tenor shrilled. Lawrence burst into jangling laughter.
-
-"The evening is over," he said, still red and shaking. "Allow me to
-escort you home."
-
-He never remembered the time between this speech and the moment when
-she asked him to step in for a while, and he laughed in her face. Then
-there was another time, and he was at his rooms at the club. But that
-was early morning. He was lame and his shoes hurt his feet--he must
-have walked a great deal.
-
-At eight o'clock Stebbins dashed into the room.
-
-"Well, of all the fellows! What's the matter with you?"
-
-He was fresh and rosy; a faint, wholesome aroma of cigars and
-eau-de-cologne swept in with him.
-
-"Why the deuce aren't you down to see us off? They're all there. Got my
-telegram yesterday? Fire didn't amount to much, but the fools hadn't
-half the stuff I ordered. I was down there all the afternoon seeing to
-it. I sent Bob right around to you. You must have walked him well.
-Stevens said he came in at eight and tumbled straight to bed. He's
-fresh as paint this morning. Asked him where he'd been, and I swear
-he didn't know. Says you told him to go to bed, and he went. Drove
-home, he says. Actually doesn't remember a living thing but that,
-since dinner. When you said he'd be that way sometimes I didn't really
-believe you, but I do now. Where were you?"
-
-Dillon faced him.
-
-"For God's sake, Lawrence, what is it? Are you sick? She said you
-wouldn't be there----"
-
-"She? Who?"
-
-"The old one--the aunt. Bob was wondering about it, and she says
-directly, 'No, he won't be here this morning,' so I slipped off. Bob
-said if you were tired, never mind.
-
-"I say, Lawrence, that's an awfully attractive boy. You can't help
-liking him. He called me aside, and, 'Look here,' says he, 'Uncle Owen
-says there's to be no wine packed for you. Now I can't have that,
-Stebbins, it won't do. It's awfully bully of you to come, and you must
-have everything you want.' I told him that would be all right and what
-a fine vacation it was going to be for me----"
-
-Lawrence turned the water into the tub and began to pull at his shoes.
-Never had he felt so grateful for Stebbins's constant chatter.
-
-"I don't believe I'll come down," he heard himself say. "I have a
-beastly headache. I didn't get much sleep----"
-
-"Well, for heaven's sake get some, if it makes you look like that!
-Where'd you go, anyway, after you put Bob to bed?"
-
-Lawrence pulled off his coat.
-
-"Parson's down there, you know. He and uncle seem to be hand in glove.
-He's pretty well fixed with most of the family, I shouldn't wonder."
-
-"How much time have you got?" said Lawrence's voice.
-
-"George, not much! Cab's waiting outside. I won't mention how you look,
-then--just tell 'em good-bye."
-
-"That's all. Just tell 'em good-bye."
-
-Lawrence was in the bath-room as Stebbins hurried out. He sat down on
-the porcelain rim of the tub, his face drawn and grey above his white
-shirt.
-
-"It seems to be pretty well settled up," he said quietly. "I hope his
-mother's pleased!"
-
-
-
-
-A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE BOOKS
-
-
-The new librarian entered upon her duties bright and early Monday
-morning. She closed with a quick snap the little wicket-gate that
-separated the books from the outer vestibule, briskly arranged her
-paste-tube, her dated stamp, and her box of slips, and summoned her
-young assistant sharply. The assistant was reading _Molly Bawn_ and
-eating caramels, and she shut book and bag quickly, wiping her mouth as
-she hurried to her superior.
-
-"Now, Miss Mather, I expect to get fifty books properly labelled and
-shelved before noon," said the new librarian, "and there must be no
-time wasted. If anyone wants me, I shall be in Section K," and she
-turned to go.
-
-Section K was only a few feet from the registering-table, but it
-pleased the new librarian to assume the existence of long corridors
-of volumes, with dumb-waiters and gongs and bustling, basket-laden
-attendants. So much majesty did she throw into her sentence, indeed,
-that the young assistant, who had always, under the old régime,
-privately referred to Section K as "those old religious books," and
-advised the few persons interested in them to "go right in behind and
-see if the book you refer to is there," was staggered for a moment, and
-involuntarily glanced behind her, to see if there had been a recent
-addition to the building.
-
-The new librarian strode down between the cases, glancing quickly from
-side to side to detect mislaid or hastily shoved-in volumes. Suddenly
-she stopped.
-
-"What are you doing in here, little boy?" she said abruptly.
-
-In the angle of the case marked "Books of Travel, Adventure, etc.,"
-seated upon a pile of encyclopædias, with his head leaning against
-_Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_, was a small boy. He was
-dark of eyes and hair, palely sallow, ten or eleven years old, to
-appearance. By his side leaned a crutch, and a clumsy wooden boot,
-built up several inches from the sole, explained the need of this. A
-heavy, much-worn book was spread across his little knees.
-
-He looked up vaguely, hardly seeming to see the librarian.
-
-"What are you doing here? How did you get in?" she repeated.
-
-"I'm reading," he replied, not offering to rise, "I just came in."
-
-"But this isn't the place to read. You must go in the reading-room,"
-she admonished him.
-
-"I always read here. I'd rather," he said, pleasantly enough, dropping
-his eyes to his book, as if the matter were closed.
-
-Now the new librarian thoroughly disapproved of the ancient custom that
-penned the books away from all handling, and fully intended to throw
-them open to the public in a few months' time, when she should have
-them properly systematised; but she resented this anticipation of what
-she intended for a much-appreciated future privilege.
-
-"But why should you read in here, when none of the other children can?"
-she demanded.
-
-The boy raised his eyes again.
-
-"Mr. Littlejohn lets me--I always do," he repeated.
-
-The new librarian pressed her lips together with an air of highly
-creditable restraint.
-
-"Mr. Littlejohn allowed a great many irregularities which have been
-stopped," she announced, "and as there is no reason why you should do
-what the other children cannot, you will have to go. So hurry up, for
-I'm very busy this morning."
-
-She did not speak unkindly, but there was an unmistakable decision in
-her tone, and the boy got up awkwardly, tucked his crutch under his
-arm, and laying the big book down with care, went out in silence, his
-heavy boot echoing unevenly on the hardwood floor. The librarian went
-on to Section K.
-
-Presently the young assistant, who had been accustomed to keep her
-crocheted lace-work on the Philosophical shelf, directly behind the
-_Critique of Pure Reason_, recollected that it would in all human
-probability be discovered, on the removal of that epoch-making
-treatise, and came hastily down to get it. Having concealed it safely
-in her pocket, she paused.
-
-"That was Jimmy Reese you sent out--did you know it?" she asked.
-
-"No, what of it?"
-
-"Why, nothing, only he's always read in here ever since I came. Mr.
-Littlejohn was very fond of him. He helped pick out some of the books.
-He----"
-
-"Picked out the books--that child? Great heavens!"
-
-"Well, he's read a good deal, Jimmy has," the assistant contended.
-"It's all he does. He can't play like the other children, he's so lame.
-He seems real old, anyhow. And he's always been here. He helps giving
-out the books, and helps the children pick out. He was very convenient
-when Mr. Littlejohn didn't like to be waked up."
-
-"Great heavens!" the librarian cried again.
-
-"I think you'll find he'll be missed, you being so new," the assistant
-persevered.
-
-"I think I can manage to carry on the library, Miss Mather," replied
-her superior coldly, "without any assistance from the children of the
-town. Will you begin on that Fiction, please?"
-
-She walked on again, but paused to put away the brown book, which lay
-where the intruder had left it, a mute witness to the untidiness of the
-laity. Opening it briskly, she glanced at the title:
-
-                                  The
-                             AGE OF FABLE
-
-                                  or
-
-                         BEAUTIES OF MYTHOLOGY
-
-                                  by
-
-                            THOMAS BULFINCH
-
-Below was a verse of poetry in very fine print; she read it
-mechanically.
-
-    _O, ye delicious fables! where the wave
-      And woods were peopled, and the air, with things
-    So lovely! why, ah! why has science grave
-      Scattered afar your sweet imaginings?_
-
-                                   BARRY CORNWALL.
-
-It flashed into her mind that an absolutely shameless subscriber had
-retained Miss Proctor's collected poems for three weeks now, and she
-made a hasty note of the fact on a small pad that hung from her belt.
-Then she set the _Age of Fable_ in its place and went on about her
-work, the incident dismissed.
-
-The next afternoon as she was sorting out from the department labelled,
-"Poetry, Miscellaneous Matter, etc.," such books as Mr. Littlejohn had
-found himself unable or unwilling to classify further, shaking down
-much dust on the further side of the shelves in the process, she was
-startled by a faint sneeze. Her assistant was compiling a list of fines
-at the desk, and this sneeze came from her very elbow, it seemed, so
-she hastily dismounted from her little ladder and peered around the
-rack. There sat the little boy of yesterday, the same brown book spread
-across his knees. She looked severe.
-
-"Is this Jimmy Reese?" she inquired stiffly.
-
-"Yes'm," he answered, with a polite smile. He had an air of absolute
-unconsciousness of any offence.
-
-"Well, don't you remember what I told you yesterday, Jimmy? This is not
-the reading-room. Why don't you go there?"
-
-"I like it better here."
-
-The librarian sighed despairingly.
-
-"Perhaps you don't know who I am," she explained, not crossly, but with
-that air of detachment and finality that many people assume in talking
-with children. "I am Miss Watkins, the new librarian, and when I give
-an order here it must be obeyed. When I tell any one to do anything,
-I expect them to do it, because--because they must," she concluded
-lamely, a little disconcerted by the placid stare of the brown eyes.
-"You see, if all the little boys came in here, there would be no room
-for us to work."
-
-"But they don't--nobody comes but me," he reminded her.
-
-"Suppose," she demanded, "that someone should call for that book you
-are reading. I shouldn't know where to look for it."
-
-"Nobody ever wants it but me," he assured her again.
-
-"I have no time to argue," she said irritably, "you must do as I tell
-you. Put the book up and run away."
-
-Without another word he laid the book on the broad base-shelf, picked
-up his crutch, and went out. As she watched his retreating figure, a
-little uneasy feeling troubled her usual calm. He seemed so small, so
-harmless a person.
-
-A little later it occurred to her to see how he had entered the
-library, and stepping through the two smaller rooms at the back, choked
-and dusty with neglected piles of old magazines, she noticed a door
-ajar. Picking her way through the chaos, she pulled the knob, and saw
-that it gave on a tiny back porch. On the steps sat the janitor, as
-incompetent, from the librarian's point of view, as his late employer.
-
-"I thought you were sweeping off the walks, Thomas," she suggested,
-coughing as the wreaths from his pipe reached her.
-
-"Well, yes, Miss Watkins, so I was. I just stopped a minute to rest,
-you see," he explained, eyeing her distrustfully. Since her advent life
-had changed greatly for the janitor.
-
-"I see Thomas, does that little lame boy come in this way?"
-
-"Jimmy? Yes, ma'am. 'Most always he does. In fact, that's why I keep
-the door unlocked."
-
-"Well, after this I prefer that you should keep it locked. There is no
-reason why he should have a private entrance to the library that I can
-see; and anyway it's not safe. Some one might----"
-
-"Oh, Lord, Miss Watkins, don't you worry. Nobody ever came in here yet,
-and I've been here eight years. Jimmy's all right. He's careful and
-still's a mouse, and he won't do a mite of harm. He comes in regular
-after school's out, and it's just like a home to him, you may say. He's
-all right."
-
-Miss Watkins frowned.
-
-"I have no doubt that he is a very estimable little boy," she said;
-"but you will please see that no one enters the library by this door. I
-see no reason for favouritism. You understand me, I hope."
-
-And she returned to her work. The assistant, weary of her unprecedented
-labour, had laid aside the list of fines, and was openly crocheting. No
-sound of broom or lawn-mower proclaimed Thomas worthy of his hire, and
-Miss Watkins, vexed beyond the necessity of the case, labelled Fiction
-angrily, wondering why such a town as this needed a library, anyway.
-
-Two little old ladies, plump and deprecatory, entered in a swish of
-fresh, cambric morning-dresses. One of them fumbled in her black-silk
-bag for a book, and leaning on the little gate, coughed lightly to
-attract the assistant's attention.
-
-"Yes, indeed, Miss Mather, a lovely day. Sister and I enjoyed this very
-much. I don't know about what we'll take, exactly; it's so hard to
-tell. I always look and look, and the more I look the more anxious I
-get. It always seems as if everything was going to be too long, or else
-we've read it. You see we read a good deal. I wonder--do you know where
-the little boy is?"
-
-Miss Mather smiled triumphantly. "You'll have to ask Miss Watkins," she
-said.
-
-"The new librarian, my dear? Oh, I hardly like to disturb her. They say
-she's very strict. My cousin told me she charged her nine cents for a
-book that was out too long. You ask her, my dear!"
-
-"Miss Watkins," said the assistant meekly, "there is a lady here would
-like to see Jimmy. Do you know where he is?"
-
-"I do not," the librarian returned briefly. "Anything I can do----"
-
-"Oh, no, not at all!" cried the flushed old lady, "not for the world!
-Don't disturb yourself, please--Miss--Miss--I'll just wait till he
-gets in. He picked this out for me. You see, he knows pretty well
-what we want. I always like something with a little travel in it, and
-sister won't hear of a book unless it ends well. And it spoils it so
-to look ahead. So the little fellow looks at the end, and sees if it's
-all right for sister, and then he assures me as to the travel--I like
-European travel best--and then we know it's all right. I'll just wait
-for him."
-
-"I have no reason to suppose that he will be here," Miss Watkins said
-crossly.
-
-"Oh, yes, he'll be here," the old lady returned comfortably. "He'll be
-here soon. We can wait."
-
-The librarian pressed her lips together and retired into her work.
-The minutes passed. Presently the outer door opened softly, and the
-irregular tap of a crutch was heard. Jimmy's head peered around
-the partition into the ante-room. The old ladies uttered a chirp
-of delight, and slipped out into the hall for a brief, whispered
-consultation, returning with a modest request for "_Griffith Gaunt_, by
-Charles Reade." The elder of the two shut it carefully into her bag,
-remarking sociably, "I wanted to read the _Cloister and the Hearth_, by
-the same author, I'd heard there was so much travel in it, but he said
-sister never could bear the ending."
-
-Going into the reading-room later, on some errand, the librarian was
-surprised to find the magazines neatly laid out in piles, the chairs
-straightened, the shades pulled level, and a fresh bunch of lilacs in
-the jar under the window. She guessed who had done it, but Jimmy was
-not to be seen. Once, during the next afternoon, she thought she saw a
-small, grey jacket disappearing into the waste-room, but much to her
-own surprise, forbore to make certain of it. During the next few days,
-when her time was entirely taken up with the catalogue in the front
-of the library, and the assistant transacted all business among the
-shelves, she was perfectly convinced that somewhere between sections A
-and K a little boy with a brown book was concealed, but found herself
-too busy to rout him out.
-
-Even when a red-faced, liveried coachman presented her with a note,
-directed in a sprawling, childish hand to "Mr. Jimmy Reese, Esq.,"
-she only coughed and said severely, "There is no such official in the
-library."
-
-"It's just the little boy, ma'am, that's meant," the man explained
-deferentially. "Master Clarence is back for the summer--Mrs. Clarence
-Vanderhoof, ma'am--and he always sends a note to the little fellow.
-There was some book he mentioned to him last year as likely that he
-would enjoy, and Master Clarence wants it, if it's in. I was to give
-him the note."
-
-"I will send a list of our juveniles to Mrs. Vanderhoof," said the
-librarian, in her most business-like manner, "and I will give you, for
-Master Clarence, the new Henty book. He will probably like that."
-
-"I beg pardon, ma'am," persisted the coachman, "but Master Clarence
-says that there was a book that the little boy particularly recommended
-to him, and I was to be very special about it. He goes a good deal by
-the little fellow's judgment. I'll call in again when he's here, after
-my other errands."
-
-Miss Watkins sighed, and gave way. "Will you see, Miss Mather, if Jimmy
-Reese is in the library?" she inquired, and Miss Mather, smiling,
-obeyed her.
-
-He was never formally enfranchised, but he took up his place in the
-department of Travel and Adventure, and held it unchallenged. All the
-long, spring afternoons he sat there, throned on the books, leaning
-against them, banked safely in from the tumult of the world outside, a
-quiet little shadow among the shadowy throngs that filled the covers.
-
-Whatever he might read, for he turned to other books as one travels,
-for the joy of coming home again, the old brown book lay open on his
-knees, and he patted the pages with one hand, absently, as his eyes
-travelled over the print. Sooner or later he came back to the yellowed
-leaves--perhaps to the story of Dryope.
-
-"_Now there was nothing left of Dryope but her face. Her tears still
-flowed and fell on her leaves, and while she could, she spoke. 'I am
-not guilty. I deserve not this fate. I have injured no one. If I speak
-falsely, may my foliage perish with drought and my trunk be cut down
-and burned. Take this infant and give it to a nurse. Let it often be
-brought and nursed under my branches, and play in my shade; and when
-he is old enough to talk, let him be taught to call me mother, and to
-say with sadness, "My mother lies hid under this bark." But bid him be
-careful of river-banks, and beware how he plucks flowers, remembering
-that every bush he sees may be a goddess in disguise. Farewell, dear
-husband and sister and father. If you retain any love for me, let not
-the axe wound me nor the flocks bite and tear my branches. Since I
-cannot stoop to you, climb up hither and kiss me; and while my lips
-continue to feel, lift up my child, that I may kiss him. I can speak
-no more, for already the bark advances up my neck, and will soon shoot
-over me. You need not close my eyes; the bark will soon close them
-without your aid.' Then the lips ceased to move, and life was extinct;
-but the branches retained, for some time longer, the vital heat._"
-
-In fancy he walked by that fatal stream. He saw the plant dripping
-blood--the flower that was the poor nymph Lotis. The terrible,
-beautiful revenge, the swift doom of those wonderful Greeks, that
-delights even while it horrifies, he felt to the fullest measure. He
-had no more need to read them than a priest his breviary, for he knew
-them all, but he followed the type in very delight of recognition.
-
-Through the window came the strong scent of the purple lilacs, that
-grew all over the little New England town. Faint cries of children
-playing drifted in with the breeze. The organ in the church nearby
-crooned and droned a continual fugue. Someone was always practising
-there. The deep, bass notes jarred the air, even the little building
-trembled to them at times. And since it had been at this season of
-the year, when he had first found the book, the lovely broken myths,
-elusive sometimes, and as dim to his understanding as the marble
-fragments that still bewilder the enchanted artist, he always connected
-with that throbbing, mournful melody, that haunting lilac odour.
-Sometimes the organ swelled triumphantly and cried out in a mighty
-chorus of tone: at those times Ulysses shot down the false suitors,
-or Perseus, hovering over the shrieking sea-beast, rescued the white
-Andromeda. Sometimes a minor plaintive strain troubled him vaguely, and
-then he listened to poor Venus, bending in tears above the slain Adonis.
-
-"_'Yet theirs shall be but a partial triumph; memorials of my grief
-shall endure, and the spectacle of your death, my Adonis, and of my
-lamentation, shall be annually renewed. Your blood shall be turned into
-a flower; that consolation none shall envy me.' Thus speaking, she
-sprinkled nectar on the blood; and as they mingled, bubbles rose as in
-a pool, on which rain-drops fall, and in an hour's time there sprang
-up a flower of bloody hue, like that of the pomegranate. But it is
-short-lived._"
-
-The peculiar odour of much leather on pine shelves was confused, too,
-with the darling book. He had never read it elsewhere; he had not money
-enough for a library-ticket. Old Mr. Littlejohn, quickly recognising
-the invaluable services that this little acolyte might be counted upon
-to render, had readily granted him the freedom of the shelves, and
-smoked his pipe in peace for hours together, thereafter, in the back
-room, sure of his monitor in front.
-
-Miss Watkins needed no such assistance, but she found herself, to
-her amazement, not wholly ungrateful for the many steps saved her
-by Jimmy's tactful service to the children. At first she would have
-none of it, and groups of shy boys and girls waited awkwardly and in
-vain before the little gate, hoping for a glimpse of their kindly
-counsellor. She thrust lists of juveniles into their unwilling hands,
-led them cautiously into an inspection of Nature Lessons for Little
-Learners, displayed tempting rows of bound _St. Nicholas_--but to no
-purpose.
-
-"Where's Jimmy?" they demanded stubbornly.
-
-"What on earth do they want of him?" she asked of her assistant one
-day. "That stupid Meadows child--is she going to ask his opinion of the
-Dotty Dimple Books?"
-
-"Not at all," Miss Mather replied tranquilly. "But he always gets
-her a Mary J. Holmes novel, and I stamp it and let it go. You always
-argue with her about it, and ask her if she wouldn't prefer something
-else--which she never would."
-
-Little by little he grew to wait on the children as a matter of course.
-He was even allowed to keep the novels desired by the Meadows child in
-the juvenile shelf, where he insisted they belonged.
-
-"Only the girls in Number Seven want 'em," he explained, when his
-superior complained of his audacity in removing them from adult fiction.
-
-And so the little girl who had reached that period of little girlhood
-when every well-regulated young person is compelled by some inward
-power to ask the librarian, tremblingly, if she has a book in the
-libr'y called _St. Elmo_, was spared all embarrassment, for Jimmy
-handed it out to her almost before she asked.
-
-Not that he lacked the discrimination to exercise a proper authority
-on occasion. Miss Watkins remembered long a surprising scene which
-she witnessed from the top of a ladder in the Biography and Letters
-Section. A shambling, unwholesome boy had asked Miss Mather in a husky
-voice for the works of Edgar A. Poe, and as she blew off the dust
-from the top and extended two fat volumes toward him, a rapid tapping
-heralded the youngest official.
-
-"Don't you give 'em to him, don't you!" he cried, warningly. As she
-paused instinctively he shook his finger with a quaint, old-fashioned
-gesture at the boy.
-
-"You ought to be ashamed, Sam Wheeler," he said reprovingly. "You
-shan't take those books a step. Not a step. If you think you're going
-to scare Susy to death you're mistaken. If you want to read 'em, come
-here and do it. But you aren't a-going to read 'em to her nights,
-again. So you go right off, now!"
-
-Without a word Sam turned and left the library, and Miss Watkins from
-her ladder remonstrated feebly.
-
-"Why, Jimmy, if that boy has a ticket you haven't any right----"
-
-"Do you know what he does with those books, Miss Watkins?" replied the
-dauntless squire of dames. "He reads 'em after supper to his little
-sister Susy. That one where the house all falls down and the one where
-the lady's teeth come out and she carries 'em in her hand! And she
-don't dare take her feet off the rungs, she sits so still. And she
-don't go to sleep hardly ever. Do you s'pose I'd let him take 'em?"
-
-The librarian threshed the matter over, and finally thought to stagger
-him by the suggestion that it would be difficult for him to ascertain
-the precise intention of everyone drawing out books. "How do you know,"
-she asked, "that other people may not be frightening each other with
-various stories?"
-
-"There aren't many fellows as mean as Sam Wheeler," he replied
-promptly, "and then I was sure that he was going to. I happened to
-know."
-
-She turned again to her work and he went back to his corner, the brown
-book under his arm.
-
-The syringa was out now, and the mournful, sweet odour blew in from
-the bushes around the church. In the still June air he could hear the
-bees buzzing there. He turned the beloved pages idly. Should it be poor
-Psyche, so sweet and foolish, or Danaë, the lovely mother, hushing
-her baby in the sea-tossed chest? He found the place of Proverbial
-Expressions at the back of the book, and read them with a never-failing
-interest. Around them he wove long stories to please himself.
-
-"_Their faces were not all alike, nor yet unlike, but such as those of
-sisters ought to be._"
-
-This one always pleased him--he could not have said why.
-
-"_Here lies Phäton, the driver of his father's chariot, which if he
-failed to manage, yet he fell in a great undertaking._"
-
-The simple grandeur of this one was like the trumpet tone of the organ.
-He thrilled to it delightedly.
-
-The third he murmured to himself, entranced by the very sound of the
-words:
-
-"_He falls, unhappy, by a wound intended for another; looks up to the
-skies, and dying remembers sweet Argos._"
-
-Ah, why would Thomas never consent to the witchery of these words:
-
-"----_and dying remembers sweet Argos._"
-
-He sighed delightedly and dreamed into the dusk. Almost he thought he
-had known that man, almost he remembered sweet Argos....
-
-In the middle of June the Vanderhoof's coachman brought bad news:
-Master Clarence was quite ill. No one knew what it was exactly, but if
-there was any exceptionally fine book that Jimmy could suggest, he'd be
-glad to be read to from it.
-
-For the first time the little librarian parted from his darling.
-
-"If you'll be especially careful of it, William, and I've put in slips
-of paper at the best ones. And as soon as he gets better, I'd be glad
-if he'd send it back--if he's through with it."
-
-The days seemed long without it. The heat was intense, and when Miss
-Mather stayed at home a day or two, and all the summer people came in
-for books, he had a great deal to do. Miss Watkins was very glad of his
-help, now.
-
-One hot Saturday afternoon he did not return to the library, but began
-a resolute journey to the Vanderhoof's big house on the hill. It was
-almost two miles, and he went slowly; now and then he stopped to rest
-on the stone horse-blocks. It took him an hour to get there, and at the
-door he had to stop to wipe his forehead and get his breath.
-
-"I came to ask how Clarence was," he said to the maid.
-
-"He's better, thank you, but it's dreadful sick he's been. 'Twas
-scarlet fever, dear," she answered, with a pitying glance at the
-crutch. "Not that you need be worried, for the half of the house is
-shut off, and we've not been near it," she added.
-
-"I'm glad he's better, and--and is he through with the book?" he asked
-eagerly.
-
-"The book? What book is it, my dear? Sure the nurse does be reading a
-hundred books to him."
-
-"A brown book: Stories of Gods and Heroes. I--I'd like it, if he's
-through with it. I stay at the libr'y, and I sent it to him--" he sank
-on the step, exhausted.
-
-The kind-hearted girl dragged him into the hall. "Come out with me,
-dear, and get a glass of cold milk," she said. "You've walked too far."
-
-Seated on a chair in the kitchen, his eyes closed, he heard, as in a
-dream, his friend's voice raised in dispute with some distant person.
-
-"And I say he shall have it, then. Walking all this way! And him lame,
-too! Tell Emma to put it on the tray, and leave it in the hall. The
-child's well enough now, anyway. I'll go get it myself--I'm not afraid.
-The whole of us had the fever, and no such smelling sheets pinned up,
-and no fuss at all, at all. I'm as good as a paid nurse, any day, if
-you come to that. A book'll hurt no one."
-
-Later he found himself perched beside the coachman, who was going
-to meet a train, the beloved book tight in his arms. He fingered it
-lovingly; he smelled the leaves like a little dog. For the first time
-in his life he took it to his home, and clasped it in his arms as he
-lay in bed.
-
-For days he did not appear, and it was Thomas, the janitor, who went
-finally to look him up, troubled by the children's reports of his
-illness. He returned grave-faced.
-
-"It's the fever, Miss Watkins, and they say there's little chance for
-him, the poor little feller! He was worn out with the heat. They don't
-know how he got it. He's out of his mind. To think of Jimmy like that!"
-
-The librarian's heart sank, and her assistant put her head on her arms
-and cried. Thomas sat sadly on his little porch, his unlighted pipe in
-his mouth. The library seemed strangely empty.
-
-The little Meadows girl brought them the news the next morning.
-
-"Jimmy's dead," she said abruptly. "He got it from a book up at the
-Vanderhoof's. His aunt feels awful bad. It was a libr'y book. They say
-he held it all the time."
-
-The librarian put away the book in her hand, envying the younger woman
-her facile tears. She was not imaginative, but she realised dimly for a
-moment that this little boy had known more of books, had got more from
-them, than she, with all her catalogues.
-
-They sat together, she, Miss Mather, and Thomas, a strange trio, at the
-simple funeral service in the church nearby. So far as daily living
-went, they were as near to him as the aunt who cared for him.
-
-Coming back to the library, they lingered awhile in the reading-room,
-trying to realise that it was all over, and that that little, quick
-tapping would never be heard again among the books. At last Thomas
-spoke:
-
-"It don't seem right," he said thickly, "it don't seem right nor fair.
-Here he was, doting on that book so, tugging it round, just living on
-it, you might say, and it turned on him and killed him. Gave it up, and
-a sacrifice it was, too--I know--and as a reward, it killed him. Went
-back to get it, brought it home, took it to bed--and it killed him.
-It's like those things he'd tell me out of it--they all died; seemingly
-without any reason, the gods would go back on 'em, and they'd die. He's
-often read it out to me."
-
-"It will be lovely to have that Children's-room memorial," said Miss
-Mather, softly, "with all the books and pictures and the little chairs.
-It was beautiful in Mrs. Vanderhoof, I think. It wasn't her fault. I
-wish--I wish we'd had a little chair in there for Jimmy."
-
-The librarian got up abruptly and moved around among the magazines, a
-mist before her eyes. Only now did she realise how she had grown to
-love him.
-
-
-
-
-THE MAID OF THE MILL
-
-
-I
-
-"The only objection I have to ghost stories," said young Sanford, "is
-from a literary point of view. They're so badly done, you know."
-
-"In what way?" said the clerk of the hotel, settling back in his office
-chair, and smiling at young Sanford and the circle of men who had come
-down for their keys from the billiard-room.
-
-"Well, in this way. I'm not considering the little harmless stories
-where the heroes are only frightened, or even those where their heads
-are grey in the morning. I'm thinking of those where they never live
-to tell the awful tale, you know; the ones in which they tell their
-friends to come if they call, and then they never call; the ones in
-which, although they scream and scream, nobody hears them.
-
-"And yet the old trembling man who points them to the haunted room
-knows perfectly well that five men have entered that room on five
-nineteenths of October, and never come out alive. Yet he only warns
-them, or at most only beseeches them not to go in. He has no police
-force--not that police could seriously harm the ghosts, but somehow
-they never appear to the police; he does not arrange with the victim's
-friend to burst in the door at twelve-thirty, anyhow, whether they are
-summoned or not; he doesn't--but then, what do any of them do that they
-might be expected to? And all this forced condition of things so that
-the ghost may have all the evening to work quietly in. Do you mean to
-tell me that if I were frightened to the extent of grey hair in the
-morning, I couldn't scream loud enough to be heard any distance?"
-
-This speech drew nods of approval from several of the men. "I've
-thought of that, too," said the clerk. In a dark corner behind the
-stove sat a man, hunched over his knees, silent, and apparently unknown
-to any of the others. At this point he looked up, cleared his throat,
-and said in a strange, husky voice:
-
-"Do you really suppose that that is anything else than nonsense?" Young
-Sanford flushed. "Sir"--he began. The other continued in his rough,
-thick voice:
-
-"Do you suppose they don't try to scream? Do you suppose they don't
-_think_ they're screaming?"
-
-A little silence of discomfort fell on the circle. There was something
-disagreeably suggestive in the question. Suddenly the man spoke again.
-
-"I had a friend," he said, "in fact, I had two friends. One was
-young--about your age," nodding to Sanford. "The other was older. He
-was not so clever nor so attractive nor so brilliant nor so jolly as
-the younger, but he had a characteristic--perhaps his only one--for he
-was a very ordinary man. He had an iron will. His determination was
-as unbreakable as anything human could be. And he was devoted to his
-friend, who, somehow, loved him. I don't know why, because he had so
-many other admirers--but he stuck to his friend--Joan. They called the
-two Darby and Joan. Their real names were not unlike those, and it was
-rather funny. Darby used to talk as you were talking, sir," he nodded
-again to Sanford, "and he was sure, cock sure, that what he said was
-right. He would tell what things were possible and what were not, and
-prove what he said very nicely. Joan wasn't clever, but he knew that it
-does no good to call a thing impossible. He knew, in fact, that nothing
-is more possible than the most impossible things."
-
-The man coughed and cleared his throat and waited a moment as if to see
-whether he were intruding. No one spoke, so he went on.
-
-"One day Darby rushed into Joan's study and told him of a haunted mill
-he'd discovered. It was one of the old mills where the farmers used to
-bring their sacks before the big concerns in the West swallowed all the
-little trades. It was dusty and cobwebbed and broken down and unused
-and haunted. And there was a farmhouse directly across the road and a
-house on either side of it not a hundred feet away.
-
-"'Was it always haunted?' asked Joan. 'No,' said Darby, 'only once
-a year.' On Christmas eve every year for nineteen years there had
-appeared, late at night, a little light in one of the windows; and that
-side of the house had an odd look, somehow it seemed to look fresher
-and newer, and at one o'clock or so a horrible piercing shriek would
-ring out from the mill, and then a kind of crashing fall, and then all
-was still, and the light would disappear.
-
-"'Had nobody investigated?' Oh, yes. The first year it was noticed
-was when houses were built up around it. It used to stand away from
-everything else, and the miller and his family lived there. Then, long
-after they were dead, people moved out there and heard the noises
-and saw the light. They thought of tramps and escaped criminals and
-everything one suggests till it had occurred too repeatedly for that,
-and then a young farmer went over one Christmas eve, not telling any
-one, and they found him roaming about the mill, a hopeless wreck the
-next day; he had gone quite mad.
-
-"And the next year a man came up from the city, and his friends were in
-the next room to help him if he called, and he didn't call, and they
-were afraid to startle him by knocking, so they got a ladder and peeped
-into the window at ten minutes to one, and he lay peacefully on the
-bed with his eyes closed and his hands stretched loosely out, and they
-thought it was a great joke that he should sleep through it, so they
-went home, and in the morning they found him in horrible convulsions,
-and he never recovered.
-
-"And there were two young divinity students that went once together,
-and they had a crowd along with instructions to break in the door at
-one exactly. And at the stroke of one the crowd beat in the great
-door and burst into an empty room! They had gone up a flight too far,
-somehow, and as they stood staring at each other, from the room beneath
-them came a dreadful shriek and a crash, and when they rushed down they
-found the boys in a dead faint. They brought them to and got them home,
-and they muttered nonsense about a dog and a sash and would say no
-more. And they escaped with severe nervous prostration. But later they
-lost what little nerve they had and couldn't sleep at night, and joined
-the Catholic Church, because they said that there were things they
-found it difficult to reconcile....
-
-"'And what was the story of it all?' asked Joan. Oh, the story was
-disagreeable enough. The miller's daughter wanted to marry a poor young
-man, but her father would not let her. And she refused to accept his
-rich nephew. So he locked her in her room till she should consent. And
-she stayed there a week. And one night the nephew came home late and
-saw a tiny light in her window, and presently he saw some one place
-a ladder and go softly up, and the miller's daughter leaned out and
-helped him in. So he told her father, who came into her room the next
-night with a bloodhound, and bound her to the bed and hushed her cries
-with her sash, and lit the little light. And when her lover had climbed
-the ladder--the dog was there. And that was Christmas eve.
-
-"'Do the people suffer this without complaint--these deaths and
-convulsions and apostasies?' asked Joan. Well, no. But if they
-destroyed the mill a liquor saloon would go up immediately. The
-proprietor was simply waiting. And they didn't want that. So they
-kept it quiet. And nobody need go there. Nobody had been alarmed
-or hurt except the meddlers. And in villages the people have less
-scientific curiosity. But Darby was going immediately. It was December
-twenty-third now. Joan must come, too; it would be most exciting. Joan
-argued against it, but he too was curious, so they agreed to go. And
-the next day they went."
-
-
-II
-
-By this time the circle was absolutely silent, concentrated to ears
-and eyes. They stared and leaned towards the shadowy corner behind the
-stove where the dimly defined figure crouched. The clerk got up and
-turned down the gas, which flared in his face, and the room was almost
-wholly dark. The man spoke in a dull, mechanical way, as one speaks who
-clears his mind, once for all. At intervals he waited fully ten seconds
-to rest his voice, strangely impressive, with its strained, choked
-tones.
-
-"The next day they went," he repeated. "Darby was not only clever--he
-was extremely sensitive. Ridicule was unbearable to him. And though he
-was a literary fellow, and artistic and all that, he was practical,
-too, for all he was so brilliant and winning. It actually troubled
-him that people should believe anything but what he called 'the
-strictly logical,' and he thought Joan's ideas far too flexible and
-credulous. It was really for Joan's sake, he said in joke, whom he
-rather suspected of spiritualistic leanings, that he intended to make
-the excursion into the country. And he would tell nobody. He would
-make no inquiries. He would conduct the search along somewhat unusual
-lines, he declared. One of them should sleep in the room. At one
-o'clock precisely the other should quietly mount a ladder fixed just
-where the mythical ladder had been and enter the room in that way, thus
-preventing any mischievous practical jokes from without, and insuring
-help to the man within, should he need it.
-
-"And Joan agreed to this. He was interested himself, and he'd have been
-as eager and scornful as Darby if it hadn't occurred to him--for he was
-a terribly literal fellow--that four tragedies, sad as these had been,
-and all unexplained, couldn't be accounted for by chance nor made less
-sad even by a good logician like Darby. So he suggested one or two
-friends to fall back upon in case of foul play of any kind. And Darby
-looked at him and laughed a little sneering laugh and called him----"
-The man choked and bent lower. He seemed to be unable to speak for some
-seconds. Then he hurried on, speaking from this point very rapidly and
-using a kind of clumsy gesture that brought the scenes he spoke of
-strangely clear to the men around him.
-
-"He called him a coward. So Joan agreed to go. And on the afternoon
-of the day before Christmas they took a long ladder and a lantern and
-some sandwiches and two revolvers and drove in a butcher's cart to the
-little village. And Joan was as eager as Darby that no one should know.
-You see, Darby called him a coward.
-
-"They slipped into the old, dingy mill at dusk, and went over it with
-the greatest thoroughness. Everything was open and empty. Only the
-corner bedroom and one of the living rooms were furnished at all. The
-dust lay thick in the mill proper, but the living rooms were singularly
-free from it. Darby noticed this and remarked it to Joan. 'It doesn't
-smell half so musty, either,' he said. 'I'm glad of that. I hate old,
-musty smells.'
-
-"Then a queer, crawly feeling came over Joan, and he said: 'Darby,
-let's go home. Life's short enough, heaven knows. If anything----' And
-then Darby told him once for all that if he wanted to go home he might,
-and otherwise he might shut up.
-
-"'Do you want it dusty and smelly?' said he.
-
-"'Yes,' said Joan, 'I do. I don't see why it isn't, either. It's just
-as old and just as deserted as the other part.'
-
-"'You might get a little dust from the other side and scatter it
-about,' said Darby, and before Joan could reply he had scooped a
-handful of dry, brown dust from the bagroom of the mill and laid it
-about on the bureau and chairs of the bedroom. 'Now come out for our
-last patrol,' he said. They went out and studied the mill carefully. As
-they came around to the house side, keeping carefully in the shadow,
-Joan looked surprised and pointed to the door by which they had
-entered.
-
-"'That door's shut,' he said.
-
-"'Well?' asked Darby.
-
-"'We left it ajar.'
-
-"'Oh, the wind!' said Darby, and went up to the door softly, listening
-for any escaping joker. He rattled the knob and pushed it inward, but
-the door did not yield. 'Why, you couldn't have left it ajar,' he said,
-'it's locked!'
-
-"Joan stared at the house, wondering if it was possible that the
-window-panes really shone so brightly. And the cobwebs about the
-blinds, where were they? He could have sworn that the porch was full of
-dead leaves and sticks when they went in--it was as clean as his hand
-now.
-
-"'We'll go in by the window, the broken one, at the back,' he said
-quietly. They went around the house and hunted for the broken window,
-but did not find it. The window was not only whole but locked. Then
-Joan set his teeth.
-
-"'The broken window must have been at the mill side,' he said, 'we'll
-go there.' So they went around and clambered in by a paneless window
-and went to the bedroom. The room was dim, but they could distinguish
-objects fairly well. Darby looked queerly at Joan.
-
-"'So you cleared away the dust,' he asked.
-
-"'What dust?' asked Joan. Then he followed Darby's eyes, and where the
-little piles of brown dust had lain were only clean, bare boards.
-
-"Outside, the teams of the home-coming farmers rolled by. A dog barked,
-and now a child called. But they seemed far away--in another country.
-Where the two young fellows stood, there was a strange lonely belt of
-silence.
-
-"'Perhaps I brushed the chair as we went out,' said Darby slowly. But
-he looked at Joan queerly.
-
-"They took their supper, and then Joan announced his intention of
-staying in the room while Darby patrolled the house, and climbed the
-ladder at one. At first Darby demurred. He had planned to stay. But
-Joan was inflexible. It was utterly useless to argue with him, so Darby
-agreed. If Joan wanted help he was to call. At eleven and twelve Darby
-was to climb the ladder and look in, and at one he was to come in,
-whatever the situation. At the slightest intimation of danger of any
-kind Joan was to fire his revolver and Darby was to call for help and
-rush up the ladder. For all that the people were so quiet round about,
-they were probably uneasy--they knew that things might happen on the
-night before Christmas.
-
-"Joan sat for some time after Darby had left him, staring about the
-room. It was simply furnished with a large bed, a table, and two deal
-chairs. Thrown over the bed was a moth-eaten blanket, checked white
-and red. Joan swept it off from the bed and shook it, closing his eyes
-instinctively to avoid the dust. But no dust came. He shook it again.
-It was as fresh and clean as his handkerchief. He threw it back on the
-bed and looked out at Darby walking quietly around in the shadow.
-
-"He was glad Darby was out there. He got to thinking of ghosts and
-strange preparations for their coming. The boards of the window
-creaked, and he gasped and stared, only to see Darby's face at the
-window. 'Anything happened?' he signalled. Joan shook his head. It
-must be eleven o'clock. How was it possible? The time had seemed so
-short. He stared at a big star till his eyes swam. He felt dull and
-drowsy. He had sat up late the night before, and he needed sleep.
-
-"A thought came to him, and it seemed somehow very original and
-striking. He tapped on the pane to Darby.
-
-"'I'll lie down and take a little nap,' he whispered, opening the
-window softly. 'You can call me at twelve.' Darby nodded.
-
-"'How do you feel, old fellow? All right?' he asked."
-
-The man choked again and was silent for a time. The strain was growing.
-The men waited for something to happen as one awaits the falling of the
-red, snapping embers.
-
-"Joan lay down in that bed," said the stranger hoarsely, and from this
-point he hurried on almost too quickly for clearness, "on that hideous
-checked blanket, and fell asleep. He fell asleep thinking of Darby's
-words and how thoughtful they were: 'How do you feel, old fellow? All
-right?'
-
-"He had bad dreams. He dreamed a woman stood at the foot of the bed and
-stared at him and motioned him to go. And she was an unnatural woman.
-She kept changing colour, from red to yellow, from yellow to cream
-colour, from cream colour to white, from white to--ah! she was a dead
-woman!
-
-"She motioned him to go, but he refused. She came to the side of the
-bed and took off her long red sash and bound him down. Then he was
-willing to go indeed, and strained his muscles in useless efforts
-to break away, but she laughed at him and then breathed in his face
-till her damp, icy breath chilled his very soul--and he woke, covered
-with the sweat of terror--to see her standing at the foot of the bed,
-looking, looking into his staring eyes!
-
-
-III
-
-"So it was true. There were such things. But at least his limbs were
-free, and to his joy he discovered that he was not afraid. No; he
-had a dull feeling of coming disaster, but no fear. She was a young
-woman, with big shadowy eyes and a strange mouth. She had on a long,
-loose white nightgown, open at the throat, and she carried a little
-lamp. 'Go!' he saw in her eyes as plainly as if she said it. He looked
-about the room--he could have sworn it was changed. It had the air of
-a woman's room, that she is living in and keeps her things in. He had
-no right there--none. He should have gone. But he was proud because
-he wasn't afraid, and he answered her with his eyes that he would not
-go. A tired, puzzled look came into her face, a kind of frown, and she
-leaned over the footboard and begged him with those big dark eyes,
-begged him hard to go. He had his chance--oh, yes, the fool had his
-chance!
-
-"But he was so proud that he could master her, master a returned
-soul--for lovely as she was, he knew she wasn't human--that he only set
-his teeth and started up to come nearer her. But she raised her hand
-and he fell back, feeling queer and drowsy. Then she came to the edge
-of the bed and sat down and took from behind her a soft red silk sash
-and drew it across his face. A sweet, languid feeling stole over him;
-the bed seemed like a cloud of down, her sash smelled like spice and
-sandalwood in a warm wind. He felt he was being drugged and weakened,
-and he tried to stumble up, but the soft silk smothered him, and he
-became almost unconscious.
-
-"He only wanted one thing--to feel her fingers touch his face and to
-hold her long brown hair. And while she drew the sash across his mouth
-he stretched out his hands on either side to catch it and reach her
-fingers. There was nothing ghostly about her--she was only a lovely
-dream-woman. Maybe he was asleep....
-
-"And then she pulled the sash away, and he caught her eye and awoke
-with a start--her look was full of triumph. She didn't beg him any
-longer. This was no helpless, gentle spirit of a woman; this was a
-weird elemental creature; she hadn't any soul or any pity; something
-made her act out all this dreadful tragedy, without any regard for
-human life or reason. He knew somehow that she couldn't help his
-weakness; that though in some fiendish way she had bound him hand
-and foot, she did it not of herself, but in obedience to some awful
-law that she couldn't help any more than he. And then he began to be
-afraid. Slowly great waves of horror rose and grew and broke over
-him. He tried to move his feet and hands, but he could not so much as
-will the muscles to contract. He strained till the drops stood on his
-forehead, but still his arms lay stretched motionless across the bed.
-
-"Just then he met her eyes again, and his heart sank, they were so
-mocking and bitter. 'Fool! fool!' they said. They were so malignant,
-and yet so impersonal--he could have sworn that she was afraid too.
-What was to happen? Would she kill him? His tongue was helpless. He
-worked his lips weakly, but they made no words. And she turned down her
-mouth scornfully and played with the sash. Why did she wait? For she
-was waiting for a time to come--her eyes told that. What was that time?
-A great joy that Darby was safe outdoors came to him, and he remembered
-that Darby would come at twelve! He would break the spell. And just
-then she left the bed and bent down over the little lamp, and when she
-took it up it was lighted. She moved across to the window and set it
-in the sill. Then she glided to the door and locked it. Joan heard the
-bolt slip.
-
-"Steps sounded on the ladder outside. Into Joan's half-dulled thought
-came a kind of comfort. Darby was coming. Some one knocked on the pane
-and the window was raised from the outside.
-
-"'Joan! Joan!' whispered Darby, 'are you all right? Why did you light
-the lamp? Where are you?' And then Joan, the fool, forgot that if he
-had not answered, Darby would surely have come in. It seemed to him
-that if he did not speak now, he was lost. He strained his throat to
-say four words--only four: 'All right. Come in.' Just that. The first
-two to reassure Darby, the second to bring him. He made a mighty
-effort. 'All--all right!' he shouted, 'c--c--,' and then her eyes were
-on him and he faded into unconsciousness. He saw in them a terror and
-surprise. He understood that she wondered at his speaking. There was a
-stinging pain in his throat, and he heard Darby whisper angrily,
-
-"'Keep still, can't you? Don't howl so! It's quarter to one. I looked
-in at twelve, and didn't want to wake you. You'd better get up
-now--who's that down there?' and with a sickening despair he heard
-Darby hurry down the ladder.
-
-"The leaves rustled a little and then all was still. He didn't struggle
-any longer. It was clear to him now. He was to play the lover in this
-ill-fated tragedy, whose actors offered themselves, fools that they
-were, unasked, each time. And what happened to the lover? Why, he was
-killed. Well, rather that he should die than Darby. It seemed to him so
-reasonable, now. No one had asked him to suffer. He had had his chance
-to go and refused it. No one could help him now. Not even she. They
-must play it out, puppets of an inexorable drama.
-
-"And then the girl dashed to the bed, and sank beside it as if to pray.
-And he felt her hair on his face, as he had hoped, but it brought no
-joy to him. For something was coming up from the floor below. Something
-that sent a thrill before it, that advanced, slowly, slowly, surely.
-The girl shuddered and grasped the bed and tried to pull herself up,
-but she sank helplessly back. And slowly the bolt of the door pushed
-back. No one pushed it, but it slipped back. Then slowly, inch by inch,
-the door opened. Joan grew stiff and cold, and would not have looked
-but that his eyes were fixed. Wider, wider, till it stood flat against
-the wall.
-
-"Then up the stairs came steps. And with them others, quick and
-pattering. What was that? Who walked so quickly, with padding, thudding
-feet? He longed for them to come in--he dreaded their coming. The door
-was ready for them. The room was swept and clean.
-
-"Up, up, they came, the heavy steps and the scratching, pattering feet.
-Nearer, nearer--they came in. The man, large, dark, heavy-jawed; the
-stone-grey, snarling hound, licking its frothing jaws, straining at its
-chain. The girl writhed against the bed in terror--she opened her lips,
-but with a stride the man was upon her, his heavy hand was over her
-mouth. He dragged her up, shaking and sinking, he snatched the sash and
-bound her mouth, he held her at arm's length and stared once in her
-eyes. Scorn and rage and murder were in his.
-
-"Joan forgot his own danger in terrified pity. He struggled a moment,
-but it was useless. His dreadful bonds still held. The man came to the
-bed, dragging the hound, and Joan shut his eyes, not to see the dark
-evil face. He would die in the dark, alone, unaided. Oh! to call once!
-To hear a human voice! But there was no sound but the panting of the
-great, eager dog.
-
-"The man seemed not to see him. He seized the girl, and turning her
-toward the light that burned at the pane, he bound her to the bed-post
-with the silken sash. She writhed and bent and tried to grasp his feet;
-she pleaded with her eyes till their agony cut Joan like a knife, but
-the man tied her straight and fast. Then he walked to the pane and
-crouched down by it and held the dog's muzzle, and became like a stone
-image.
-
-"And suddenly it flashed across Joan's mind, with a passion of fear to
-which all that had gone before was as nothing, that Darby was coming up
-that ladder to that light! Darby, whom he had thought so safe, was to
-come unknowing, unwarned, to that straining, panting beast. He turned
-faint for a moment. And then with all the power of his soul he tried
-to scream. He felt his throat strain and bend and all but burst with
-the tremendous effort. He tried again, and the pain blinded him. At
-his feet there the girl strained and twisted, great tears rolling down
-her cheeks. And yet there was a ghastly silence. The stifled panting
-of that hound echoed in a deadly quiet. It was horrible, pitiful! The
-girl's white gown was torn and mussed; her soft naked shoulder quivered
-when she strained against the cruel sash. He could see that her arm was
-red where it was tied.
-
-"She trembled and bent and bit her lip till the blood stained her chin.
-He cursed and prayed and shrieked till the sound, had it come, would
-have deafened him--but it was all a ghastly mockery! It was as still as
-a quiet summer afternoon--and the dog and the man waited at the window.
-
-"There was a sound of scraping. Someone was coming up the
-ladder--someone who whistled softly under his breath, and came nearer
-every moment. Up, up--the ladder rattled against the window-frame.
-The man at the window slipped his hand slowly, slowly from the dog's
-muzzle. The dog stiffened and drew back his black, dripping jaws from
-his yellow teeth. The man's fingers sunk in the beast's wrinkled neck
-and he held him back, while he threw one look of hate and triumph at
-the tortured woman behind him.
-
-"The man bound to the bed couldn't bear it any longer. As a hand
-grasped the window-sill from outside, he summoned all his iron will,
-and with a rasping, rending effort that brought a sickly, warm taste to
-his mouth, he gave a hoarse cry.
-
-"Then the woman leaned over till the sash sunk into her soft flesh, and
-shrieked with a high, shrill note that cut the air like a knife. But
-even as she shrieked, a form rose over the sill, there was a rush from
-inside, and their voices were drowned in a cry of terror, a scream so
-broken and despairing that Joan could not recognise the voice. And then
-there was a horrid crashing fall, and the light went out, and something
-snapped in the brain of the man chained to the bed, and he dropped for
-miles into a deep, black gulf."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-There was a dead silence in the room. No one dared to speak. The
-stranger's voice had quavered and broken, and in a hoarse whisper he
-said, rising and stumbling to the door while they made way for him
-silently:
-
-"And when he knew his friends again, Darby had been buried a long time.
-Joan did not know whether a broken neck is so much worse than anything
-else in the world. He hadn't any curiosity about the mill--he didn't
-care to hear the details of how they burned it to the ground. Perhaps
-after a while he will be too tired to contradict ignorant people. But
-he thinks--he has said, that when a man has not slept five hours in a
-week, nor spoken for days together without agony, much may be forgiven
-him in the line of intolerance of other people's ignorance--a blessed
-ignorance gentlemen, a blessed ignorance."
-
-The door closed behind him and the men drew a long breath. No one
-turned out the gas and it burned till morning, for they took their
-keys in silence and went upstairs, for the most part arm in arm,
-haunted by the hoarse, rough voice of the stranger, whom they never saw
-again.
-
-And indeed they did not care to see him. "For what could one say?"
-as young Sanford demanded, the next day. "It either happened, or it
-didn't. If it didn't, he can say no more; if it did, then he is right,
-and we are in blessed ignorance." And no one of the circle but nodded
-and looked for a moment at the chair behind the stove.
-
-
-
-
-THE TWILIGHT GUESTS
-
-
-When they left him, in the warm, late afternoon, lying listless on his
-couch in the porch, they thought he would stay alone there till they
-came again. His little granddaughter, indeed, felt so sad at deserting
-him that she ran back and kissed him twice. "To leave Grandpapa alone!"
-she said. But he was not alone; there came to him strange guests and
-sweet. And this was the manner of their coming.
-
-As he watched the shadow creeping up the steps, he thought how often he
-had marked the time by it in the far away days. He remembered how he
-had tried to keep in the broad sunbeam that lay along the walk, when
-he used to run home to supper tired and hungry, shouting to his mother
-that his school was over and out and that he had come--"So hungry,
-mother dear!" And as he thought of her, slow tears crept from under his
-old eyelids, and he raised his hand feebly to wipe them away. When he
-saw clearly again, he started slightly, for up the path, walking in the
-sunbeam, came a boy. He smiled sweetly, cheerily at the old man, and
-sat down confidingly, close to the couch. "It is so warm in the sun!"
-he said.
-
-The old man turned uneasily and looked at him. "Are you Arthur's son?"
-he asked doubtfully. "My eyes are so dim--I cannot always tell you
-apart, at first. Are you Arthur's son?"
-
-"No," said the child.
-
-"Are you----" but then the boy looked full in his face and the old man
-could not take his eyes from that searching smile. And as he looked,
-there grew around his heart the sweet faint breath of lilac trees,
-though it was early autumn and not at all the spring. And deep in the
-child's eyes was so strange a soul--yet so familiar! As he looked yet
-deeper the lilac scent grew stronger and he dared not turn away his
-eyes, lest he should lose it. So he listened to the child, who spoke
-brightly yet gravely, with his head resting against the old man's knee.
-
-"See!" he said, "the lilacs are all out! I took a bunch to school, and
-the teacher wore them in her dress. Oh, but I grow tired of the school
-in the mornings, when the birds sing under the window! The brook is all
-full with the flood water, do you know?"
-
-"Yes," said the old man dreamily, "yes, I know."
-
-"There are pickerel there--I saw one, anyway!" said the boy. "The old
-one--he lives under the stone all alone. If I could get him, I'd be
-proud enough! But I never can--I can only catch him on a Friday night
-when the moon is full, and then I'm not allowed out! The man that weeds
-the garden told me that. Do you remember?"
-
-"Yes, I remember," said the old man.
-
-"But if I don't fish, I don't care so much," said the boy happily. "For
-I get so wet and dirty, and Rachel doesn't like me then. I can't look
-on her book. She is so dear! She never spots the ink on her apron, like
-the other girls. And she never eats fish, either. She thinks it hurts
-them too much to kill them. I don't think so--do you? But girls are
-different."
-
-"Where are you going to-night?" said the old man, quietly, yet his
-voice trembled.
-
-"I'm going to sing to Rachel's grandfather. He's blind, you know."
-
-"Yes," said the old man, "and old. His hair is white. He walks with a
-cane. But he loves the singing."
-
-"Then to-morrow I must go to church," said the boy. "The minister talks
-and prays and I get so sleepy. But mother keeps a peppermint for me,
-just before the second hymn. Then I have it for the long prayer. And
-I can sing the hymns. Rachel never looks at me, she sits so still in
-church. And she won't play on Sunday. I can have my whip and two of the
-largest marbles. Do you think that is wrong?"
-
-"No," said the old man, "I don't think that is wrong."
-
-"And we have gingerbread on the porch in the afternoon," said the boy,
-"and Rachel comes. Mother says children must not be vexed at the Lord's
-Day."
-
-"Yes," said the old man, "mother is so good to us--so good----" and
-when he saw clearly again, the child was gone. Only the shadow lay upon
-the upper step of the porch, and the sunbeam was shrunken to a narrow
-path of light.
-
-He stretched out his trembling hands and called sorrowfully to the boy.
-"Come back! O come back! I had forgotten so much! And the lilacs----"
-but he was alone. And his hair was almost white. He covered his face
-with his hands and shivered. For the shadow was creeping up the porch.
-
-And then over his chilled heart there came the breath of roses--summer
-roses. The air struck warm and soft upon his cheeks. And when he
-dropped his hands there stood in the sun-ray a straight tall youth. His
-eyes were shining with strength; his smile was happiness itself. In his
-firm brown hands he held roses--summer roses. The old man forgot to be
-afraid and raised himself on the cushions.
-
-"Give them to me--give them!" he cried. The young man laughed low and
-laid the red flowers softly up against the withered cheeks. Then he sat
-down and took the cold, dry hands in his.
-
-"What do they make you remember?" he said.
-
-The old man sighed for pure joy. "Ah, how sweet--how heavenly sweet!
-Did they come from the garden behind her father's house?"
-
-"Yes," said the youth, "from the old bush near the wall. It was
-moonlight, and we picked them together. I reached the highest ones,
-because Rachel is not tall. She wore----"
-
-"She wore the white gown with the big shade hat," said the old man
-eagerly. "And I made a wreath for her shoulders. I called her--what did
-I call her? The queen--the queen"--
-
-"The queen of roses," said the youth.
-
-"Ah, yes, the queen of roses!" said the old man. "Her mouth was like
-the pink, young buds. We went up and down the long paths, and I wanted
-her to take my arm."
-
-"But she would not," laughed the young man. "She said that old folks
-might lean, but she could run as well as any man!"
-
-"So she ran through the garden, and I after!" cried the old man,
-crushing the roses till they filled the porch with sweetness. "She hid
-behind the old elm and let me call and call. And I had to find her in
-the moonshadows. You know she grew afraid and cried out when I caught
-her? And yet she knew I would. But women are so. Her mother knew I was
-with her, so she let us stay till it was late. Rachel's mother was kind
-to me, you know?"
-
-"Yes," said the young man. "But she knew that Rachel----"
-
-"Ah!" said the old man quickly, "it seems they all knew! All but Rachel
-and me! Now that is so strange. For we should have known it first. But
-Rachel laughed so when I tried to tell her, she said--what was it she
-said?"
-
-"That you were too young to know how you would think of it later," said
-the youth.
-
-"And I said, 'I'm old enough to know I love you, Rachel, now and for
-ever!'" said the old man softly, clasping his hands together so that
-the roses dropped to the ground. "And then she did not laugh at all,
-but only held her head down so I could not see her eyes, and would not
-speak."
-
-"It was so still," said the youth. "There was no breeze, and
-everything in the garden listened, listened, for what she would say."
-
-"But nothing in the garden could hear," said the old man eagerly,
-"because she only whispered!"
-
-"Was it then that her mother called?" asked the youth.
-
-"Yes," said the old man, and he smiled. "But we did not come, for
-Rachel was afraid to go. She thought her mother would not like to have
-her leave the old home. And she feared to tell her that she wanted to
-go. So we sat like silly children in the dark. You see, I was afraid,
-too. Her father and mother were old, and old people cannot know how we
-feel when love first comes to us--and yet they loved, once!"
-
-"Yes, they loved once," said the youth, "but they forget. They think
-of lands and money and the most prudent course--they cannot feel their
-heart's blood rushing through their veins, surging in their ears, 'She
-loves me!' They cannot feel that one hour with her is dearer than years
-with the others of the world!"
-
-"And then we went in!" said the old man softly. "Then we went in! And
-her mother stood waiting for us. Rachel would not look up and I had to
-lead her by the hand. She feared that we could not make it plain, that
-her mother would scold us----"
-
-The youth laughed aloud. "But did she?" he said.
-
-And the old man laughed too.
-
-"No. She came to me and kissed me and then she held Rachel and cried.
-But not that she was sorry. Older people feel strange when the younger
-ones start away, you see."
-
-The young man picked up the roses and laid them again by the side of
-the couch. "Sleep," he said softly, "and dream of her!" And the old
-man's eyelids drooped and the hands that held the roses relaxed in
-quiet sleep.
-
-When he awoke the sun had almost set. The path of rays had faded and
-the creeping shadow had covered the highest step and lay along the
-porch. He felt feebly for the roses, but they were gone. And the sweet
-warm scent of them was only in his dim memory. But there sat in the
-shadow a man.
-
-Threads of grey were in his hair and lines around his firm mouth. But
-in his eyes shone yet a sweet strength, and he held his head high as he
-spoke.
-
-"Do you know where I have been?" he said.
-
-The old man shook his head.
-
-"Think!" said the other.
-
-Then while he looked into the stranger's eyes, there stole across his
-heart the wind that blows through the orchard when the fruit is ripe.
-He drew in great breaths of it, in doubt, and at last he said in a
-whisper so low that he hardly heard himself, "You have been to his
-grave--his little grave!"
-
-"Yes," said the man, "I have. His mother goes there alone--not even I
-go with her. She goes alone."
-
-"No," said the old man solemnly, "no. God goes with her. I thought that
-she would have died--why did she live?"
-
-"Because," said the other, "because you would have been alone. And you
-could not have kept yourself a man, if she had gone, too."
-
-"Ah, yes!" said the old man softly, "that is it. She is an angel! When
-he was born I was almost afraid. I said, 'My son! I have a son! If I
-should die to-night, he would live and I should live in him!' And when
-she brought him herself into the orchard--I see her now--I see her now!"
-
-He could not lift his head from the pillow, he was so tired and weak,
-but with his eyes he begged the other to come nearer. The man came
-close to the couch and looked down tenderly at the old man. "She wore
-the white trailing gown," he said.
-
-"Yes," whispered the old man, "and the great wide hat. And she held him
-up under the brim and said that if it should rain, she and he could
-keep dry together, but I must stay in the rain!"
-
-"Do you remember," said the other, "how when he could just say words,
-you played with him under the apple tree?"
-
-"Can I ever forget?" said the old man. "But now the angels teach him a
-better language, so that he had but one to learn!"
-
-"Do you remember how she left him with her mother and went away with
-you?" said the other.
-
-The old man smiled a little. "Ah, yes! Well enough!" he said. "We
-thought we would be young again, and leave him to his grandmother and
-his sisters. He had enough care! It was not lack of that----"
-
-"And when you had gone only a few miles she grew anxious----"
-
-"Yes, yes!" said the old man. "She said, 'Suppose he is sick? Suppose
-he falls into the brook? He walks about so brave and strong--and he is
-our only son!' So we came back."
-
-"You were good to her," said the other. "You did always just as she
-wished."
-
-"I loved her," said the old man simply.
-
-The stranger's eyes grew moist and his voice shook as he said, "When he
-grew sick----"
-
-"Ah, when he grew sick!" cried the old man bitterly. "Almost I lost
-my trust in the Giver of my child, and dared not give him back! How I
-begged! How I prayed!--you know!"
-
-"Yes," whispered the stranger, "I know."
-
-"Then she left me for the first time," said the old man slowly. "For
-the first time. She went alone and prayed. Oh Rachel, my dear, dear
-wife, I could not go with you to God! I think even we go best alone! I
-said 'It cannot be! He cannot let it come! I have done all my life as
-best I knew how, and is this my reward?' And I heard her crying, and I
-wished I had never lived."
-
-"But not for long?" said the other.
-
-The old man smiled through his tears.
-
-"No, no, not for long!" he said. "When Rachel saw that I was weak she
-grew strong. It is strange, but women are the strongest then. And she
-showed me the folly and wickedness of throwing away my faith because
-the Most Faithful had taken away my child. And she brought me my little
-daughters and set them on my knees and put her arms around my neck. So
-I grew comforted. And there have come other sons--Arthur and John. But
-he--ah, Rachel! Little we thought when we laid him on the grass under
-the tree and measured him with goldenrod, that he would so soon lie
-there for all our lives!"
-
-"And he lies there now," said the stranger.
-
-"Yes," said the old man softly, "he lies there now. Under the apple
-tree where he lay and laughed that day, he lies there now. For Rachel
-wanted it so. 'I carried him out there the first time,' she said, 'and
-he always loved it there. I used to walk there before he came, and
-plan for him, how he should grow so great and famous and good; and now
-I want him to be there, while he is asleep. And I think that all the
-fields are God's--the orchard as well as the graveyard.' So we laid him
-there, and she goes there often, and I."
-
-"You miss her?" said the stranger.
-
-"Miss her?" said the old man, staring at the visitor, "miss her? Why,
-she is here! She is my wife!----" but he was alone, on the couch, with
-the faint breath of ripening apples dying on the air.
-
-And as he turned wearily, the shadow crept softly and covered the porch
-and the couch where he lay. The sun dropped behind the hills and the
-air struck cold on his uncovered shoulders. He was too tired to cry,
-too old and weak to question or find fault, but he dimly felt that
-to be left alone was hard. His memory grew suddenly untrustworthy;
-had they come or not? It was all so plain to him now. He was not with
-Rachel, he was neither in the church nor in the garden nor in the
-orchard. He was an old man, strangely weak and confused, left alone.
-
-"Ah, Rachel," he murmured, "only come again, while I go! Come to take
-me--not that it will be long to wait before I see you, dear! We have
-been so happy, you and I! But it was so cold----"
-
-And then while he shivered helplessly and half afraid, there came the
-scent of spring lilac-bushes, and by his bed stood the bright-eyed
-child.
-
-"Come! come and sit by me!" cried the old man. But the boy only smiled.
-"Take my hands--they are so cold!" he begged. Still the boy smiled. And
-as the old man looked, the child's eyes filled him with half hope, half
-fear. "Are you--are you----" he tried to speak, but no sound came from
-his lips.
-
-"If I come and touch you," said the boy, "it will be the end. Shall I
-come?" The old man's face lighted softly.
-
-"Yes," he said in his heart, for he could not speak aloud, "yes, come
-now!" The boy laughed and stepped to the couch and lay down beside him,
-putting his cheek close to the white hair.
-
-Into the heart of the old man rushed a quick, new life. "Ah, Rachel,
-Rachel," he said strong and clear, "sit on the step and eat your cake
-with me? Here is the flag-root I promised you--it's quite clean. I took
-off all the mud! And here is the red marble"--but the child kissed him
-and he went to sleep, holding to his heart his happy youth.
-
-And when they found him in the evening, they were not too grieved, for
-on his face was a great content.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Whom The Gods Destroyed, by 
-Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
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