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diff --git a/7362-h/7362-h.htm b/7362-h/7362-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fa7b44 --- /dev/null +++ b/7362-h/7362-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8554 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Life at High Tide, Edited by William Howells and Henry Alden</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Life at High Tide</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Life at High Tide<br /> + Harper's Novelettes</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Editors: William Dean Howells and Henry Mills Alden</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 21, 2003 [eBook #7362]<br /> +[Most recently updated: March 19, 2023]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Sandra Bannatyne, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AT HIGH TIDE ***</div> + +<h1>LIFE AT HIGH TIDE</h1> + +<p class="center"> +Harper's Novelettes +</p> + + +<h2 class="no-break">Edited By<br/> +William Dean Howells and Henry Mills Alden</h2> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">THE IMMEDIATE JEWEL</a></td><td> MARGARET DELAND</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> "<a href="#chap02">AND ANGELS CAME</a>"</td><td> ANNE O'HAGAN</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">KEEPERS OF A CHARGE</a></td><td> GRACE ELLERY CHANNING</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">A WORKING BASIS</a></td><td> ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">THE GLASS DOOR</a></td><td> MARY TRACY EARLE</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">ELIZABETH AND DAVIE</a></td><td> MURIEL CAMPBELL DYAR</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">BARNEY DOON, BRAGGART</a></td><td> PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">THE REPARATION</a></td><td> EMERY POTTLE</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">THE YEARLY TRIBUTE</a></td><td> ROSINA HUBLEY EMMET</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">A MATTER OF RIVALRY</a></td><td> OCTAVE THANET</td> +</tr> + +</table> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + +<p> + There is a tide in the affairs of men<br/> + Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the poet—and poetry, of the old order at least, always waiting upon great +events, has found in the high-tide flotations of masterful heroes to fortune +themes most flatteringly responsive to its own high tension. +</p> + +<p> +The writer of fiction has no such afflatus, no such high pitch of life, as to +outward circumstance, in his representation of it, as the poet has; and +therefore his may seem to the academic critic the lesser art—but it is nearer +to the realities of common human existence. He deals with plain men and women, +and the un-majestic moments of their lives. +</p> + +<p> +“Life at High Tide”—the title selected for this little volume of short stories, +and having a real significance for each of them, which the reader may find out +for himself—does not reflect the poet’s meaning, and, least of all, its easy +optimism. In every one of these stories is presented a critical moment in one +individual life—sometimes, as in “The Glass Door” and in “Elizabeth and Davie,” +in two lives; but it leads not to or away from fortune—it simply discloses +character; also, in situations like those so vividly depicted in “Keepers of a +Charge” and “A Yearly Tribute,” the tense strain of modern circumstance. In all +these real instances there are luminous points of idealism—of an idealism +implicit but translucent. +</p> + +<p> +The authors here represented have won exceptional distinction as short-story +writers, and the examples given of their work not only are typical of the best +periodical fiction of a very recent period—all of them having been published +within five years—but illustrate the distinctive features, as unprecedented in +quality as they are diversified in character, which mark the extreme advance in +this field of literature. +</p> + +<p> +H. M. A. +</p> + +<hr /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a> +THE IMMEDIATE JEWEL</h2> + +<h3>BY MARGARET DELAND</h3> + +<p> + “<i>Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord,<br/> + Is</i> the immediate jewel of their souls.”<br/> + —<i>Othello</i>. +</p> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p> +When James Graham, carpenter, enlisted, it was with the assurance that if he +lost his life his grateful country would provide for his widow. He did lose it, +and Mrs. Graham received, in exchange for a husband and his small earnings, the +sum of $12 a month. But when you own your own very little house, with a +dooryard for chickens (and such stray dogs and cats as quarter themselves upon +you), and enough grass for a cow, and a friendly neighbor to remember your +potato-barrel, why, you can get along—somehow. In Lizzie Graham’s case nobody +knew just how, because she was not one of the confidential kind. But certainly +there were days in winter when the house was chilly, and months when fresh meat +was unknown, and years when a new dress was not thought of. This state of +things is not remarkable, taken in connection with an income of $144 a year, +and a New England village where people all do their own work, so that a woman +has no chance to hire out. +</p> + +<p> +All the same, Mrs. Graham was not an object of charity. Had she been that, she +would have been promptly sent to the Poor Farm. No sentimental consideration of +a grateful country would have moved Jonesville to philanthropy; it sent its +paupers to the Poor Farm with prompt common sense. +</p> + +<p> +When Jonesville’s old school-teacher, Mr. Nathaniel May, came wandering back +from the great world, quite penniless, almost blind, and with a faint mist +across his pleasant mind, Jonesville saw nothing for him but the Poor Farm.... +Nathaniel had been away from home for many years; rumors came back, +occasionally, that he was going to make his fortune by some patent, and +Jonesville said that if he did it would be a good thing for the town, for +Nathaniel wasn’t one to forget his friends. “He’ll give us a library,” said +Jonesville, grinning; “Nat was a great un for books.” However, Jonesville was +still without its library, when, one August day, the stage dropped a gentle, +forlorn figure at the door of Dyer’s Hotel. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m Nat May,” he said; “well, it’s good to get home!” +</p> + +<p> +He brought with him, as the sum of his possessions, a dilapidated leather +hand-bag full of strange wheels and little reflectors, and small, scratched +lenses; the poor clothes upon his back; and twenty-four cents in his pocket. He +walked hesitatingly, with one hand outstretched to feel his way, for he was +nearly blind; but he recognized old friends by their voices, and was full of +simple joy at meeting them. +</p> + +<p> +“I have a very wonderful invention,” he said, in his eager voice, his blind +eyes wide and luminous; “and very valuable. But I have not been financially +successful, so far. I shall be, of course. But in the city no one seemed +willing to wait for payment for my board, so the authorities advised me to come +home; and, in fact, assisted me to do so. But when I finish my invention, I +shall have ample means.” +</p> + +<p> +Jonesville, lounging on the porch of Dyer’s Hotel, grinned, and said, “That’s +all right, Nat; you’ll be a rich man one of these days!” And then it tapped its +forehead significantly, and whispered, “Too bad!” and added (with ill-concealed +pleasure at finding new misfortune to talk about) that the Selectmen had told +Mr. Dean, the superintendent, that he could call at Dyer’s Hotel—to which +Nathaniel, peacefully and pennilessly, had drifted—and take him out to the +Farm. +</p> + +<p> +“Sam Dyer says he’ll keep him till next week,” Mrs. Butterfield told Lizzie +Graham; “but, course, he can’t just let him set down at the hotel for the rest +of his natural life. And Nat May would do it, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he would,” Lizzie Graham admitted; “he was always kind of simple +that way, willin’ to take and willin’ to give. Don’t you mind how he used to be +always sharin’ anything he had? James used to say Nat never knowed his own +things belonged to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Folks like that don’t never get rich,” Mrs. Butterfield said; “but there! you +like ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +The two women were walking down a stony hillside, each with a lard-pail full of +blueberries. It was a hot August afternoon; a northwest wind, harsh and dry, +tore fiercely across the scrub-pines and twinkling birches of the sun-baked +pastures. Lizzie Graham held on to her sun-bonnet, and stopped in a scrap of +shade under a meagre oak to get breath. +</p> + +<p> +“My! I don’t like wind,” she said, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s set down a while,” Mrs. Butterfield suggested. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d just as leaves,” Lizzie said, and took off her blue sunbonnet and fanned +herself. She was a pretty woman still, though she was nearly fifty; her hair +was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown +like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below +them the valley shimmered in the heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; +popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of +movement ran through the pines on the opposite hillside. +</p> + +<p> +“The Farm ain’t got a mite of shade round it,” Lizzie said; “just sets there at +the crossroads and bakes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You was always great for trees,” Mrs. Butterfield said; “your house is too +dark for my taste. If I was you, I’d cut down that biggest ellum.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cut it down! Well, I suppose you’ll laugh, but them trees are real kind o’ +friends. There! I knowed you’d laugh; but I wouldn’t cut down a tree any more +’an I’d—I don’t know what!” +</p> + +<p> +“They do darken.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some. But only in summer; and then you want ’em to. And the Poor Farm ain’t +got a scrap of shade!—I wonder if he feels it, bein’ sent there?” +</p> + +<p> +“I ain’t seen, him, but Josh, told me he was terrible broke up over it. Told me +he just set and wrung his hands when Hiram Wells told him he’d got to go. Josh +said it was real pitiful. But what can you do? He’s ’bout blind; and he ain’t +just right, either.” +</p> + +<p> +“How ain’t he just right?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you know, Nathaniel was always one of the dreamin’ kind; a real good +man, but he wa’n’t like folks.” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“And if you remember, he was all the time inventin’ things. Well, now he’s got +set that he can invent a machine so as you can see the dead. I mean spirits. +Well, of course he’s crazy. Josh says he’s crazy as a bluefish. But what’s +troublin’ him now is that he can’t finish his machine. He says that if he goes +to the Farm, what with him bein’ blindish and not able to do for himself, that +his glasses and wheels—and dear knows what all that he’s got for +ghost-seein’—will get all smashed up. An’ I guess he’s ’bout right. They’re +terrible crowded, Mis’ Dean says. Nat allows that if he could stay at Dyer’s, +or some place, a couple of months, where he could work, quiet, he’d make so +much money that he’d pay his board ten times over. Crazy. But then, I can’t +help bein’ sorry for him. Some folks don’t mind the troubles of crazy folks, +but I don’t know why they ain’t as hard to bear as sensible folks’ troubles.” +</p> + +<p> +“Harder maybe,” Lizzie said. +</p> + +<p> +“Josh said he just set and wrung his hands together, and he says to Hiram +Wells, he says, ‘Gimme a month—and I’ll finish it. For the sake,’ he says, ‘of +the blessed dead.’ Gave you goose-flesh, Josh said.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can see that he believes in his machine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he’s just as sure as he’s alive!” +</p> + +<p> +“But why can’t he finish it at the Farm? I guess Mis’ Dean would give him a +closet to keep it in.” +</p> + +<p> +“Closet? Mercy! He’s got it all spread out on a table in his room at the hotel. +Them loafers go up and look at it, and bust right out laughin’. Josh says it’s +all little wheels and lookin’-glasses, and they got to be balanced just so. +Mis’ Dean ain’t got a spot he could have for ten minutes at a time.” +</p> + +<p> +They were silent for a few minutes, and then Lizzie Graham said: “Does he feel +bad at bein’ a pauper? The Mays was always respectable. Old Mis’ May was real +proud.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Butterfield ruminated: “Well, he don’t like it, course. But he said (you +know he’s crazy)—‘I am nothin’,’ he says, ‘and my pride is less than nothin’. +But for the sake of the poor Dead, grant me time,’ he says. Ain’t it pitiful? +Almost makes you feel like lettin’ him wait. But what’s the use?” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham nodded. “But there’s people would pay money for one of them +machines—if it worked.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what he said; he said he’d make a pile of money. But he didn’t care +about that, except then he could pay board to Dyer, if Dyer’d let him stay.” +</p> + +<p> +“An’ won’t he?” +</p> + +<p> +“No; and I don’t see as he has any call to, any more ’an you or me.” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham plucked at the dry grass at her side. “That’s so. ’Tain’t one +person’s chore more ’an another’s. But—there! If this wa’n’t Jonesville, I +believe I’d let him stay with me till he finishes up his machine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Lizzie Graham!” cried Mrs. Butterfield, “what you talkin’ about? You +couldn’t do it—you. You ain’t got to spare, in the first place. And anyway, him +an unmarried man, and you a widow woman! Besides, he’ll never finish it.” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie’s face reddened angrily. “Guess I could have a visitor as well as +anybody.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I didn’t mean you wouldn’t be a good provider,” Mrs. Butterfield said, +turning red herself. “I meant folks would talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Folks could find something better to talk about,” Lizzie said; “Jonesville is +just nothin’ but a nest o’ real mean, lyin’ gossip!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s so,” Mrs. Butterfield agreed, placidly. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham put on her sunbonnet. “Better be gettin’ along,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Butterfield rose ponderously. “And they’d say you was a spiritualist, too; +they’d say you took him to get his ghost-machine made.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s just what I would do,” the other answered, sharply. “I ain’t a mite of +a spiritualist, and I don’t believe in ghosts; but I believe in bein’ kind.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe in keepin’ a good name,” Mrs. Butterfield said, dryly. +</p> + +<p> +They went on down the windy pasture slope in silence; the mullein candles +blossomed shoulder-high, and from underfoot came the warm, aromatic scent of +sweet-fern. Once they stopped for some more blueberries, with a desultory word +about the heat; then they picked their way around juniper-bushes, and over +great knees of granite, hot and slippery, and through low, sweet thickets of +bay. At the foot of the hill the shadows were stretching across the road, and +the wind was flagging. +</p> + +<p> +“My, ain’t the shade good?” Lizzie said, when they stopped under her great elm; +“I couldn’t bear to live where there wa’n’t trees.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s always shade on one side or another of the Poor Farm, anyway,” Mrs. +Butterfield said, “’cept at noon. And then he could set indoors. It won’t be +anything so bad, Lizzie. Now don’t you get to worryin’ ’bout him;—I know you, +Lizzie Graham!” she ended, her eyes twinkling. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie took off her sunbonnet again and fanned herself; she looked at her old +neighbor anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Say, now, Mis’ Butterfield, honest: do you think folks would talk?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you took Nat in and kep’ him? Course they would! You know they would; you +know this here town. And no wonder they’d talk. You’re a nice-appearin’ woman, +Lizzie, yet. No; I ain’t one to flatter; you <i>be</i>. And ain’t he a man? and +a likely man, too, for all he’s crazy. Course they’d talk! Now, Lizzie, don’t +you get to figgerin’ on this. It’s just like you! How many cats have you got on +your hands now? I bet you’re feedin’ that lame dog yet.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Graham laughed, but would not say. +</p> + +<p> +“Nat will get along at the Farm real good, after he gets used to it,” Mrs. +Butterfield went on, coaxingly; “Dean ain’t hard. And Mis’ Dean’s many a time +told me what a good table they set.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Tain’t the victuals that would trouble Nat May.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Lizzie, now you promise me you won’t think anything more about him +visitin’ you?” Mrs. Butterfield looked at her anxiously. +</p> + +<p> +“I guess Jonesville knows me, after I’ve lived here all my life!” Lizzie said, +evasively. +</p> + +<p> +“Knows you?” Mrs. Butterfield said; “what’s that got to do with it? You know +Jonesville; that’s more to the point.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a mean place!” Lizzie said, angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not sayin’ it ain’t,” Mrs. Butterfield agreed. “Well, Lizzie, you’re good, +but you ain’t real sensible,” she ended, affectionately. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie laughed, and swung her gate shut. She stood leaning on it a minute, +looking after Mrs. Butterfield laboriously climbing the hill, until the road +between its walls of rusty hazel-bushes and its fringe of joepye-weed and +goldenrod turned to the left and the stout, kindly figure disappeared. The +great elm moved softly overhead, and Lizzie glanced up through its branches, +all hung with feathery twigs, at the deep August sky. +</p> + +<p> +“Jonesville’s never talked about <i>me</i>!” she said to herself, proudly. “I +mayn’t be wealthy, but I got a good name. Course it wouldn’t do to take Nat; +but my! ain’t it a poor planet where you can’t do a kind act?” +</p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p> +Nathaniel May sat in his darkness, brooding over his machine. Since it had been +definitely arranged that he was to go to the Poor Farm, he did not care how +soon he went; there was no need, he told Dyer, to keep him for the few days +which had been promised. +</p> + +<p> +“I had thought,” he said, patiently, “that some one would take me in and help +me finish my machine—for the certain profit that I could promise them. But +nobody seems to believe in me,” he ended. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, folks believe in you, all right, Mr. May,” Dyer told him; “but they don’t +believe in your machine. See?” +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel’s face darkened. “Blind—blind!” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“How did it come on you?” Dyer asked, sympathetically. +</p> + +<p> +“I was not speaking of myself,” Nathaniel told him, hopelessly. +</p> + +<p> +There was really no doubt that the poor, gentle mind had staggered under the +weight of hope; but it was hardly more than a deepening of old vagueness, an +intensity of absorbed thought upon unpractical things. The line between sanity +and insanity is sometimes a very faint one; no one can quite dare to say just +when it has been crossed. But this mild creature had crossed it somewhere in +the beginning of his certainty that he was going to give the world the means of +seeing the unseen. That this great gift should be flung into oblivion, all for +the want, as he believed, of a little time, broke his poor heart. When Lizzie +Graham came to see him, she found him sitting in his twilight, his elbows on +his knees, his head in his long, thin hands. On one hollow cheek there was a +glistening wet streak. He put up a forlornly trembling hand and wiped it away +when he heard her voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; yes, I do recognize it, ma’am,” he said; “I can tell voices better than I +used to be able to tell faces. You are Jim Graham’s wife? Yes; yes, Lizzie +Graham. Have you heard about me, Lizzie? I am not going to finish my machine. I +am to be sent to the Farm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I heard,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +They were in the big, bare office of the hotel. The August sunshine lay dim +upon the dingy window-panes; the walls, stained by years of smoke and grime, +were hidden by yellowing advertisements of reapers and horse liniments; in the +centre was a dirty iron stove. A poor, gaunt room, but a haven to Nathaniel +May, awaiting the end of hope. +</p> + +<p> +“I heard,” Lizzie Graham said; she leaned forward and stroked his hand. “But +maybe you can finish it at the Farm, Nathaniel?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” he said, sadly; “no; I know what it’s like at the Farm. There is no room +there for anything but bodies. No time for anything but Death.” +</p> + +<p> +“How long would it take you to put it together?” she asked; and Dyer, who was +lounging across his counter, shook his head at her, warningly. +</p> + +<p> +“There ain’t nothin’ to it, Mrs. Graham,” he said, under his breath; “he’s—” He +tapped his forehead significantly. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, man!” Nathaniel cried out, passionately, “you don’t know what you say! Are +the souls of the departed ‘nothing’? I have it in my hand—right here in my +hand, Lizzie Graham—to give the world the gift of sight. And they won’t give me +a crust of bread and a roof over my head till I can offer it to them!” +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t somebody put it together for you?” she asked, the tears in her eyes. +“I would try, Nathaniel;—you could explain it to me; I could come and see you +every day, and you could tell me.” +</p> + +<p> +His face brightened into a smile. “No, kind woman. Only I can do it. I can’t +see very clearly, but there is a glimmer of light, enough to get it together. +But it would take at least two months; at least two months. The doctor said the +light would last, perhaps, three months. Then I shall be blind. But if I could +give eyes to the blind world before I go into the dark, what matter? What +matter, I say?” he cried, brokenly. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie was silent. Dyer shook his head, and tapped his forehead again; then he +lounged out from behind his counter, and settled himself in one of the +armchairs outside the office door. +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel dropped his head upon his breast, and sunk back into his dreams. The +office was very still, except for two bluebottle flies butting against the +ceiling and buzzing up and down the window-panes. A hot wind wandered in and +flapped a mowing-machine poster on the wall; then dropped, and the room was +still again, except that leaf shadows moved across the square of sunshine on +the bare boards by the open door. When Lizzie got up to go, he did not hear her +kind good-by until she repeated it, touching his shoulder with her friendly +hand. Then he said, hastily, with a faint frown: “Good-by. Good-by.” And sank +again into his daze of disappointment. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie wiped her eyes furtively before she went out upon the hotel porch; there +Dyer, balancing comfortably on two legs of his chair, detained her with +drawling gossip until Hiram Wells came up, and, lounging against a +zinc-sheathed bar between two hitching-posts, added his opinion upon Nathaniel +May’s affairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Lizzie, seen any ghosts?” he began. +</p> + +<p> +“I seen somebody that’ll be a ghost pretty soon if you send him off to the +Farm,” Lizzie said, sharply. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Hiram said, “I don’t see what’s to be done—’less some nice, likely +woman comes along and marries him.” +</p> + +<p> +Dyer snickered. Lizzie turned very red, and started home down the elm-shaded +street. When she reached her little gray house under its big tree, she went +first into the cow-barn—a crumbling lean-to with a sagging roof—to see if a +sick dog which had found shelter there was comfortable. It seemed to Lizzie +that his bleared eyes should be washed; and she did this before she went +through her kitchen into a shed-room where she slept. There she sat down in +hurried and frowning preoccupation, resting her elbows on her knees and staring +blankly at the braided mat on the floor. As she sat there her face reddened; +and once she laughed, nervously. “An’ me ’most fifty!” she said to herself.... +</p> + +<p> +The next morning she went to see Nathaniel again. +</p> + +<p> +He was up-stairs in a little hot room under the sloping eaves. He was bending +over, straining his poor eyes close to some small wheels and bands and +reflectors arranged on a shaky table. He welcomed her eagerly, and with all the +excitement of conviction plunged at once into an explanation of his principle. +Then suddenly conviction broke into despair: “I am not to be allowed to finish +it!” He gave a quick sob, like a child. He had forgotten Lizzie’s presence. +</p> + +<p> +“Nathaniel,” she said, and paused; then began again: “Nathaniel—” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is here? Oh yes: Lizzie Graham. Kind woman; kind woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nathaniel, you know I ain’t got means; I’m real poor,—” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you?” he said, with instant concern. “I am sorry. If I could help you—if I +had anything of my own—or if they will let me finish my machine; then I shall +have all the money I want, and I will help you; I will give you all you need. I +will give to all who ask!” he said, joyfully; then again, abruptly: “But no; +but no; I am not allowed to finish it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nathaniel, what I was going to say was—I am real poor. I got James’s pension, +and our house out on the upper road;—do you mind it—a mite of a house, with a +big elm right by the gate? And woods on the other side of the road? Real shady +and pleasant. And I got eight hens and a cow;—well, she’ll come in in +September, and I’ll have real good milk all winter. Maybe this time I could +raise the calf, if it’s a heifer. Generally I sell it; but if you—well, it +might pay to raise it, if—we—” Lizzie stammered with embarrassment. +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel had forgotten her again; his head had fallen forward on his breast, +and he sighed heavily. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, I <i>am</i> poor,” Lizzie said; “you wouldn’t have comforts.” +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel was silent. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie laughed, nervously. “Well? Seems queer; but—will you?” +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel, waking from his troubled dream, said, patiently: “What did you say? +I ask your pardon; I was not listening.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why,” Lizzie said, her face very red, “I was just saying—if—if you didn’t mind +getting married, Nathaniel, you could come and live with me?” +</p> + +<p> +“Married?” he said, vacantly. “To whom?” +</p> + +<p> +“Me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel turned toward her in astonishment. “Married!” he repeated. +</p> + +<p> +“If you lived with me, you could finish the machine; there’s an attic over my +house; I guess it’s big enough. Only, we’d <i>have</i> to be married, I’m +afraid. Jonesville is a mean place, Nathaniel. We’d have to be married. But you +could finish the machine.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood up, trembling, the tears suddenly running down his face. <i>“Finish +it?”</i> he said, in a whisper. “Oh, you are not deceiving me? You would not +deceive me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see why you couldn’t finish it,” she told him, kindly. “But, +Nathaniel, mind, I am poor. You wouldn’t get as good victuals even as you would +at the Farm. And you’d have to marry me, or folks would talk about me. But you +could finish your machine.” +</p> + +<p> +Nathaniel lifted his dim eyes to heaven. +</p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mrs. Butterfield, “I suppose you know your own business. But my +goodness sakes alive!” +</p> + +<p> +“I just thought I’d tell you,” Lizzie said. +</p> + +<p> +“But, Lizzie Graham! you ain’t got the means.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can feed him.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s his clothes; why, my land—” +</p> + +<p> +“I told Hiram Wells that if the town would see to his clothes, I’d do the rest. +They’d have to clothe him if he went to the Farm.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Mrs. Butterfield, “I never in all my born days—Lizzie, now +<i>don’t</i>. My goodness,—I—I ain’t got no words! Why, his victuals—” +</p> + +<p> +“He ain’t hearty. Sam Dyer told me he wa’n’t hearty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, Sam Dyer had better feed him, ’stid o’ puttin’ it onto you!” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie was silent. Then she said, with a short sigh, “Course if I could ’a’ +just taken him in an’ kep’ him—but you said folks would talk—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I guess so. Course they’d talk—you know this place. You’ve always been +well thought of in Jonesville, but that would ’a’ been the end of you, far as +bein’ respectable goes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you can’t say this ain’t respectable.” +</p> + +<p> +“No; I can’t say it ain’t respectable; but I can say it’s the foolishest thing +I ever heard of. An’ wrong too; ’cause anything foolish is wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“Anything cruel is wrong,” Lizzie said, stubbornly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you was crazy to think of havin’ him visit you. But it don’t follow, +’cause he can’t be visitin’ you, that you got to go <i>marry</i> him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I got to do something,” Lizzie said, desperately; “I’d never have a minute’s +peace if he had to go to the Farm.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’d be more comfortable there.” +</p> + +<p> +“His stomach might be,” Lizzie admitted. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then!” Mrs. Butterfield declared, triumphantly. “Now you just let him +go, Lizzie. You just be sensible.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m goin’ to marry him. I’m goin’ to take him round to Rev. Niles day after +to-morrow; he said he’d marry us.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Butterfield gasped. “Well, if Rev. Niles does that!—There! You know he was +a ’Piscopal; they’ll do anything. What did he say when you told him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, nothin’ much; I asked him about him visitin’ me, an’ he said it wa’n’t +just customary. Said it was better to get married. Said we must avoid the +appearance of evil.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t right; but—” Then, in despair, she turned to +ridicule: “Folks’ll say you’re marryin’ him ’cause you expect he’ll make money +on his ghost-machine!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you tell ’em I don’t believe in ghosts. That’ll settle <i>that</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“If folks knew you didn’t believe in any hereafter, they’d say you was a wicked +woman!” cried Mrs. Butterfield, angrily;—“an’ that fool machine—” +</p> + +<p> +“I never said I didn’t believe in a hereafter. Course his machine ain’t sense. +That’s what makes it so pitiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll never finish it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Course he won’t. That’s why I’m takin’ him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my <i>sakes!</i>” said Mrs. Butterfield, helplessly. And then, angrily +again, “Course if you set out to go your own way, I suppose you don’t expect no +help from them as thinks you are all wrong?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not,” Lizzie said, steadily; and then a spark glinted in her leaf-brown +eye: “Folks that have means, and yet would let that poor unfortunate be taken +to the Farm—I wouldn’t expect no help from ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Mis’ Graham, you can’t say I ain’t warned you.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, Mis’ Butterfield, I can’t,” Lizzie responded; and the two old friends +parted stiffly. +</p> + +<p> +The word that Lizzie Graham—“poor as Job’s turkey!”—was going to marry +Nathaniel May spread like grass fire through Jonesville. Mrs. Butterfield +preserved a cold silence, for her distress was great. To hear people snicker +and say that Lizzie Graham must be “dyin’ anxious to get married”; that she +must be “lottin’ considerable on a good ghost-market”; that she “took a new way +o’ gettin’ a hired man without payin’ no wages,”—these things stung her sore +heart into actual anger at the friend she loved. But she did not show it. +</p> + +<p> +“Mis’ Graham probably knows her own business,” she said, stiffly, to any one +who spoke to her of the matter. Even to her own husband she was non-committal. +Josh sat out by the kitchen door, tilting back against the gray-shingled side +of the house, his hands in his pockets, his feet tucked under him on the rung +of his chair. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he had unbuttoned his baggy old +waistcoat, for it was a hot night. Mrs. Butterfield was on the kitchen +door-step. They could look across a patch of grass at the great barn, connected +with the little house by a shed. Its doors were still open, and Josh could see +the hay, put in that afternoon. The rick in the yard stood like a skeleton +against the fading yellow of the sky; some fowls were roosting comfortably on +the tongue. It was very peaceful; but Mrs. Butterfield’s face was puckered with +anxiety. “Yet I don’t know as I can do anything about it,” she said, her foot +tapping the stone step nervously; “she ain’t got no call to be so foolish.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” Josh said, removing his pipe from his lips and spitting thoughtfully, +“seems Mis’ Graham’s bound to get some kind of a husband!” Then he chuckled, +and thrust his pipe back under his long, shaven upper lip. +</p> + +<p> +“Now look a-here, Josh Butterfield; you don’t want to be talkin’ that way,” his +wife said, bitterly. “Bad enough to have folks that don’t know no better pokin’ +fun at her; but I ain’t a-goin’ to have you do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I was only just sayin’—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, don’t you say it; that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +Josh poked a gnarled thumb down into the bowl of his pipe, reflectively. “You +ain’t got a match about you, have you, Emmy?” he said, coaxingly. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Butterfield rose and went into the kitchen to get the match; when she +handed it to him, she said, sighing, “I’m just ’most sick over it.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do seem consid’able shuck up,” Josh said, kindly. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,—I know Lizzie’s just doin’ it out of pure goodness; but she’ll ’most +starve.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see myself how she’s calculatin’ to run things,” Josh ruminated; +“course Jim’s pension wa’n’t much, but it was somethin’. And without it—” +</p> + +<p> +“Without it?—land! Is the government goin’ to stop pensions? There! I never did +like the President!” +</p> + +<p> +“No; the government ain’t goin’ to stop it. Lizzie Graham’s goin’ to stop it.” +</p> + +<p> +“What on airth you talkin’ about?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Emmy woman, don’t ye know the United States government ain’t no such fool +as to go on payin’ a woman for havin’ a dead husband when she catches holt of a +livin’ one? Don’t you know that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Josh Butterfield!—you don’t mean—” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, that’s true. Didn’t you know that? Well, well! Why, a smart widow woman +could get consid’able of a income by sendin’ husbands to wars, if it wa’n’t for +that. Well, well; to think you didn’t know that! Wonder if Lizzie does?” +</p> + +<p> +“She don’t!” Mrs. Butterfield said, excitedly; “course she don’t. She’s +calculatin’ on havin’ that pension same as ever. Why, she <i>can’t</i> marry +Nat. Goodness! I guess I’ll just step down and tell her. Lucky you told me +to-night; to-morrow it would ’a’ been too late!” +</p> + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham was sitting in the dark on her door-step; a cat had curled up +comfortably in her lap; her elm was faintly murmurous with a constant soft +rustling and whispering of the lace of leaves around its great boughs. Now and +then a tree-toad spoke, or from the pasture pond behind the house came the +metallic twang of a bullfrog. But nothing else broke the deep stillness of the +summer night. Lizzie’s elbow was on her knee, her chin in her hand; she was +listening to the peace, and thinking—not anxiously, but seriously. After all, +it was a great undertaking: Nathaniel wasn’t “hearty,” perhaps,—but when you +don’t average four eggs a day (for in November and December the hens do act +like they are possessed!); when sometimes your cow will be dry; when your +neighbor is mad and won’t remember the potato-barrel—the outlook for one is not +simple; for two it is sobering. +</p> + +<p> +“But I can do it,” Lizzie said to herself, and set her lips hard together. +</p> + +<p> +The gate clicked shut, and Mrs. Butterfield came in, running almost. “Look +here, Lizzie Graham,—oh my! wait till I get my breath;—<i>Lizzie, you can’t do +it.</i> Because—” And then, panting, she explained. “So, you see, you just +can’t,” she repeated. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie said something under her breath, and stared with blank bewilderment at +her informant. +</p> + +<p> +“Maybe Josh don’t know?” +</p> + +<p> +“Maybe he does know,” retorted Mrs. Butterfield. “Goodness! makes me tremble to +think if he hadn’t told me to-night! Supposin’ he hadn’t let on about it till +this time to-morrow?” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie put her hands over her face with an exclamation of dismay. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, there!” Mrs. Butterfield said, comfortably; “I don’t believe Nat’ll +mind after he’s been at the Farm a bit. Honest, I don’t, Lizzie. How comes it +you didn’t know yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m sure I don’t know; it ain’t on my certificate, anyhow. Maybe it’s on the +voucher; but I ain’t read that since I first went to sign it. I just go every +three months and draw my money, and think no more about it. Maybe—if they knew +at Washington—” +</p> + +<p> +“Sho! they couldn’t make a difference for one; and it’s just what Josh +says—they ain’t goin’ to pay you for havin’ a dead husband if you got a live +one. Well, it wouldn’t be sense, Lizzie.” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie shook her head. “Wait till I look at my paper—” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Butterfield followed her into the house, and waited while she lighted a +lamp and lifted a blue china vase off the shelf above the stove. “I keep it in +here,” Lizzie said, shaking the paper out. Then, unfolding it on the kitchen +table, the two women, the lamplight shining upon their excited faces, read the +certificate together, aloud, with agitated voices: +</p> + +<p> +“BUREAU OF PENSIONS +</p> + +<p> +“It is hereby certified that in conformity with the laws of the United States—” +and on through to the end. +</p> + +<p> +“It don’t say a word about not marryin’ again,” Lizzie declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, all the same, it’s the law. Josh knows.” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie blew out the lamp, and they went back to the door-step. Mrs. +Butterfield’s hard feelings were all gone; her heart warmed to Nathaniel; +warmed even to the mangy dog that limped out from the barn and curled up on +Lizzie’s skirt. But when she went away, “comfortable in her mind,” as she told +her husband, Lizzie Graham still sat in the dark under her elm, trying to get +her wits together. +</p> + +<p> +“I know Josh is right,” she told herself; “he’s a careful talker. I can’t do +it!” But she winced, and drew in her breath; poor Nathaniel! +</p> + +<p> +She had seen him that afternoon, and had told him, this time with no +embarrassment (for he was as simple as a child about it), that she had arranged +with Mr. Niles to marry them. “An’ you fetch your bag along, Nathaniel, and +we’ll put the machine together, evenin’s,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, kind woman,” he answered, joyously. “Oh, what a weight you have taken +from my soul!” +</p> + +<p> +His half-blind eyes were luminous with belief. Lizzie had smiled, and shaken +her head slightly, looking at the battered rubbish in the bag—the little, +tarnished mirrors, one of them cracked; the two small lenses, scratched and +dim; the handful of rusty cogs and wheels. With what passion he had dreamed +that he would see that which it hath not entered into the heart of man to +conceive! He began to talk, eagerly, of his invention; but reasonably, it +seemed to Lizzie. Indeed, except for the idea itself, there was nothing that +betrayed the unbalanced mind. His gratitude, too, was sane enough; he had been +planning how he could be useful to her, how he was to do this or that sort of +work for her—at least until his eyes gave out, he said, cheerfully. “But by +that time, kind woman, my invention will be perfected, and you shall have no +need to consider ways and means.” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie, smiling, had left him to his joy, and gone back to sit under her elm in +the twilight, and think soberly of the economies which a husband—such a +husband—would necessitate. +</p> + +<p> +And then Mrs. Butterfield had come panting up to the gate; and now— +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see as I can tell him!” she thought, desperately. To go and say to +Nathaniel, all eager and happy and full of hope as he was, “You must go to the +Farm,”—would be like striking in the face some child that is holding out its +arms to you. Lizzie twisted her hands together. “I just can’t!” But, of course, +she would have to. That was all there was to it. If she married him, why, there +would be two to go to the Farm instead of one. Oh, why wouldn’t they give her +her pension if she married again! Her eyes smarted with tears; Nathaniel’s pain +seemed to her unendurable. +</p> + +<p> +But all the same, the next morning, heavily, she set out to tell him. +</p> + +<p> +At Dyer’s, Jonesville had gathered to see the sight; and as she came up to the +porch, there were nudgings and whisperings, and Hiram Wells, bolder than the +rest, said, “Well, Mis’ Graham, this is a fine day for a weddin’—” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham, without turning her head, said, coldly, “There ain’t goin’ to be +no weddin’.” Then she went on upstairs to Nathaniel’s room. +</p> + +<p> +The idlers on the porch looked at each other and guffawed. “I knowed Sam was +foolin’ us,” somebody said. +</p> + +<p> +But Sam defended himself. “I tell you I wa’n’t foolin’. You ask Rev. Niles; she +told me only yesterday he said he’d tie the knot. I ain’t foolin’. She’s +changed her mind, that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lookin’ for a handsomer man,” Hiram suggested;—“chance for yourself, Sam!” +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie, hot-cheeked, heard the laughter, and went on up-stairs. Nathaniel was +sitting on the edge of his bed, his hat on, his poor coat buttoned to his chin; +he was holding his precious bag, gripped in two nervous hands, on his knee. +When he heard her step, he drew a deep breath. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, kind woman!” he said; “I’d begun to fear you were not coming.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am—a little late,” Lizzie said. “I—I was detained.” +</p> + +<p> +“It does not matter,” he said, cheerfully; “I have had much food for thought +while awaiting you. I have been thinking that this wonderful invention will be +really your gift to humanity, not mine. Had I gone to the Farm, it would never +have been. Now—!” His voice broke for joy. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, I don’t know ’bout that,” Lizzie said, nervously; “I guess you could +’a’ done it anywheres.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no; it would have been impossible. And think, Lizzie Graham, what it will +mean to the sorrowful world! See,” he explained, solemnly; “we poor creatures +have not been able to conceive that of which we have had no experience; the +unborn child cannot know the meaning of life. If the babe in the womb +questioned, What is birth? what is living? could even its own mother tell it? +Nay! So we, questioning: ‘God, what is death? what is immortality?’ Not even +God can tell us. The unborn soul, carried in the womb of Time, has waited death +to know the things of Eternity, just as the unborn babe waits birth to know the +things of life. But now, <i>now</i>, is coming to the world the gift of sight!” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause; Lizzie Graham swallowed once, and set her lips; then she +said, “I am afraid, Nathaniel, that I—I can’t marry you—because—” +</p> + +<p> +“Marry me?” he said, with a confused look. +</p> + +<p> +“We were to get married to-day, you know, Nathaniel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; but—but I can’t, Nathaniel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind,” he said. “Shall we go now, kind woman?” He rose, smiling, and +stretched out one groping hand. Involuntarily she took it; then stood still, +and tried to speak. He turned patiently towards her. “Must we wait longer?” he +asked, gently. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Nathaniel, I—I don’t know what to say, but—” +</p> + +<p> +A startled look came into his face. “Is anything the matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Oh!</i>” Lizzie said. “It just breaks my heart!” +</p> + +<p> +His face turned suddenly gray; he sat down, trembling; the contents of his bag +rattled, and something snapped—perhaps another mirror broke. He put one hand up +to his head. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s that pension,” Lizzie said, brokenly; “if I get married, I lose it. An’ +we wouldn’t have a cent to live on. You—you see how it is, Nathaniel?” +</p> + +<p> +He began to whisper to himself, not listening to her. There was a long pause, +broken by his strange whispering. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham looked at him, and turned her eyes away, wincing with pain;—the +tears were rolling slowly down his cheeks. She put her hand on his shoulder in +a passion of pity; then, suddenly, fiercely, she gathered the poor bowed head +against her soft breast. “I don’t care! My name ain’t worth as much as that! +Let ’em talk. Nathaniel, are you willin’ <i>not</i> to get married?” +</p> + +<p> +But she had to speak twice before he heard her. Then he said, looking up at her +out of his despair: “What? What did you say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nathaniel,” she explained, kneeling beside him and holding his hand against +her bosom, “if you were to come and live with me, and we were not married—” +</p> + +<p> +But he was not listening. A door opened down-stairs, and there was a noisy +burst of laughter; then it closed, and the hot room was still. +</p> + +<p> +“Emily Butterfield will stand my friend,” she said, her lips tightening. Then, +gently: “We won’t get married; Nathaniel. You will just come and visit me +until—until the machine is finished.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will let me come?” he said, with a gasp; “you will let me finish my +invention?” He got up, trembling, clutching his bag, and holding out one hand +to clasp hers. +</p> + +<p> +Lizzie Graham took it, and stood stock-still for one hard moment.... +</p> + +<p> +Then she led him down-stairs, out upon the porch, past the loafers gaping and +nudging each other. +</p> + +<p> +“Goin’ to be married, after all, Mis’ Graham?” some one said. +</p> + +<p> +And Lizzie Graham turned and faced them. “No,” she said, calmly. +</p> + +<p> +Then they went out into the sunshine together. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a> +“AND ANGELS CAME—”</h2> + +<h3>BY ANNE O’HAGAN</h3> + +<p> +The full effulgence of cloudless midsummer enveloped the place. The lawns, +bright and soft, sloped for half a mile to the sweetbrier hedge. Among them +wound the drive, now and again crossing the stone bridges of the small, curving +lake which gave the estate its affected name—Lakeholm. To the left of the house +a coppice of bronze beeches shone with dark lustre; clumps of rhododendrons +enlivened the green with splashes of color. Lombardy poplars, with their +gibbetlike erectness, bordered the roads and intersected them with mathematical +shadows; here and there rose a feathery elm or a maple of wide-branched beauty. +To the right, a shallow fall of terraces led to the Italian garden, Mrs. +Dinsmore’s chief pride, now a glory of matched and patterned color and a dazzle +of spray from marble basins. Beyond all the careful, exotic beauty of the +place, the wide valley dipped away, alternate meadow and grove, until it met +the silvery shiver of willows marking the course of the river. Beyond that +again, the hills, solemn in unbroken green, rose to cloud-touched heights. +</p> + +<p> +Before the house Brockton’s new automobile waited. He himself leaned against a +stone pillar of the piazza, facing his hostess, who sat on the edge of a chair +in the tense attitude of protest against delay. She had scarcely recovered from +her waking crossness yet, and found herself more irritated than amused at the +eccentricities of her guest. She was wondering with unusual asperity why a man +with such lack-lustre blue eyes dared to wear a tie of such brilliant contrast. +He interrupted her musings. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Harned seems mighty stand-offish these days.” +</p> + +<p> +“Millicent is a little difficult,” admitted Millicent’s cousin. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you suppose it is? She seemed all smooth enough in New York last +winter, and even in the spring after—But now—” He paused again without +finishing his sentence. “And I had counted on your influence to make her more +approachable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Millicent is having a struggle with her better nature, that is all,” +laughed Mrs. Dinsmore. “It’s hard living with her during the process, but she’s +adorable once her noble impulses have been vanquished and she’s comfortably +like the rest of the world again.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what you mean,” said the downright Mr. Brockton. +</p> + +<p> +“No?” Mrs. Dinsmore was sure that the impertinence of her monosyllable would be +lost upon her elderly protege. “I’ll make it clear to you, if I can. Millicent, +you know, has nothing—” +</p> + +<p> +“With that figure and that face?” interrupted Brockton, with gallant +enthusiasm. +</p> + +<p> +“I was speaking in your terms, Mr. Brockton,” said the lady, with suave +hauteur. “Of course all of us count my cousin’s charm and accomplishments, +though we do not inventory them as possessions far above rubies. But in the +valuation of the ’change she has nothing. Oh, she may manage to extract five or +six hundred a year from some investments of my uncle, and she has the old +Harned place in New Hampshire. That might bring in as much as seven hundred +dollars if the abandoned farm-fever were still on—” +</p> + +<p> +“By ginger!” boasted Brockton, whose expletives lacked <i>ton</i>, “it’s more +than I had when I started.” +</p> + +<p> +“So I remember your saying before. But I fear that my cousin is not a financial +genius. What I meant by her struggles with her better nature is that she +sometimes tries to thwart us when we want to make things easy for her. Her +better nature had a fearful tussle with her common sense about five years ago, +when Aunt Jessie asked her to go abroad; and it nearly overcame her frivolity +and her vanity last winter when I met her at the dock and insisted upon having +her spend the winter with me, and our second cousin, Alicia Broome, offered to +be responsible for her wardrobe. But, thanks be,” she added, laughing, “the +world, the flesh, and the devil won. So cheer up, Mr. Brockton. It may happen +again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m not hopeless by any manner of means. I want her pretty badly, and I’m +used to getting what I want. I told her, out and out, when she turned me down, +back there in May, that if she were a young girl I wouldn’t urge her any more, +after what she said about her feelings. But she wasn’t, and I thought she could +look at a proposition from a plain business point of view.” +</p> + +<p> +“You told her that? You mentioned to her that she was no longer a young girl?” +Mrs. Dinsmore’s laugh rippled delightedly on the air. +</p> + +<p> +“I did. Oh, I’m used to bargaining,” he rejoined, proudly. “I always could make +the other fellow see what he’d lose by refusing my offers. And I got her to +take the matter under consideration. I heard somewhere that she was interested +in some philanthropy. Well, money comes in handy in charity.” He grinned +broadly at Mrs. Dinsmore. +</p> + +<p> +At that moment her protege was extremely distasteful to the lady. But she was a +philosopher where marriage was concerned, and she whole-heartedly hoped that +her cousin Millicent would not dally too long with her opportunity and allow +the matrimonial prize to escape. She was sincerely fond of Millicent, and +desired for her the best things in the world. She sometimes said so with +touching earnestness. +</p> + +<p> +“She told me”—Mr. Brockton stumbled slightly—“that there wasn’t any one else.” +</p> + +<p> +“There isn’t. She has her train—she’s enormously admired—but there is no one in +whom she is sentimentally interested. And Aunt Jessie says it was so all the +time they were in Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wasn’t there ever?” he demanded. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Mr. Brockton, Millicent is twenty-nine, as you reminded her, and she’s +a normal woman! Of course there have been some ones—her music-master at +fourteen, I dare say, and an actor at sixteen, and a young curate at +eighteen—oh, of course I’m jesting. But I suppose she was somewhat like other +girls. She was engaged at nineteen—and he must have been quite twenty-three! +No, I should dismiss all jealousy of her past if I were you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Engaged?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Dinsmore wondered suddenly if she had been wise, after all, to admit that +widely known fact. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh yes, a bread-and-butter engagement. My uncle was notoriously inadequate in +all practical affairs; he was a scholar and something of a recluse and the most +charming gentleman I ever saw, but a child in worldly matters,—a child! It +ended, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +“How did it end?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, poor Will Hayter died.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dead long?” +</p> + +<p> +“Five or six years.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I’m not afraid of dead men.” Brockton laughed in relief. Mrs. Dinsmore +did not point out to him from her more subtle knowledge that constancy to the +unchanging dead is sometimes easier than constancy to the variable living. She +was only too glad to have the inevitable disclosure made lightly and the truth +dismissed without frightening off the desirable suitor. “And certainly Miss +Harned don’t look as if, as if—” +</p> + +<p> +“Any irremediable grief were gnawing at her damask cheeks?—” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s this about damask cheeks?” The question came along with a swirl of +skirts from the great hall. “Cousin Anna, don’t hate me for keeping you so +long. Mr. Brockton, I owe you a thousand apologies.” +</p> + +<p> +Some of those who admitted Millicent Harned’s charm declared that it lay in her +voice. Always there sounded through its music the note of eagerness, with +eagerness’s underlying hint of pathos. Her tones were like her face, her +motions, herself. Impulse, merriment, yearning, and the shadow of melancholy +dwelt in her eyes and shaped her lips to sensitive curves. She was tall, and +her motions were of a spontaneous grace, swifter and more changeful than most +women’s. +</p> + +<p> +“You have been a disgracefully long time, Millicent,” her cousin answered her +apology. “But”—she looked at the beautifully gowned figure, the lovely, +imaginative face, thereby, like a good showman, calling Mr. Brockton’s +attention to them—“we’ll forgive you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it wasn’t primping that kept me. I stopped for a few minutes at the +schoolroom door. Poor Lena! She seemed to be feeling the responsibilities of +erudition terribly this morning. She showed me her botany slides with such an +air! Do you know what genus has the <i>rostellum</i>, Anna?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t,” said Anna, shortly. “And Lena’s growing up a perfect young prig. +I’ll have to change governesses. Heaven knows what I’ll draw next time! The +last one had charm, but no learning, and mighty little intelligence. This one +has no manner at all, and is of encyclopaedic information. A daughter’s a +terrible responsibility.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t she?” Millicent’s tone was one of affectionate raillery as she gathered +her draperies about her in the automobile. The notion of Anna’s +responsibilities amused her; Anna was so untouched by them—as smooth-skinned, +as slim and vivacious, as the forty-year-old mother of two boys entering +college, a girl in the schoolroom and another in the nursery, as she had been +as a <i>debutante</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you may make fun,” said Anna, snapping open the frothy thing she called a +sunshade, “but you don’t know how I lie awake nights, shuddering lest Lena grow +up a near-sighted girl with no color and serious views.” +</p> + +<p> +Millicent only smiled as the great machine moved off. The sunshine, the rare +and ordered beauty of the place, the fragrance of the soft winds, all lapped +her in indolence. As they neared the gate that gave upon the open road, a turn +brought them in sight of the front of the house. It was very beautiful. She +breathed deeply in the content of the sight—the delicate lines, the soft color, +the perfection of detail. In the gardens were stained, mellow columns and +balustrades which Anna had brought from the dismantled palace in the Italian +hills where she had found them. Everywhere wealth made its subtlest, most +delicate appeal to her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“My house,” thought Millicent, as they shot out of the grounds, “shall be +different, but as beautiful. The Tudor style, I think, and for my out-of-door +glory a vast rose-garden,—acres, if I please!” Then she called sternly to her +straying imagination. She was picturing what she might have as the wife of the +man before her—the man whose first proposal she had unhesitatingly refused, +whose appearance at Lakeholm she had regarded as proof of disloyalty on Anna’s +part—the man who at the best represented to her only the artistic possibilities +of riches. She dismissed her reverie with a frown and joined in the talk. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know,” she confessed, “I forget where it is that we are going?” +</p> + +<p> +“We’re coming back to the Monroes’ for luncheon,” Mrs. Dinsmore reminded her. +“But Mr. Brockton is going to skim over most of the Berkshires first. I think +you said you hadn’t been in this part of the country before, Mr. Brockton?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Brockton, “I haven’t had much chance to get acquainted with the +playgrounds of the country. I’ve been too busy earning a holiday. But I’ve +earned it all right.” He turned to emphasize his boast with a nod toward +Millicent. She blushed. His very chauffeur must redden at his braggart air, she +thought. The Tudor castle grew dim in her vision. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of the bubble, Miss Harned?” he went on. “Goes like a bird, +don’t she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed she does,” answered Millicent, characteristically making immediate +atonement in voice and look for the mental criticism of the moment before. +“It’s really going like a bird. I don’t suppose we shall ever have a sensation +more like flying.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not until our celestial pinions are adjusted,” said Anna. Brockton laughed, +but Millicent went on: +</p> + +<p> +“Seriously, the loveliest belief I ever lost was the one in the wings with +which my virtues should be at last rewarded. To breast the ether among the +whirling stars,—didn’t you ever lie awake and think of the possibility of that, +Anna?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never! I’m no poet in a state of suffocation, as I sometimes suspect you of +being.” +</p> + +<p> +“As for heaven,” declared Brockton, “I don’t take much stock in all that. We’re +here—we know that—and we’d better make the most of it. For all we know, it’s +our last chance to have a good time. Better take all that’s coming to you here +and now, Miss Harned, and not count much on those wings of yours.” +</p> + +<p> +Millicent smiled mechanically. Could any Elizabethan garden of delight +compensate for the misery of having each butterfly of fancy crushed between +Lemuel Brockton’s big hands in this fashion? +</p> + +<p> +They were entering a village. Before them was the triangular green with the +soldier’s monument upon it. About it were the post-office, the stores, the +small neat houses of the place. A white church, tall-steepled, green-shuttered, +rose behind the monument, and with it dominated the square. A wagon or two +toiled lazily along the road; before the stores a few dusty buggies were tied. +The place seemed drowsy to stagnation in the summer heat. Why, Millicent +wondered, were towns so crude and unlovely in the midst of a country so +beautiful? +</p> + +<p> +There was a sudden explosive sound, and, with a crunch and a jerk which almost +threw them from their seats, the machine came to a standstill. Brockton and his +chauffeur were out in an instant, the one peering beneath, the other examining +more closely. He emerged in a moment, and there was a jargon of explanation, +unintelligible to the two women. All that Anna and Millicent understood was +that the accident was not serious; that they would be delayed only a few +minutes, and that Brockton was very angry with some one for the mishap. The two +men worked together. Anna looked at her cousin. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m dead sleepy,” she half whispered. “The wind in my face and the sun are too +soporific for me. Let us not say a word to each other.” +</p> + +<p> +“You read last night,” Millicent accused her. “But I don’t feel particularly +conversational myself.” +</p> + +<p> +She leaned back and surveyed the scene again. She could read the words graved +on the granite block beneath the bronze soldier: +</p> + +<p> +“To the men of Warren who fought that their country might be whole and their +fellows free this tribute of love is erected.” +</p> + +<p> +And there followed the honor-roll of Warren’s fallen. +</p> + +<p> +Millicent’s sensitive lips quivered a little. Her ready imagination pictured +them coming to this very square, perhaps,—the men of Warren. Boys from the hill +farms, men from the village shops, the blacksmith who had worked in the light +of yonder old forge, the carpenter who was father to the one now leisurely +hammering a yellow L upon that weather-stained house,—she saw them all. What +had led them? What call had sounded in their ears that they should leave their +ploughshares in the furrows, their tills, their anvils, and their benches? What +better thing had stirred with the primeval instinct for fight, with the +unquenchable, restless longing for adventure, to send them forth? She read the +words again—“that their country might be whole and their fellows free.” +</p> + +<p> +She moved impatiently. For now an old shadowy theory of hers—an inheritance +from the theories of the recluse, her father—stirred from a long-drugged quiet: +a theory that there was a disintegrating unpatriotism in the untouched, charmed +life of riches she and her fellows sought. She felt the disturbing conviction +that those common men—she could almost hear their blundering speech, see their +uncouth yawns at the sights and sounds of beauty on which she fed her soul—that +those men had wells of life within them purer, sweeter, than she. She averted +her eyes from the monument. +</p> + +<p> +“Honey!” called a voice, full-throated and loving—“honey, where are you?” +</p> + +<p> +There was a play-tent on the little patch of yard before the brown cottage to +the left. The voice had come from the narrow piazza. Millicent shivered as she +looked at it, with its gingerbread decorations already succumbing to the strain +of the seasons. The answer came from the tent: +</p> + +<p> +“Here I am, muvver. Did you want me?” +</p> + +<p> +She came out—a child of five or six years. The round-eyed solemnity of babyhood +had not left her yet. She brought her small doll family with her, and a +benevolent collie ambled beside her. Her mother watched, tenderness beautifying +her brown eyes: she was a young woman, no older than Millicent, but her face +was more lined than Anna’s; a strand of dark hair was blown across her cheek; +there were fruit stains on her apron. All the marks of a busy household life +were about her, all the bounteous restfulness of a woman well beloved, and the +anxieties of a loving woman. She gave the automobile a passing glance, but it +had no interest for her. Her eyes came back to caress the young thing which +toiled up the steps to her, babbling of a morning’s events in the tent. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sweetheart, that was very nice,” she said, in answer to some breathless +demand for sympathy. “And mother has brought you the bread and jam she promised +you this morning. Will you eat it here, or in the tent?” +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t I come into the kitchen to eat it, where you are?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, yes, honey, if you want to.” +</p> + +<p> +The door closed upon the vision of intimate love. Millicent saw Lena walking +sedately with the governess of no charm and encyclopaedic information. +</p> + +<p> +“Now we’re all right,” called Brockton, loudly. “Upon my word, Mrs. Dinsmore, I +think you were asleep! Miss Harned, you can’t be as entertaining as I thought +if your cousin falls asleep with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“But think how soothing I must be; that’s even better than to be entertaining.” +</p> + +<p> +“By ginger! I never found that out—that you were soothing, I mean.” It was +evident that Mr. Brockton intended a compliment. Anna Dinsmore saw the annoyed +red whip out upon Millicent’s cheeks. She interposed a few ready, irrelevant +questions before the tide of Brockton’s flattery. +</p> + +<p> +They made their swift way through the hills, sometimes overlooking the winding +course of the river, sometimes skirting the great estates of the region, again +whizzing noisily through an old village. Anna and Brockton sustained the weight +of conversation. Millicent smiled in vague sympathy with their laughter and +Joined at random in the talk. Obstinately her mind had stayed behind her—with +the men of Warren, with the round-faced child, and the woman to whose life love +and not art gave all its beauty. +</p> + +<p> +They approached one of the larger old towns of the country—a place with a +bustling main street and elm-shaded thoroughfares branching from it. Here were +ample, well-kept lawns and houses of prosperous dignity. It seemed charming to +Millicent with its air of unhurried activity or undrowsy repose. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this, Anna?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +Anna told her. +</p> + +<p> +“Riverfield?” Millicent repeated the name, but in a strange voice. Anna stared +a little. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. Why? Do you know any one here?” +</p> + +<p> +“No.” The word trickled slowly, unwillingly, from Millicent. +</p> + +<p> +“Lovely town, and there are some good places outside,” said Anna. “The +Ostranders have one, and Jimson, the artist. But the native city, or whatever +you call it, is adorable. It has that air of rewarded virtue which makes one +ashamed of one’s life—” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish”—Millicent still spoke remotely, as if out of a sleep—“I wish, Mr. +Brockton, that we might find a little library and museum they have here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, of course!” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to compare it with the Vatican, Millicent?” asked Anna, +flippantly. Millicent turned a distant, starry gaze upon her cousin. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” she said; and then, in a flash of sympathy and fright, Anna remembered +that it had been for some little Berkshire town that Will Hayter had built a +library and museum just before his death, six years before—the town from which +his family had originally come. Her memory worked rapidly, constructing the +story. The blood dyed her face at the thought of her obtuseness. Then she set +her lips firmly. She had done her best; if a wanton fate chose to interfere now +and make Millicent slave to the phantom of her early, radiant love, she, Anna, +could do no more! +</p> + +<p> +“Here we are, I guess,” called Brockton. The machine shot into a broad street. +A promenade between a double row of elms down its centre gave it a spacious +dignity. The modest courthouse stood on one side, as green-bowered as if +Justice were a smiling goddess; a few churches broke the stretch of houses. And +on the other side the library and museum stood. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty little building, but plain,” commented Brockton, making disparaging +note of its graceful severity. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s exactly suited to the place; it epitomizes its spirit,” said Anna, +glibly. “It’s austere without being forbidding—perfect Colonial adaptation of +the Greek.” +</p> + +<p> +Millicent made no architectural observation. Instead she said: “If you don’t +mind, I should like to go in for a while. You could pick me up later, perhaps +on your way back to—Where is it we are lunching?” +</p> + +<p> +Consternation looked out of Anna’s eyes, bewilderment out of Brockton’s. But +Millicent turned to them with such gentle command in her gaze that they could +offer no protest. +</p> + +<p> +“Come back in half an hour, if you are ready,” she said. Upon Anna, whose +baffled look followed her up the flagging between the close-clipt lawns, there +came the feeling that she was leaving her cousin alone with the beloved dead. +</p> + +<p> +“Now what—” began Brockton, in full-toned protest,—“what the—” +</p> + +<p> +“That was the last thing Will Hayter did,”—Anna interrupted his question. “And +the first, so to speak. It was a fairly important commission. Jessup, the Trya +Drop liniment man, came from Riverfield—he has a mammoth place outside now. +When he began to coin money faster than the mint, he gave lots of things to his +birthplace—which has always blushed for him. It’s prouder that Whittier once +spent Sunday with one of its citizens than that Alonzo Jessup is its son. Well, +he gave the library and museum, and the commission went to Will Hayter. The +Hayters came from here two or three generations ago. It was just before his +death, and Millicent has been abroad almost ever since. So she had never seen +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Brockton gave a look of speechless chagrin at his hostess, which she answered +haughtily: +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Mr. Brockton, after all, I never undertook to be a marriage-broker!” +Then she glanced at the chauffeur and forbore. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime Millicent sat in one of the square exhibition-halls. The sweet air, +with the scent of hay from the farther country faintly impregnating it, blew +through the quiet. No one else shared the room with her. The even light soothed +her eyes, the stillness calmed the fluttering apprehension in her breast which +had presaged she knew not what fresh anguish of loss. There were pictures on +the walls—one or two not despicable originals which Trya Drop Jessup had given, +many copies, and a few specimens of Riverfield’s native talent. But she saw +none of them, any more than one sees the windows and the paintings in a great +cathedral in the first fulness of reverence. To her this was a sacred place. +That grief had lost its poignancy, that youth and health with cruel insistence +had reasserted their sway over her life, did not mean forgetfulness, unfaith. +</p> + +<p> +“Truly, truly,”—she almost breathed the words aloud,—“there has been no other +one. That was my love, young as we were. But I must fill up the days—I must +fill up the days.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Her eyes were fixed unseeingly upon a great canvas at the other end of the +hall. Some Riverfield hand had portrayed a Riverfield imagination’s conception +of the moment in the life of Christ when, the temptations of Satan withstood, +angels came to Him upon the mountain. In the lower distance the kingdoms of the +world grew dim beneath the shadow that fell from the vanquished and retreating +tempter, and from the opening heavens a dazzling cloud of angels streamed +toward the solitary Figure on the height. By and by Millicent’s eyes took note +of it. She half smiled. There was daring at least! +</p> + +<p> +Then the picture faded, and again the persistent figure of the child which had +so filled her imagination came before her. But this time it was toward herself +that the rosy face was turned and limpid eyes lifted in unquestioning +dependence. She was the mother; she stood on the piazza, and by her side he +stood, who had been so dear in himself, so infinitely dearer in the thought of +all that should be; toward them the child came; they were enveloped by +breathless love for each other and for that being, innocent, trusting, which +their love had called into life. So, dimly, she had dreamed in the radiant days +of old. Almost she could feel his hand upon her shoulder, hear his voice full +of tenderness that expressed itself only in tone, not in word, taking refuge +from too great feeling in jest. She closed her eyes against the vision that +made her faint with anguish. +</p> + +<p> +Some one entered the room with a brisk little trot; Millicent opened her eyes +and turned her head. A small woman, “old maid” from the top of her neat gray +head to the toe of her list shoes, came forward. She held a pad and pencil and +wore the badge of authority in her manner. At sight of Millicent she paused, +blinking behind her glasses. Millicent came slowly out of her trance; +recognition dawned upon her. She rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Hayter—Aunt Harriet!” she cried, advancing. +</p> + +<p> +“It is you, then!” chirped the elder lady. “My dear, who could have expected +this?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not I, for one!” She held both Miss Hayter’s hands. “I had no idea you were +here. Surely you haven’t given up your beloved Boston school?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no. Only in the summer I come here for a month and substitute for the +regular curator while she is on her vacation. It”—she struggled against a +constitutional distaste for self-revelation—“it seems like a little visit with +Will, somehow.” +</p> + +<p> +Millicent’s throat throbbed with a strangled sob. No one had spoken his name in +so long! Her people had had no interest but to banish the memory of him from +her heart; this quaint little aunt of his, who had adored him and lived for +him, was the first who had spoken of him in—she did not know how many years. +She held tight to the old hands, her eyes clung to the withering face. “Say it +again,” she whispered; “say his name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my dear,” cried the older woman, “is it still as hard as this? Come, sit +down here with me. Of course I knew that you were not one of the changing +kind,”—Millicent winced,—“but I’m sorry to think you should suffer now as +keenly as you do.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not just that,” said Millicent, shamefacedly. “Only, seeing you +unexpectedly gave me a pang. And then, being in the place he built—” +</p> + +<p> +The older woman patted her hand soothingly. “I understand,” she said. “I’ve +always understood. When—when you didn’t write after the very first, I knew it +was because you couldn’t, not because you forgot. You were really made for each +other, you two. I think I never saw two such radiant, happy creatures in the +world. Ah, well!” she wiped a sudden dew from her glasses, “waiting’s hard, my +dear, but it ends,—it ends.” +</p> + +<p> +Millicent was hurt by the unbroken faith in her, by the unquestioning belief +she could not share. She looked wistfully upon the shining, tearful eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“It is very beautiful to think that,” she said, “but, dear Aunt Harriet, you +are mistaken about me. I am going to tell you everything. I—I loved your +nephew. I shall not love any one else. It happened to come to me in perfectness +when I was young—love. But I live, I am well, I am alive to pleasure and pain. +How shall I fill up my life but with the things that still matter to me?” +</p> + +<p> +“You think of marrying, you mean?” Aunt Harriet’s voice was dry and harsh. +“Well—I am sure Will would wish your happiness, and I—it would not be for me to +object. Every day it is done, and very often rightly, I suppose; for money, for +companionship, for the chance of self-development, women marry without love. +I—I could only wish you happiness.” +</p> + +<p> +“You—do not understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear,”—her voice softened again; something in the pallor and the quivering +pain of the girl touched her,—“I do not mean to speak hardly to you. It seems +to me like this: when it comes to piecing out a life that has been broken, as +yours was—as mine was, my dear, as mine was—there are two ways of doing it. +Either you keep your ideal of perfect love, and lead your poor every-day life +of odds and ends, like mine, filling your days with the best scraps of pleasure +or usefulness you may, or you give up your ideal of perfect love and marry, and +have your home and your children and your rounded outward life. There is, +maybe, no question of higher or lower. Each one of us does what her nature bids +her. I had always thought of you as one who—But it is not for me to judge.” +</p> + +<p> +Her voice was gentle, and she did not look at Millicent. Her eyes seemed to +pierce the canvas on the opposite wall and the hangings and the stones behind +it, and to see a far image of souls in the struggle of choice. The woman beside +her sat silent, her thoughts with the idealists—the men who gave up the comfort +of their firesides, the gain of their occupations, and followed whither the +vision led; the woman whose home was built upon love and who would see only +infamy in houses founded otherwise; the poor soul beside her, stronger in +courage, more aspiring in thought, than she, with all her delicacies, her +refinements of taste. The ideal had led them all—the ideal, as it had once +shone for her and for him whose spirit had informed and beautified the spot +where she sat and made her choice. +</p> + +<p> +“Aunt Harriet,” she said, and her face was like the sudden flashing of stars +between torn clouds,—“Aunt Harriet—” She could not utter the decision in words. +“May I come to see you—and learn something from you?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Hayter looked. There was no need to question. No knight ever rose from his +accolade with a face more glorified than Millicent’s when she silently +dedicated herself to the shining company of those who keep unsullied the early +vision. +</p> + +<p> +As she passed out of the hall, her eyes fell again upon the painting of the +Temptation. She read the black and gilt legend below it—“And Angels Came and +Ministered Unto Him.” Then she laughed down upon the old-fashioned figure +trotting by her side. “And angels came,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Her rapt look frightened Anna when the automobile returned for her. Then the +heart of that frivolous woman was stricken for a moment with wistfulness. +</p> + +<p> +“You seem very happy,” she faltered, “and—amused, is it? What are you smiling +over?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am still thinking of angels. Would you ever have dreamed, Anna, that they +sometimes wore list shoes, and sometimes ate bread and jam, and occasionally +spoke with granite lips? They do.” +</p> + +<p> +Brockton stirred uneasily, foreboding failure. And Anna sighed, mourning two +lost visions. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a> +KEEPERS OF A CHARGE</h2> + +<h3>BY GRACE ELLERY CHANNING</h3> + +<p> +The Doctor’s brougham stood at the door; the Doctor’s liveried servants waited +at the foot of the stairs; the Doctor himself in his study was gathering +together his paraphernalia for the day, and the Doctor’s face was a study. +</p> + +<p> +He was tired; he was cross; he was feeling ill. His nervous hands were +unsteady; his movements were by jerks; his face was a knitted tangle of lines. +He had rheumatism in both shoulders, and a headache, and a pain in his chest. +He had slept but little, and one of his patients had had the happy idea of +despatching a messenger for him in the dead hour of the night. The Doctor never +went out nights, and she ought to have known this, but her only son was ill and +she was persuaded he could not survive a dozen hours together without the +Doctor’s personal attendance. +</p> + +<p> +It never seemed to occur to any of his patients that his own life was of the +smallest consequence in the balance with theirs or that of any member of their +families. Occasionally, when his rheumatism was exceptionally severe or his +cough racking, this reflection embittered the Doctor. At other times—and this +was generally—he accepted with philosophy this integral selfishness of clients +as a part of their inevitable constitution. They were a set of people +necessarily immersed and absorbed in their own woes, or in that extension of +their woes which was still more passionately their own, and even more +unmercifully insisted upon in proportion to the decent veneer of altruism it +possessed. +</p> + +<p> +Without being strictly a handsome man, the Doctor produced the effect of one. +Nothing gives distinction like character, and this he had and to spare. He was +not a popular physician, but a famous one; the day was long past when his +professional success depended upon anything so personal as appearance or +manner. He could afford to be—and he frequently was—as disagreeable as he felt; +desperate sufferers could not afford to resent it, and their relatives, in the +grim struggle for a precious life, swallowed without a protest the brusqueries +and rebuffs of the man who held in, the hollow of his potent hand their jewel +of existence. +</p> + +<p> +He had his passionate detractors and his personal devotees, and these last +afflicted him far more than the first. Like the priest, the physician cannot +escape taking on superhuman proportions in the eyes of those to whom he has +rendered back life, their own or a dearer, and the Doctor (having long outlived +the time when it flattered him) was often exasperated to the limits of +endurance by the blind faith which asked miracles of him as simply as cups of +tea. The strain these women—they were mostly women, of course—put upon him was +beyond belief, and he got but a mild pleasure out of the reflection that, being +in their nature foolish, they could not help it. +</p> + +<p> +It was quite in keeping, therefore, that one of them should have broken up his +night’s sleep. He knew those attacks of the boy’s by heart; there was exactly +one chance in one hundred that his presence should be necessary. He had sent a +safe remedy, telephoned a severe but soothing message, and mentally prayed now +for patience to meet the irrational, angered eyes of maternity, and to +administer a reproof equally gentle and deterrent—gentle, for of course the +woman’s nerves had to be allowed for; she had been nursing this boy for months. +The Doctor slipped into his long, fur-trimmed overcoat and reached for his tall +hat. +</p> + +<p> +“You may as well send those Symphony tickets to somebody,” he said, +impatiently, to his wife; “I sha’n’t be able to go. Ten to one I shall be late +to dinner, and I doubt if I get home to lunch at all.” +</p> + +<p> +His wife, who was patiently holding his gloves and cigar-case, looked at him +with a sweet maternal anxiety as he tumbled together the papers on the table, +but she only said, “Very well.” As he turned to take the gloves and cigar-case, +she added, quickly, with a second anxious glance: +</p> + +<p> +“Do try to get a few minutes’ rest somewhere. Any of our friends will be so +glad to give you a cup of tea—or a little music—and it always rests you so.” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor took the things from her hands; he looked abstractedly at his wife, +then stooped hurriedly and kissed her. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t worry about me; I shall be all right,” he said, as he hastened from the +room. It was characteristic of him that he forgot his clinical thermometer, and +was never known to have a prescription-pad or pencil. +</p> + +<p> +One servant opened the house door for him, and another the carriage door; the +Doctor stepped in quickly, growling out a direction and ignoring the bows of +his retainers. He kept his own for the benefit of his clients, he was wont +cynically to say. He settled himself in the seat, and before the door was +fairly closed had lighted a cigar and unfurled a medical journal. +</p> + +<p> +As the carriage whirled recklessly down the street and around corners, several +feminine patients looked longingly after, as if virtue went out from it, and +several masculine ones raised their hats, but the Doctor, his eyes glued to the +paper, saw none of them. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps his most restful moments were these spent in his brougham. It was +almost his only time for reading; he had found, moreover, that this served to +keep his mind fresh from case to case, detaching it from one train of thought +and bringing it with new concentration to the next. These brief intervals +belonged wholly to himself. His home was never safe from invasion, and little +time and less strength remained to him for domestic joys. +</p> + +<p> +Life had not brought to him all that he was conscious might have been within +its gift. Professionally, indeed, he had reached great heights, but these only +enabled a measure of the territory beyond, and if to his patients he appeared +as a species of demigod, to himself he was merely a “lucky” physician—his +peculiar luck consisting in that sixth sense which put him so easily into his +patients’ skins and pierced through obscure maladies to possible sources. How +he knew a great many things puzzled them, but puzzled him still more. Simply at +certain crises he was aware that mysteries were momentarily revealed to him. +Back of that he possessed, of course, the usual outfit of medical knowledge, +open to any one, but which had never yet made a great physician since the world +with all its aches and pains began. For <i>that</i> other things were needed: a +coloring of the artistic temperament, a dash of the gambler’s, a touch of +femininity, as well as the solid stratum of cool common sense at the bottom of +all; <i>these</i> eked out the modicum of scientific knowledge which is all +mankind has yet wrested from secretive nature. The Doctor sometimes described +himself as a “good guesser.” Surgery might be an exact science; few things in +medicine were exact, and what was never exact was the material upon which +medicine must work. The great bulk of his fraternity went through their +studious, conscientious, hard-working, and not infrequently heroic lives under +the contented conviction of having to deal with two principal facts—disease and +medicine—both accessible through study. To them the imponderable factor of the +patient represented such or such an aggregation of material—muscle, nerve, +blood, brawn, bone, and tissue—which might be counted upon to respond to such +and such a treatment in such and such a manner, with very slight variation. The +Doctor envied them their simplicity of faith. To him, on the contrary, the +patient was a factor which could not be counted on, at all—a force about which +he knew virtually nothing, acting upon a mechanism about which he knew little +more, and capable of interactions, reactions, and counteractions innumerable, +reversing and nullifying all past experience at a moment’s notice—an +<i>unforeseen</i> moment always. +</p> + +<p> +He eyed this mystery, accordingly, with respect, lying in wait for hints from +it, and frequently reversing in his turn patiently prepared plans of action, +with a prompt speed impossible to a less supple mind,—impossible at all, quite +often, to any process of conscious thought. To have these intuitions—that was +his touch of femininity; to risk largely upon them was the gambler in him; his +swift appropriation of the subject’s temperament betrayed the artist in his +own; while the hard common sense which drew the rein on all these was a +legitimate inheritance—both national and personal. So was his manner—not often +extremely courteous and quite often extremely rude. In this latter case his +adorers called it “abstracted,” while his enemies qualified it as “ill-bred.” +But his voice, ordinarily abrupt and harsh, could pass to exquisite intonations +in the sick-room, and there were moments when to anxious watchers therein, the +man seemed more than a man. +</p> + +<p> +The affinity between physician and artist is one of the most curious and +suggestive. Every one will recall the famous surgeon-etcher, and the +distinguished specialist in nerves and novels. The Doctor’s artistic passion +was for music. Unfortunately, it was not materially portable, like a +writing-pad, and there would have been something unseemly in the spectacle of a +physician fiddling in his carriage, so he nursed this love in seclusion. His +violin was his one indulgence, and when he permitted himself to dream, it was +of a life with music in it. Sometimes he wished his wife were musical; more +often he congratulated himself that she was not. He was sincerely attached to +her, owing—and, what was more significant, realizing that he owed—her much +besides the promising twins; most of all, perhaps, that she consented to be his +wife on his own terms. But she was distinctly not musical. +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor laid down his paper and took up his mail, and a disagreeable +expression came into his face. It was one of the pleasant features of his +professional career that his brother physicians occasionally vented their +jealousy of him upon one of their joint patients—stabbing him, so to speak, +through <i>their</i> lungs or heart, wherein he was most vulnerable. Just as he +expected! They had deliberately neglected his prescriptions, after calling him +a winter-journey north to deliver them, and as deliberately allowed the victim +to die according to their treatment rather than permit him to live according to +the Doctor’s. +</p> + +<p> +The look upon his face was ugly to behold; he flung open the door with +unnecessary violence before the carriage had stopped, and his foot was on the +pavement before the footman could descend. Then he braced his rheumatic +shoulders for the four steep flights of stairs; he could not justly complain of +the number, since he himself had sent the patient there to be high and dry and +quiet. On the way up he had one of his nameless seizures of intuition, and in +the dark upper hall his hand fell sharply away from the knocker and his face +set whitely. There had been just one chance in a hundred that his presence was +necessary; before the door opened he knew this had been the hundredth chance. +</p> + +<p> +The ghastly woman’s face which met him added nothing to that certitude, yet he +winced before it in every nerve. +</p> + +<p> +“You have come too late,” she articulated only. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>No</i>!” thundered the Doctor. He put her aside like a piece of furniture +and strode into the darkened room beyond. +</p> + +<p> +It was more than an hour later when he emerged. The woman stood exactly where +he had left her. It was another, tall and young, who turned from the window and +looked at him with eyes that hurt. But he did not wince this time. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s all right!” he said, cheerfully. His voice quite sang with sweetness. He +came and stood a moment by the window, breathing hard. His face was gray, but +his eyes smiled, and there was something boyish in his aspect. He looked from +one woman to the other sunnily. +</p> + +<p> +“Bless me—you ought never to let yourselves go like that! He’ll pull through +all right.” +</p> + +<p> +The younger woman continued to look at him silently, but the elder, with a long +quivering sigh, fainted. +</p> + +<p> +“Best thing she could possibly do,” said the Doctor, his fingers on her pulse. +“Get her to bed as soon as you can,—and have these prescriptions sent out. I’ll +come back later. He’ll sleep hours now.” +</p> + +<p> +He ran down-stairs, consulting his visiting-list as he ran, and jumped into the +brougham, calling an address as he pulled the door to with a slam. This time, +however, he did not take out his papers, but sat with an unlighted cigar +between his lips, gazing intently at nothing. +</p> + +<p> +In the course of the next few hours he looked over an assortment of ailing +babies, soothed as many distracted mothers, ordered to a gay watering-place one +young girl whom he was obliged to treat for chronic headache—chronic heartache +not being professionally recognizable,—administered the pathetically limited +alleviations of his art to a failing cancer-patient (she happened to be a rich +woman, going with the fortitude of the poor down the road to the great +Darkness), and so, looking in on various pneumonias and fevers, broken souls +and bruised bodies, by the way, brought up at last at the hospital to see how +yesterday’s operation was going on. It was going on in so very mixed a manner +that he telephoned he should not return to lunch—prophesying long after the +event. +</p> + +<p> +It was turning dusk when he started on his second round of visits homeward, +stopping on the outskirts to rebandage, in one of the tenements, a child’s +broken arm. He had not returned his footman’s salutation that morning, but had +carried in his subconsciousness all day this visit to the footman’s child. In +one manner or another that inconvenient locality had been compassed in his +circuit for the past three weeks. From it he passed to his daily ordeal, +another rich patient, a nervous wreck, whose primary ailment—the lack of +anything to do—had passed into the advanced stages of an inability to do +anything, with its sad Nemesis of melancholia—the registered protest of the +dying soul. It was a case which took more out of the Doctor than all his day’s +practice put together; he always came from it in a misery of doubts. +</p> + +<p> +The dusk was becoming the dark when he set his foot wearily on the carriage +step once more, and with his hand on the carriage door paused suddenly. He was +sick of sickness, mortally tired of mortality! For the first time in the whole +day he hesitated; an odd, irresolute look came into his face; he pulled out his +watch, glanced, and changing his first-given address for another, threw himself +back on the cushions with closed eyes. He did not open them again until the +carriage, rolling through many streets, came to a halt under some quiet trees, +before an apartment-house. There were yellow daffodils between white +curtains—very white and high up. As he stepped out, the Doctor glanced +involuntarily towards them, and a half-breath of relief escaped him, instantly +quenched in a nervous frown and jump as his arm was seized by a firm gloved +hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor,—this is really <i>providential</i>! You are the very person I wished +to see!” +</p> + +<p> +It was the younger of two heavily upholstered and matronly ladies who spoke, in +a voice of many underscorings. The Doctor, who had removed his hat with a +purely mechanical motion, knew himself a prey, identified his captor, and eyed +her with restrained bitterness. +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor,—it is about my Elsie;—she hasn’t a particle of color, and she +complains of feeling languid all the time—” +</p> + +<p> +“No wonder!—What do you expect?”—it was the Doctor’s harshest tone. “She is +loaded up with flesh,—she doesn’t exercise,—you stuff her. Send her out with +her hoop,—make her drink water,—stop stuffing her. What she, wants is thinning +out.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Elsie</i>!—Why, Doctor, the child eats <i>nothing</i>,—I have to tempt her +all the time;—and when she goes out she complains of feeling tired.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let her complain,—and let her get tired;—it will do her good. Don’t feed her +in betweentimes,—and when you do feed her, give her meat—something that will +make red blood,—not slops, nor sweets, nor dough. There’s nothing in the world +the matter with her.” He lifted his hat and strode on up the stairs. +</p> + +<p> +Maternity, grieved and outraged, stared after him, speechless, then turned for +sympathy in the nearest feminine eye. +</p> + +<p> +“Really, dear,—I think that was almost <i>vulgar</i>,—as well as unkind,” +murmured the other mother at her side. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Vulgar</i>! <i>Unkind</i>! Well, it is the last time he will have the +opportunity to insult me! The idea! <i>Elsie</i>!—But it’s not the first time I +have thought of changing physicians!” (This was true,—but she never did; the +solid Elsie was her only one.) “And such desperate haste;—he must have a +<i>most critical</i> case!” She cast an indignant glance at the building, as if +to make it an accessory to the fact, and turning a kindling and interrogative +glance upon her companion, encountered one of profound and scintillating +significance. For a moment they contemplated their discovery breathlessly in +each other’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever!” exclaimed number one at last. “Oh, of course I had heard +things,—but I will do myself the justice to say I <i>never</i> believed a word +of it before! <i>This</i>, of course, makes it plain enough;—this explains +<i>all</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +The two—good women, but wounded withal—coruscated subtle knowledge all down the +street. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime the Doctor climbed the stairs. He was perfectly conscious that he had +been, in fact, both unkind and rude, even though his mood did not incline him +to take measure of the extent of his delinquency. He knew equally that he +should presently have to write a note of apology—and that it would not do an +atom of good, <i>Tant pis</i>. He rang at the door of the daffodil-room, and it +was opened by the tall girl whose eyes had hurt him that morning. They did not +hurt him now, but enveloped him with a keen and soft regard that left no +question unanswered. In another moment she had put out a firm hand and drawn +him over the threshold in its clasp. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t speak,—don’t try to say a word! There!” She had taken from him his hat +and gloves and pushed forward a low chair in front of the fire, all in one +capable movement. “What is it? Tea? Coffee? A glass of wine?” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Music</i>!” answered the Doctor, raising two haggard eyes, with the +exhausted air of an animal taking shelter. +</p> + +<p> +The girl turned away her own and walked towards the piano, stopping on the way, +however, to push forward a little table set forth with a steaming tea-urn and +cups, matches and a tray, and to lift to its farther edge a bowl of +heavy-scented violets. Her every motion was full of ministry, as devoid of +fuss. +</p> + +<p> +The room was low, broad, and large, and full of books, flowers, low seats, and +leaping firelight. A grand-piano, piled with music, dominated the whole. The +girl seated herself before it and began to play, with the beautiful, powerful +touch of control. After the first bars, the Doctor’s head sank back upon the +cushions of the chair and the Doctor’s hand stole mechanically to the matches. +He smoked and she played—quiet, large music, tranquilly filling the room: Bach +fugues, German Lieder, fragments of weird northern harmonies, fragments of +Beethoven and Schubert, the Largo of Handel,—and all the time she played she +looked at the man who lay back in the chair, half turned from her, the cigar +drooping from his fingers. There was no sound in the room but the music and +light leaping of little flames in the fireplace,—no motion but theirs and the +pulsing fingers on the keys. The girl played on and on, till the fire began to +die, and with a sudden sigh the Doctor held up his hand. Then she rose at once, +and going forward, stood as simply at the side of the fireplace opposite him. +She was not beautiful, but, oh, she was beautiful with health and calm vigor. +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor let his eyes rest on her. +</p> + +<p> +“If you knew,” he said, with a little, half-apologetic laugh. +</p> + +<p> +In her turn she held up one of her long hands. +</p> + +<p> +“But I do;—you forget I was there all the morning. And you pulled him through. +As for the rest—” She stooped suddenly and began to pile together the logs; the +Doctor watched her, noting with a trained and sensitive eye the muscular ease +and grace of the supple arms and shoulders—like music. “Of course”—she spoke +lightly—“they will kill you some day, among them; but—it’s worth while, isn’t +it?—and there isn’t much else that is, is there?” Still kneeling, she turned +and looked straight up at him. “Do you know what it was like this +morning—before you came?” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor shook his head. +</p> + +<p> +She hesitated a moment, smiling a little. “‘Lord, <i>if Thou hadst been +here</i>, our brother had not died!’” she quoted. +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor got up quickly from his chair. He knocked the ash from his cigar and +laid it down on the tray. “Well,” he said, lightly, “I must be off.” He squared +his shoulders and held out his hand; its grip upon her own trembled very +slightly, but he smiled sunnily. “I’ll come back for some more music some day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do,” the girl said. She had risen and was smiling too. +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor looked about the room wistfully. “Jolly place,—I don’t get up very +often, do I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not very.” +</p> + +<p> +They smiled at each other again, then the girl, turning abruptly away, walked +to the window and came back with a double handful of yellow flowers. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you carry these to your wife? They are the first of the year.” +</p> + +<p> +She held the door open for him, and from the little landing watched him down +the stairs. At their turn he glanced up for a moment, holding his hat raised +silently. She waved him a mute acknowledgment, then going into the room again, +closed the door. +</p> + +<p> +The firelight still leaped languidly on the hearth, and on the half-smoked +cigar and pile of ashes in the tray. The girl stood a moment looking at these +things and the chair, then walked quietly to the piano and sat down before it. +But she did not play again. +</p> + +<p> +Meantime the Doctor, an erect and urgent presence in the dusk, had driven +through dim streets and climbed again the four flights of the morning, to find +the hush of heaven fallen on the house. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew <i>you</i> could save him!” said the pale mother only, lifting blind +eyes of worship from the couch. +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor laughed, poured her out with his own hands a sleeping-draught, and +sat patiently beside her till she slept, then stole away, leaving injunctions +with the nurse, established in his absence, to telephone if there came a +crisis—“even,” after a moment’s hesitation, “in the night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Home!”—he gave the order briefly. There were black circles beneath his eyes, +making him look thinner than when he left the house that morning; he had no +distinct reminiscence of lunch, and he was very tired; but his shoulders no +longer ached, his headache was gone, and his hands were perfectly steady. +</p> + +<p> +Odd bits of music hummed perversely through his head, mixing themselves up with +all things and rippling the air about him into their own large waves, bearing +now and then upon them, like the insistent iteration of an oratorio chorus, +fantastic fragments—“If Thou hadst been here!—If Thou hadst been here!” His +fingers ached towards the responsive strings, and pulling out his watch, he +made a hasty calculation. There should be good fifteen minutes, he +decided—toilet allowed for—and he hurried the coachman again and leaned +forward, looking with bright, eager eyes into the night, and humming to +himself. +</p> + +<p> +One liveried servant opened the house door, another the carriage door, and a +third relieved him of his hat and coat. Out of the warmth and brightness his +wife advanced to meet him, a child in either hand, their long curls brushed and +tied with bright ribbons. Her face was filled with tender solicitude. +</p> + +<p> +“You must be worn out;—what a long day you have made! Would you like the dinner +sent in at once, or would you rather wait? Children, don’t hang so on papa; he +must be dreadfully tired. Oh, and there’s a man been waiting over an hour; he +simply <i>wouldn’t go</i>; but you’ll let him come back to-morrow?—you won’t +try to see any one else tonight?” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor hesitated a moment, letting all the warmth and brightness sink into +him, while his hands played with the soft hair of his little son and daughter. +He smiled at his wife, a bright, tired smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Robin,” he said, “run down to the carriage; there are some posies there for +mamma—from Miss Graham, Louise,—you see I did get a moment’s rest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said his wife. She continued to gaze compassionately at the tired man. +After a moment she repeated gently, “And the dinner, dear—?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,—don’t wait for me; I’ll not be long. Have it brought in at once, and—send +the man into the office, please.” +</p> + +<p> +He stooped and kissed the children, and turning away, went into his office and +closed the door behind him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a> +A WORKING BASIS</h2> + +<h3>BY ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH</h3> + +<p> +Why she married him her friends wondered at the time. Those she made later +wondered more. Before long she caught herself wondering. Yes, she had seen it +beforehand, more or less. But she had seen other things as well: he had +developed unevenly, unexpectedly, if logically. There had been common +tastes—which grew obsolete or secondary. As the momentum of what she believed +and hoped of him ran down with them both, he crystallized into the man he was, +and no doubt virtually had always been. +</p> + +<p> +It was bad enough to have to ask for money, but to have it counted out to you, +to be questioned about it like a child, was worse. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand,” she said in the first months of their marriage. “Are you +afraid I won’t be judicious, responsible? Mightn’t you try before judging?” +</p> + +<p> +“Judicious? Responsible?” He pinched her cheek. (Judith was five feet nine and +sweetly sober of mien.) “There are no feminines or diminutives of those words, +my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +She stepped back. “But with more freedom I could manage better, Sam.” +</p> + +<p> +“Manage?”—jocularly. “That <i>is</i> your long suit, isn’t it? You feel equal +to managing all of us? Could even give me pointers on the business, eh?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” she asked, quietly. +</p> + +<p> +Sam, feet apart, hands in pockets, looked her over with the smile one has for a +dignified kitten. “I won’t trouble you, my dear. I manage this family.” With +his pleasantries a lower note struck—and jangled. +</p> + +<p> +“But that isn’t the point. I want—” +</p> + +<p> +“Really? You always do. Don’t bother to tell me what. If you got this you’d be +wanting something else, so what’s the use of the expense merely to change the +object?” He chuckled at her baffled silence. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t answer when you’re like that. But—but, Sam! It isn’t fair!” Still she +supposed that relevant. +</p> + +<p> +However, money was not the chief thing. He could manage. Let it go. +</p> + +<p> +Having properly impressed her, nothing made Sam feel larger than to bring her a +set of pearl-handled knives,—when she had wanted a dollar for kitchen tins. His +extravagances were not always generosities. Once, after she had turned her +winter-before-last suit and patched new seats into the boy’s flannel drawers, +because “times were hard,” he bought a brace of blooded hunting-dogs. +</p> + +<p> +Next day she opened an account at a department store. +</p> + +<p> +With the promptness of the first of the month and the sureness of death, the +bill came. Sam had expressed himself unchecked before she turned in the +doorway. “If you will go over it,” she said, with all her rehearsal unable, +after all, to imitate his nonchalance, “you will find nothing unnecessary. I +think there is nothing there for the dogs.” +</p> + +<p> +But her cannon-ball affected him no more than a leaf an elephant; he did not +know he was hit. It was always so. +</p> + +<p> +In his cool way, however, Sam had all the cumulative jealousy of the primitive +male for his long primacy. Some weeks later, when Judith ordered an overcoat +for Sam junior sent home on approval, she found the store had been instructed +to give her no credit. +</p> + +<p> +She got out, with burning face and heart, without the article. Her first +impulse was to shrink from a blow. +</p> + +<p> +But at table that night she recounted her experience: “The very courteous +gentleman who informed me of your predicament happened to be a cousin of Mr. +Banks, of Head and Banks. (They supply your grain, I believe?) Mrs. Howe (isn’t +it R. E. Howe who is president of the Newcomb Club?) was at my elbow. The +salesgirl has Sam junior’s Sunday-school class. Doubtless it will interest them +all to know you are in such straits you can’t clothe your children.” +</p> + +<p> +Ah? She had touched his vulnerable point? Instantly she was swept by +compunction, by impulses to make amends, to him, to their love. Their love! +That delicate wild thing she kept in a warm, moist, sheltered place, and +forbore to look at for yellowing leaves. +</p> + +<p> +Like the battle of Blenheim, it was a famous victory, but what good came of it +at last? The overcoat came home, to be sure, with cap and shoes besides. But +she was too gallant to press her advantage. Besides, she still looked for him +to take a hint. +</p> + +<p> +He did, after his own fashion. “You ought to see Judith here,” he laughed to a +caller, “practising her kindergarten methods on me.” His imperturbability was +at once a boast and a slight. +</p> + +<p> +“He doesn’t mean it,” she apologized, later, protecting herself by defending +him. “You know how men are; the best of them a bit stupid about some things. +They don’t mean to hurt you. You know it, but you can’t help crying.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I understand!” (That any one should sympathize with her! It was not so +much her vanity that suffered as her precious regard for him, her pride in +their marriage.) “Nobody minds little things like that against such devotion +and constancy. Why, he talks of you all the time, Judith; of your style, your +housekeeping. You are his pet boast. He says you can do more with less than +anybody he ever saw.” And then Judith laughed. +</p> + +<p> +They were all articles of the creed she herself repeated—and doubted more and +more. Faithful enough. He never came or went without the customary kiss. When +he had typhoid fever, no one might be near him but her, until her exhaustion +could no longer be concealed, when he fretted about her—until he fretted +himself back into high temperature and had a relapse. +</p> + +<p> +So, run down as she was, she hid it, kept up, went on alone, adding to the +score of her inevitable day of reckoning, after the old heroic-criminal +woman-way. +</p> + +<p> +She had begun with ideas of their saving together for a purpose; but, not +allowed to plan, she must use every opportunity to provide against future +stricture; besides, Sam’s arbitrary and unregulated spending made her poor +little economies both futile and unfair. +</p> + +<p> +“I know nothing about your business. How can I tell if I spend too much?” +</p> + +<p> +“Make your mind easy; I’ll keep you posted,” he laughed. <i>He</i> was not +bothering about dangerous ground. +</p> + +<p> +“Doubtless,”—dryly. “But if I spend too little?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not you.” +</p> + +<p> +He did mean it! He didn’t care! The half-truth fanned the slow fire growing +within her into sudden flame. Judith turned, stammering over the dammed rush of +replies. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, my dear!” he deprecated, amused. “How easily you lose your temper +lately, every time there is a discussion of expenses! Why excite yourself?” +Why, indeed? Anger put her at a disadvantage, and making her half wrong, half +made him right. “I don’t say I particularly blame you, but you see for yourself +you don’t keep your balance, and it’s mistaken kindness to tempt any woman’s +natural feminine weakness for luxury and display.” +</p> + +<p> +The retorts were so obvious they were hopeless. She stood looking at him. +</p> + +<p> +His eyebrows lifted; he shrugged his shoulders, went out, and forgot. +</p> + +<p> +Why any of it, indeed? There was no bridge of speech between alien minds. Their +life was a continual game of cross-questions and silly answers. Their natures +were antipodal; he had the faults that annoyed her most; his virtues were those +least compensating. +</p> + +<p> +Was her dream of influencing the children a superstition too, then? +</p> + +<p> +The children! They slipped the house whenever possible; avoided their father +with an almost physical effect of dodging an expected blow; when with him, +watched his mood to forestall with hasty attention or divert with strained wit, +with timorous hilarity when he proved complaisant. The possibilities for harm +to them were numberless. She and Sam were losing the children, and the children +were losing everything. +</p> + +<p> +For years they had been a physical and mental outlet for her nature. That love +had no question of reciprocity or merit. She had always been willing for them. +Only it seemed to her all the rest of love should come first. It occurred to +her ironically how happy her marriage would have been without her husband. +</p> + +<p> +What was his love worth? It was only taxation—taxation without representation. +Had either of them any real love left? +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she stood on the brink of black emptiness. To live without love; her +whole nature, every life-habit, changed! <i>Oh, no, no, no</i>! So the cold +water sets the suicide struggling for shore. +</p> + +<p> +Dear, dear! This would not do. Her nerves were getting the best of her; she was +losing her own dignity and sweetness—was on the verge of a breakdown. +</p> + +<p> +But to say so would be to invoke doctors, pointless questions, futile drugs, +and a period of acute affection from Sam—affection that took the form chiefly +of expecting it of her. +</p> + +<p> +At times Judith thought of death as an escape, but she thought of no other as +being any more in her own hands; like so many people, she quoted the Episcopal +marriage-service as equal authority with the Bible. She was too live to droop +and break as some do. She had not made herself the one armor that would have +been effective—her own shell. Friction that does not callous, forms a sore. Her +love, her utmost self, ached like an exposed nerve. She had not dreamed one’s +whole being could be so alive to suffering. She must be alone, to get a hand on +herself and things again. +</p> + +<p> +At table one night she wanted them all to know she was going away, for several +months perhaps, leaving her cousin Anne in charge. It was all arranged. +</p> + +<p> +The amazing innovation surprised Sam into speechlessness. +</p> + +<p> +Judith had had few vacations. There had always been the babies, of course. And +Sam’s consent had always been so hard to get. His first impulse about +everything was to refuse, contradict, begrudge. Then certainly he mustn’t be +too easily convinced. After that he always moped through her preparations; +counted and recounted the cost, and at the last perhaps gave her a handsome new +bag when her old one was particularly convenient, and he had supplied only half +she had asked for clothes; would hardly tell her good-by for desolate devotion; +tracked her with letters full of loneliness, ailments, discomforts. When she +had cut short her plans and hurried back, a bit quiet and unresponsive perhaps, +“How truly gracious your unselfishness is, my dear!” he observed. “If it comes +so hard to show me a little consideration, you would really better keep doing +your own way.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never do my own way.” +</p> + +<p> +“No? Whose then? I fail to recognize the brand.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the trouble. I might as well stop trying.” +</p> + +<p> +Now, she could not delay for, nor endure, the conventional comedy. +</p> + +<p> +Since he asked her no questions, she hastened to explain: “I want to rest +absolutely. Not even to write letters. You need not bother to, either. Anne +will let me know if I am needed. And if I need anything, you will be sure to +hear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, sure.” Sam was recovering. +</p> + +<p> +But he couldn’t think she would really go, in that way at least. He thought he +knew one good reason why not. Yet, vaguely on guard against her capacity for +surprise, he did not risk the satire of asking her plans. To the last Judith +hoped he would shame her a little by offering the money; and against his utter +disregard her indignation rose slowly, steadily, deepening, widening, drowning +out every other feeling for him. +</p> + +<p> +When, after their final breakfast, he kissed her good-by as for the morning +only, she took her jewelry and silver, mementos of his self-indulgence in +generosity, and pawned them, mailing him the tickets from the station where she +piloted herself alone. +</p> + +<p> +She spent a month (in her rest-cure!), writing and destroying letters to him. +There was no alternation of moods now. Nor was she seeking a solution of the +problem; there was only one. +</p> + +<p> +At last a letter seemed to do: “It cannot hurt you to read, as much as me to +write. But it must come. I can see now it has always been coming. Things cannot +go on as they are. We are unable to improve them together. I will cast no +blame. Perhaps some other woman would have called out a different side of you, +or would have minded things less. It is enough that we do not belong together, +because we are we and cannot change. We are not only ruining each other’s +happiness—that is already irrevocable,—we are ruining each other, and the +children, and their futures. It is a question of the least wrong. And I am not +coming back. +</p> + +<p> +“I want the children, all of them. But if you insist, you take Sam junior and I +the girls—and the baby, of course, at least for the present. And you shall +provide for us proportionately. There is no use pretending independence; I have +given my strength and all the accomplishments I had to you and them. And there +is no sense in the mock-heroics that I don’t want your money. It isn’t your +money; it’s ours, everything we have. I have borne your children, and saved and +kept house and served and nursed for you and them. If you want to divide +equally now, I will take that as my share forever. But we can’t escape the fact +that we have been married and have the children.” +</p> + +<p> +She could get an answer in two days. +</p> + +<p> +But it did not come in two days, nor two weeks, nor three; while she burned +herself out waiting. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, her funds were running low. She had waves of the nausea of defeat, +fevers of the desperation of the last stand. +</p> + +<p> +Then it occurred to her. Her armor had always been defensive. She had never +stooped to neutralize his alkali with acid. But there was one weapon of offence +she occasionally used. She wrote: “I am drawing on you to-day through your +First National for a hundred and fifty. You will honor it, I think. And if I do +not hear from you in a day or two I shall have Judge Harwood call on you as my +attorney.” +</p> + +<p> +The answer came promptly enough:—“My dear child, I couldn’t make out what had +struck you, so I hoped you would just feel better after blowing off steam and +would get over your fit of nerves. Besides, I have nothing to say except to +quote yourself: ‘We can’t escape the fact that we are married and have the +children.’ I know you too well to be afraid of your throwing off all +obligations like that. It is impossible to fancy you airing our privacies.” +Bait? or a goad? Oh yes, he counted on her “womanly qualities”—but with no idea +of masculine emulation! “If you need advice, think what either of our mothers +would say.” Her mother! Judith could hear her, “His doing wrong cannot make it +right for you to,” with logic so unanswerable one forgot to question its +relevance. And his! Judith held her partly accountable; some women absolutely +fostered tyranny. Their mothers, poor things! Occasionally their fathers were +different, but so occasionally that now the times were. “This sudden mood +strikes me as very remarkable. ‘After all I have done—twelve years of grind to +keep you from the brunt of the world; and now...! My dear child, do you realize +that there are husbands with violent tempers, husbands who drink and gamble and +worse? +</p> + +<p> +“I honored your draft. Do not try it again. And I advise you to use it to come +home. We will have Dr. Hunter give you a tonic, and you will find you have +fewer morbid fancies occupied with your duties. I shall look for you the end of +the week.” Surely Sam was moved quite out of himself, that he had no lashes of +laughter for her. But the next was more in character: “Bridget threatens to +leave. She does not work well under Anne. The children are not manageable under +her, either. Little Judith is sallow and fretful. I suspect Anne gives her +sweets between meals. I saw a moth flying in my closet to-day....” +</p> + +<p> +Judith pushed the letter away, fidgeted, yet smiled. How well they knew each +other. And they used it only to sting and bully! Surely it could be put to +better purpose. Had she tried <i>everything</i>? Had Sam fully understood? +Sometimes she thought her early excuses had hurt too much for her to admit +their truth: much of his unkindness was not intentional, only stupid; slow +sympathy, dull sensibility; he did not suffer, nor comprehend, like a savage or +a child. If the possibility of separation was new to her, would not he never +have thought of it at all? But now, might he not see? Was not his unwonted +self-defence itself admission of new enlightenment and approachability? +</p> + +<p> +She sat long in the increasing dusk. Exhausted with struggle, loneliness was on +her, crying need of the children, return to the consideration of many things. +Admitting that at times it was right to break everything, wrong not to, it was +at least the last resort. Love, of course, was over irrevocably; but were there +not some things worth saving? Could not she and Sam find some working basis? +</p> + +<p> +What had made their being together most intolerable to her was their +persistence in the religion of a vanished god in whose empty ceremonies alone +they could now take part together. Of the sacred image nothing was left but the +feet of clay. Freed of that desecration, she could cure or endure everything +else; her obligations, moreover, would hardly conflict at all. +</p> + +<p> +Looking back at the pressures of nature, society, events, Sam’s persistence, +she wondered at times if, from the beginning, she had been any more responsible +for her marriage than for the color of her hair. There were many such +explanations for Sam, too. Not that they made her like him any better, feel him +any more akin. But it was true that between the fatalities of heredity and +environment that “slight particular difference” that makes the self had but +short tether for action and reaction. Oh, she could be generous enough to him +if he did not have to be part of herself! +</p> + +<p> +She got up, lit the gas, shutting out the stars, and wrote: “I am coming back +to make one more and one last effort. <i>Won’t you</i>?” If he would only try! +</p> + +<p> +Sam met her with the magnanimity of forgiveness, the consciousness of kind +forgetting. Her redeemed valuables were all in place. Everything should be the +same, in spite of—And she put the back of her hand against his lips! +</p> + +<p> +When he dressed for dinner the salvage of the three balls, the spoils of war, +were piled in his bureau drawer. +</p> + +<p> +Still he hoped better for the roses by her plate. She had the maid carry them +out, explaining in her absence, “No gifts, please, Sam. Substitutes will not do +any longer.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam played with his fork, smiling, with lips only. How shockingly she showed +suffering. Separation had made her appearance unfamiliar; he thought the change +all recent. He took pains to compliment the immediate improvement in the +pastry, to give her the servants’ money unreminded as soon as they were alone. +</p> + +<p> +How characteristic! Judith thought, wearily, letting the bills lie where he +laid them. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s one of the things for us to settle, Sam,” she said, in her new freedom +and self-respect discarding the familiar little diplomacies by which she was +used to soothe, prepare, manage, the lord of the hearth. “I am not going to ask +for money in the future, nor depend on what you happen to give.” The manner was +a simple statement of fact. “You must make me an allowance through your +bookkeeper.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam was lounging through his cigar. “So that’s it? Still?” He smiled +confidentially at the smoke, puffing it from his lower lip. “As accurately as I +can recollect, my dear, I have told you seven thousand and three times that I +am not on a salary, and don’t know from month to month what I will make.” +</p> + +<p> +How unchanged everything was! Her determination stiffened. “But you know what +you have made. Base it on the year before. Or have a written statement mailed +me every month, and file my signature at the bank.” +</p> + +<p> +Not quite unchanged; for Sam took the cigar from his mouth and turned slowly to +look at her. If he had taken her return for capitulation and had met it +according to his code, things were not fitting in. “Really, my dear! Really! +What next? Evidently I have never done you justice; you have positive genius in +the game—of monopoly; first thing, <i>I’ll</i> be begging from <i>you</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +Well, why not, as fairly? and why should he think better of her than of +himself? But it was too old to go over again. For a breath she waited to see +her further way. She had not planned this as the issue, but the moment was +obviously crucial, and offered what, in international politics already awry, +would constitute a good technical opportunity. If her mirage of regeneration, +her hope of an understanding, perhaps even her love, had flung up any last +afterglow in this home-coming, it was over now. Indeed, now it seemed an old +grief, the present but confirmation concerning a lover ten years lost at sea. +She saw the whole man now clearly, the balance of her accusations and excuses; +he had neither the modern spirit of equality, nor the medieval quixotism of +honor and chivalry; appeal merely stirred the elemental tyranny of strength and +masculinity, held as a “divine right”; weakness tempted an instinctive cruelty, +half unconscious, half defiant. +</p> + +<p> +It was Sam who spoke first, abruptly, not laughing. Sam who was never angry, +was angry now. “I never have understood you in some ways. How a woman like you +can forever bring money between us! How you got tainted with this modern female +anarchy! You seem to forget that <i>I</i> made the money, it is <i>mine</i>. +There is bound to be discussion; I never knew any one so determined to have +everything his own way. All the same,” the defence rested its case, “it takes +two to quarrel, and I won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +No, his defence was only admission of conscious weakness. He was afraid—of the +solution she had discarded. She did not go back to it now. But now she saw the +way, the only way, to accomplish reconstruction. +</p> + +<p> +Judith looked at him steadily. Her voice was deadly quiet. “I am sure I have +made myself quite plain. We will never discuss this again. You can let me know +in the morning which arrangement you choose.” +</p> + +<p> +They faced each other with level eyes. +</p> + +<p> +And Sam’s shifted. +</p> + +<p> +He never had real nerve, she realized; they didn’t—that kind. How had she +managed to love him so long? +</p> + +<p> +Late that night he knocked at her door with a formal proposition: Would that +do?—dumbly. She changed a point or two: <i>That</i> would do, and signified +good night. Sam, looking at her face, turned away from it, hesitated, turned +back, broke. Fear increased his admiration, and, to do him justice, the fear +was not wholly for conventions and comforts; the man had certain broad +moralities and loyalties. A reflex muscular action had set in to regain what he +had lost. “Judith! Judith!” he begged. +</p> + +<p> +Her raised hand stopped him. “You are too late, Sam.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, you mustn’t get the idea that I don’t love you still.” +</p> + +<p> +“Love has nothing to do with it any more. Besides, it is never any use to talk +of love without justice.” +</p> + +<p> +He went out, dazed and aggrieved. He had always thought they got along as well +as most people. <i>He</i> had not been cherishing grudges. +</p> + +<p> +Womanlike, having met the emergency gallantly, after it was all over Judith +collapsed. The day of reckoning for which she had so long been running up an +account was on her. But the growing assurance rallied her, that her going away +and her coming back were equally means to her success in failure. +</p> + +<p> +The reality of their marriage could not have been saved. But they had the +children; and to the children was restored much of what their father had +largely spoiled in the first place, and she nearly forfeited in the second. For +the fact was that Sam did better; the despot is always a moral coward, and +always something of the slave to a master. Moreover, her growing +invulnerability to hurt through him set, in large measure, the attitude of the +household; everybody was more comfortable. She discounted his opinions and +complaints; but, in considering the welfare of the greatest number, she +sacrificed as little as possible his individual comforts. His interests she +studied. And for the rest, she let him go his way and went hers. +</p> + +<p> +Life is a perfect equation: if something is added or subtracted, something is +subtracted or added, so long as there <i>is</i> life. Judith got her poise +again in time, as strong natures do after any death; with some fibres weakened +past mending, gray, but calm. If his side of her nature was stunted, she seemed +to blossom all the more richly in other ways. She loved her children in +proportion as she had suffered and worked for them. After her domestic years, +like so many women, she took fresh start, physically and mentally. Her +executive ability found public outlet. She could admit friends again. Freedom +from the corrosion of antagonism was happiness. Without the struggle to keep +that love which must ask so much of its object, she could give Sam more of that +altruism which asks nothing. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a> +THE GLASS DOOR</h2> + +<h3>BY MARY TRACY EARLE</h3> + +<p> +Charlotte and Emory Blake lived at the old Blake place, on the little plateau +at the foot of the Colton hill, in a vine-covered stone cottage. The place had +belonged to old George Blake. When it came into Emory’s hands he sold it to +Uncle Billy Kerr, and used the money for a course in a school of pharmacy. +Later, Charlotte, who was then Charlotte Hastings, bought it, and, after her +marriage, finished paying for it out of its own products, while her husband +talked politics or played chess in his drug-store. It was said that when Blake +was doing either of these things he was as likely as not to keep a customer +standing a half-hour before waiting on him,—and this not so much out of +interest in his discussion or his game as from complete lack of interest in the +business of selling drugs. +</p> + +<p> +North Pass correctly interpreted this general nonchalance of Blake’s as a sign +that he was an unwilling partner in the matrimonial venture he had undertaken. +Indeed, it was known that the engagement had hung fire for years through no +fault of Charlotte’s, and everybody had noticed that such mildly loverlike +enthusiasm for her society as Blake had shown before he went to the school of +pharmacy had disappeared from his manner when he returned. Charlotte had told +people that they should marry as soon as he came home, yet the wedding did not +come off for two years. During this time it was noticed that although she held +her head high and was fertile in good reasons for the delay, her girlish look +left her, her features sharpened, and her speech developed an acid reaction; it +was at this time, too, that she bargained with Uncle Billy Kerr for the old +Blake place, and also borrowed money from the old man to put up a new house. +When people saw the house going up it was generally supposed that she was +preparing either to rent it or to live in it as an old maid; but when it was +completed, to the surprise of every one, Charlotte and Blake were married and +moved in. +</p> + +<p> +The morning after the wedding Blake was in his drug-store playing chess as +languidly as ever, but Charlotte spent her whole day planting a +vegetable-garden, in a mood of unreckoning exaltation such as rarely comes to a +woman of her nature, and never comes to her but once. She had felt no such +blissful security when Blake and she were first engaged. Blake was weak. She +had felt it intensely even when her infatuation for him was too fresh to permit +her to reason, and a weak man while unmarried is peculiarly liable to changes +of affection. But, on the other hand, a weak man once safely married is +completely in the power of his wife; during the last two years of their +engagement certain illusions regarding herself and Blake had fallen from her +eyes; she had stated both those facts plainly to herself, and they had helped +her to decide upon a course of action. There had been moments when she had +despised herself for using her stronger will to coerce Blake into the +fulfilment of his engagement, but on the morning after the wedding these +moments were forgotten, and, as she hoed and raked and planted in the brisk air +and the bright spring sunshine, her whole existence seemed uplifted by the +knowledge that she and Blake at last belonged unquestionably to each other; +that every output of her strength was for their common comfort, and would +continue to be as long as they both should live. +</p> + +<p> +As the first year of married life goes, Charlotte’s first year was fairly +successful. She knew Blake’s faults already, and had made up her mind to them, +and if there was a frank indifference in his quiet languor, she had made up her +mind to that, too. He was never unkind, and there were times when some fresh +evidence of her devotion to him would touch him into an appreciation that was +almost responsive. And there were other times when she would find him looking +at her with an expression which any other observer might have classed as pity, +but which she counted as tenderness. On the whole, it seemed to her that time +was bringing them together, as she had counted that it would, and with this +hope her face lost its sharp outlines. +</p> + +<p> +Her first heavy chagrin was at the time of her baby’s birth. When Blake came +into the room to inquire for her, and she turned down the bed-cover to show him +the little bundle at her side, a look of pain and aversion flashed across his +face, and he moved away, begging her not to show the baby to him until it was +older. On another day she tried to make him select a name for it, and he +refused. +</p> + +<p> +“Call it anything you please,” he said at first, but she would not let him go +at that. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been thinking,” she suggested, with a hesitation that was foreign to +her,—“I’ve been thinking of calling her for your mother—Dorcas.” +</p> + +<p> +They were alone in the room, and he was sitting by her bed, but looking away +from her into the corner of the room, while she looked anxiously at him. At her +words he started, flashing a keen glance at her. “Why should we name her that?” +he asked. +</p> + +<p> +There was something so sharply disturbed in his manner, and his distaste for +the idea was so evident, that Charlotte flushed in extreme embarrassment. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you might like to,” she explained. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I wouldn’t,—I—I don’t think the name’s pretty in itself,” he declared; +adding, with a great effort to speak naturally, “I’d rather name her for you.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte’s lips came together so closely that all the unpleasant lines showed +around them. “I certainly shall not name her for myself,” she said. “You must +think of some other name.” +</p> + +<p> +Blake got to his feet. “That’s the only one I can think of,” he said. “If you +don’t like it, you can take some other. It’s your affair, not mine.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte’s eyes flashed and then filled with tears, for she was very weak. “If +I were asking you to father some other man’s child, you couldn’t act more as if +you despised me,” she sobbed. +</p> + +<p> +He turned as he was leaving the room and gave her a long look full of +exasperation, repugnance, and despair. “You are quite mistaken,” he said. “I +don’t despise you. I despise myself.” +</p> + +<p> +For half an hour Charlotte sobbed, her hands clenched at her sides, her tears +flowing unchecked; then, quite suddenly, she was calm, and, drying her +disfigured face, she began to take account of stock. All that she had before, +she reasoned, she still had. The gains of a year might seem to be lost in the +outbreak of a moment, yet they still existed as a solid foundation to build +upon. There would be constraint at first, but the effort of daily patience +would overcome it in time; moreover, there was the baby. Blake might refuse to +look at her now, but as she grew and acquired the irresistible graces of a +healthy babyhood he would be obliged to see and to yield to her. A man of his +nature could not live in the house with a child and not love it. She touched +the small form at her side, as if to assure herself that this ally which she +had so suffered for had not deserted her. Yes, she had more hope now than ever +before, she told herself, and her eyes shone with a passionate tenderness, +though her lips were set in a hard line. Suddenly the line broke into a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll name her Hope,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +When Hope was two months old she began her mission, and when she had reached +six months Blake was vying with Charlotte in his devotion to her. He even +plucked up a little interest in his business; sometimes he talked over his +place with his wife, and the words which had passed between them over the +naming of the child, though unforgotten, seemed so far in the past that +Charlotte’s courage strengthened with each day. The sense of security which had +marked the first months of her married life did not return, but she could feel +herself making a strong fight against fate to hold what she had, and, if she +were never entirely certain of the issue, at least she fought with the +obstinacy which has no knowledge of yielding. Sometimes even her love for Blake +seemed to lose itself in this obstinacy, and her tenderness towards her child +seemed the only womanly sentiment left in her; but more often her love for her +husband mounted high and unmixed above the other feelings as the tremendous, +inexplicable passion of her life. +</p> + +<p> +Hope’s attainment of six months was marked by an unusual display of energy on +the part of Blake. The first cold weather of autumn had come, and when the +house doors were closed, Charlotte was surprised to hear her husband declare +that the sitting-room, where the baby would spend most of her time in winter, +was poorly lighted, and needed to have a glass door substituted for the wooden +one which opened on to the front porch. Still more to her surprise, the door +was delivered from an adjoining town the next day, and on the following morning +Blake rose earlier than usual and hung it before going down to his store. It +was the first time he had lifted his hand towards the improvement of +Charlotte’s house. +</p> + +<p> +He whistled boyishly while he measured and fitted in the hinges, and when it +came to holding the door while the hinges were screwed in place, he called to +Charlotte. She came, with lips as usual closed very tight, but with cheeks +flushed very pink, and when the work was finished she was so atremble that she +had to sit down for a moment before she could put breakfast on the table. +</p> + +<p> +To give a reason for the delay, she kept looking at the door. “The room, is +perfect now,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Blake swung the new acquisition back and forth, and latched it once or twice to +make sure that it was perfectly adjusted. When he was satisfied he glanced at +his wife. +</p> + +<p> +“It will give our baby the sunlight,” he said, and their eyes met for a moment. +</p> + +<p> +All that day, whenever Charlotte could bring her work into the sitting-room, +she sat facing the glass door. She was not exactly happy; she was too strangely +excited for happiness; but she was keenly awakened and alert. Every nerve in +her seemed keyed up to its ultimate tension, and if the shadow of a cloud +passed, even if a red leaf fell outside, she looked out expectantly through the +door. +</p> + +<p> +It was middle afternoon when, on looking up, she saw a young woman crossing the +porch, leading a little child. Charlotte jumped to her feet, then reseated +herself and waited for the tap on the glass. The visitors were strangers to +her, and though she could not have told why, as she sat staring at them through +the door, her mouth suddenly set into the lines of indomitable obstinacy which +had grown so deep around it in the past three years. When she finally crossed +the room to open the door, she walked slowly and deliberately, as if she had +some definite purpose in mind and meant to accomplish it. +</p> + +<p> +The woman on the outside was the first to speak. “Does Mr. Emory Blake live +here?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“He does. I am his wife. What can I do for you?” asked Charlotte. +</p> + +<p> +The woman gave a little cry and drew back. “Oh no!” she said, breathlessly. +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte stood, white and stiff and silent, while the other looked about her +in a despairing helplessness. She was a frail-looking woman, worn with fatigue +and the excited emotions with which timidity spurs itself to action. She looked +as if she longed to sit down somewhere, and as if perhaps she could have more +courage seated, but Charlotte made no motion to invite her to enter. After a +while the newcomer brought her frightened eyes back to the set face in the +doorway. +</p> + +<p> +“I am so sorry for you,” she said, timidly. “I am his wife.” +</p> + +<p> +A shiver of resentment ran convulsively through Charlotte’s muscles. “You can +be sorry for yourself,” she said, roughly. +</p> + +<p> +“But he married me while he was at the school of pharmacy,” the other cried, +weakly. “I was Nettie Trent. I clerked, and I boarded where he did, and we fell +in love and married. He told me about you. You are Charlotte Hastings, aren’t +you, that wanted to marry him before he left home?” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte moved her dry lips soundlessly once or twice before she could speak. +Then her masterful spirit rose to a new task. She drew herself up and looked +down gravely, almost compassionately, upon the woman who had been Nettie Trent. +</p> + +<p> +“I was Charlotte Hastings before my marriage,” she said. “I am sorry to be the +one to hurt you, but you have been cruelly treated. I was married to Emory +Blake before he left home for the school.” +</p> + +<p> +The smaller woman gave a little gasp and stood silent, while Charlotte, with +the fire in her veins scorching her cheeks and eyes and almost smothering her +breath, waited for her to offer some resistance, to assert her own claim, or to +ask for proof of the statement which denied it; but Nettie said nothing, and +after a moment her gaze dropped from Charlotte’s and she began to sob. +Charlotte took her by the hand and led her into the room. +</p> + +<p> +Neither of them spoke for a long time. Nettie sat with her face buried in her +hands. On one side her child tugged at her dress; on the other, little Hope +slept in her cradle. Charlotte stood pale and tall, watching all three. +</p> + +<p> +At last Nettie looked up. “I suppose you think I ought to hate him—now I’ve +found out,” she said, “but I don’t; I just can’t. When we were together he was +so sweet to me. I don’t think he meant to harm me. He must have thought it +would come out all right somehow.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I were in your place,” Charlotte said, slowly, “I should hate him.” +</p> + +<p> +Nettie wiped her eyes and drew her child up into her arms. “But what he did was +almost as bad for you as it was for me,” she urged, “and you don’t hate him.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte turned suddenly and walked to her own baby’s cradle. “Oh, I don’t +know,” she said, in a low voice. +</p> + +<p> +After a moment she came back and sat down. “I must ask you some questions,” she +said, gravely. “Is this your only child?” +</p> + +<p> +The young woman nodded. Her lips were quivering. “Named Dorcas,” she said, +brokenly,—“for his mother.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte flushed and the lines about her lips deepened. “Does he—provide for +you?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +The other nodded once more. “He sends me money once in a while. I wrote him not +to worry when he didn’t have it. I’m clerking again.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte made no comment. She was thinking how strange it was that this other +woman, who was a frail, poor-spirited thing, should be ready to support herself +and child out of love for Blake. In Charlotte’s mind, which was pitilessly +clear and active, there was room for a passing wonder at the mysterious power +which so weak a man could exert over women, even without his will. She was +wondering, too, if her own passion for him would ever rise again. At present +she was far from loving him; she felt only a bitter resentment, a desire to +punish him by holding to him, and a towering obstinacy and pride which refused +to be set at fault and put to shame. While she was boldly examining and +analyzing herself she glanced at the clock to see how long before he could +possibly return; the time was ample, and she continued to sit silent. Presently +her baby woke, and she rose and went to it. +</p> + +<p> +As she lifted it from its cradle, Nettie started up and came towards her. Hope +hid her face against her mother’s neck, but after an instant turned shyly to +steal a glance at the stranger. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie sat down again, trembling. “Your baby is like him,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Very like him,” Charlotte answered, and as the baby nestled up to her again, +she dropped her cheek against it and tears came into her eyes—scalding tears +that seemed to sear their way up from the depths of her heart. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the other wife leaned forward, eagerly suspicious. “You have no other +children—<i>older</i>?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte looked round blankly, her eyes still wet. “<i>Other</i> children?” +she echoed, but Nettie’s sharpened face brought her to herself. She wiped her +eyes on Hope’s dress. “I lost—a child,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” Nettie murmured, “I’m sorry I asked you. It was older than Dorcas?” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte stood at bay, with her child strained close to her. She nodded. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” Nettie murmured again, in a shaken voice. She looked at Charlotte in +despairing envy. “What is this baby named?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“This one,” Charlotte answered, “we call Hope.” +</p> + +<p> +She seated herself and began trotting the child to a slow measure. There were +still a few questions which she wished to ask, but the other’s simple +acceptance of all she said inspired her with cool deliberation. There was +plenty of time, and she wished to make no mistake. She must be sure of her own +safety, and after that she must do anything she could for the comfort of the +other woman. It would probably be very little. +</p> + +<p> +“How did you get here?” she inquired, finally. “You must have asked somebody +where Mr. Blake lived.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I didn’t have to ask. He’d written me he was boarding with a woman that +lived on his old place,” Nettie said, “and I knew where that was because he’d +often told me all about where he grew up and just the road he used to take from +the station to the house, and I remembered every word of it. I didn’t like to +go to him at his store for fear there would be loafers around, so I came right +to his house. I thought I wouldn’t mind telling the woman that I was his wife, +if she asked me any questions while I waited for him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You were very wise,” Charlotte said, dryly. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie settled back in her chair, rocking her little girl, who had grown +restless and impatient, and as she rocked she began to pour out her heart. “You +must think queer of me to sit down here with you like this and not to be in a +rush to go,” she began, “but I feel like I’ve got to sit still and—and kind of +get my breath before I can start out. I’ve been so afraid of it that it doesn’t +seem like I ought to be surprised, but I tell you it pretty near kills me now I +know it for sure.” She paused and stroked a stray lock of hair away from her +child’s eyes. “My baby’s like him, too,” she said, irrelevantly. “My baby’s +just as like him as yours is.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte glanced again at the clock. “How do your friends treat you?” she +asked, abruptly. “Do they believe you were really married or not?” +</p> + +<p> +A bright flush sprang over Nettie’s face. “They believed it at first, of +course, just the way I did,” she answered, quickly, “but lately they’ve been +suspecting something. It was what they said made me get uneasy. I don’t +distrust folks right quick myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“And none of them tried to make inquiries for you?”—Charlotte put the question +seriously, all her nerves tight strung. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh no,” Nettie said. “I don’t have any family or any friends close enough to +me to take trouble like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I presume you’re glad now that they didn’t,” Charlotte said. “In your +place I’d rather find it out for myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’d much rather,” Nettie answered. “I couldn’t have stood having other +people find it out, and I’m not going to give anybody that knows me a chance to +find out now. You see, I’ve been afraid of this so long that I’ve had time to +make my plans and to save up money a little. Before I came here I gave up my +place and told folks I was going to join Mr. Blake; so I’ll not go back. I’ll +go to New York and get work there.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte looked at her keenly. “I suppose you’re depending on Mr. Blake to +help you?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Again the color sprang into Nettie’s face. “Oh no, ma’am,” she answered. “I +couldn’t let him help me now. I did wrong to live with him, but I didn’t know +he was married, so I don’t feel like one of that kind of women; but if I was to +take money from him now, I—I shouldn’t feel that I was raising my child +honest.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte lifted her baby so that it hid her face. “For him to help you would +only be right,” she said, from its shelter. “He owes you—money, at least.” +</p> + +<p> +The other shook her head. “I couldn’t bear it,” she said, chokingly. “Oh, you +can’t understand—nobody could understand unless she’d been through what I have, +being left before my baby came, and having people ask me close questions, and +then, little by little, losing my own faith. You can’t see why, but if I was to +take money from him now, it would make me feel my shame, and I don’t want to,—I +want to feel honest.” +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte lowered Hope to her knee. “Perhaps I can understand that—in a way,” +she said, with twitching lips. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie looked into her face with a helpless, childish perception of the +suffering shown in its drawn lines. “You’re so good to me—I believe you feel +’most as bad as I do,” she declared; “and if I were you, I wouldn’t say a word +to anybody about my having been here. Nobody knows it. I didn’t have to ask my +way. There aren’t many women would treat me the way you do, and I won’t stay +here any longer making you feel bad.” She rose, still holding her heavy child +in her arms. “There isn’t anything more we’ve got to say to each other, is +there?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait a moment,” Charlotte said. She, too, rose, and as she stood looking at +the other woman, so much smaller, so much weaker, so blindly trustful, and so +patient, her heart, which had sunk in shame, rose suddenly in pity; at that +moment if she had opened her lips the truth would have escaped from them, but +her stubborn will held her lips closed. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie eyed her with troubled uncertainty, but after a moment moved towards the +door. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I must go,” she declared. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait a moment,” Charlotte said again. Her voice was so dry and strange that +after she had spoken she paused to moisten her lips. Her limbs trembled, and in +the glass door which she had opened against the wall she could see the ashen +whiteness of her face. +</p> + +<p> +Nettie turned, and the two women confronted each other, each holding her child. +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte put a hand up to her throat. “I have money I could give you,” she +offered. “Not his, my own.” +</p> + +<p> +The other shook her head. “Oh, I couldn’t,” she exclaimed. “Anyway, I don’t +need it. I’ve saved up a good deal. And you’ve done better than give me money; +you’ve been kind to me.” She put out her hand with a little appealing gesture +and took Charlotte’s, which lay cold in it. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better go,” Charlotte broke out. “You’ll meet him coming home if you +wait any longer. Here; I’ll tell you how to go a roundabout way.” +</p> + +<p> +She walked out on to the piazza and led the way down the steps and round to the +back of the house, where she stood giving short, sharp directions, when across +her hurried words came Blake’s voice calling from the front: +</p> + +<p> +“Charlotte! Charlotte! Where are you and Hope?” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time since they had lived together Blake had come home before his +hour. +</p> + +<p> +The two women looked at each other. Charlotte pointed to the path which hid +itself quickly in the shelter of an orchard. “Run,” she whispered. “I’ll keep +him in the house.” +</p> + +<p> +But Nettie stood as if paralyzed, her eyes widening and filling with tears. +“Oh, you’ve been so good—mayn’t I see him—mayn’t I bid him good-by?” she +begged. +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte lifted her voice to answer Blake. “Yes, Emory; stay where you are; +I’m bringing Hope,” she called. “Hurry!” she whispered to the other woman. “It +won’t do you any good to see him. Think of what he’s done. Hurry, I say!” +</p> + +<p> +Nettie put her hand up to her head. “I—I can’t,” she murmured. She swayed a +little, and before Charlotte could reach out to catch her she had slipped to +the ground. +</p> + +<p> +At the same moment Blake came out of the back door of the house. For an instant +he stared in bewilderment. Then he was at Nettie’s side and had lifted her in +his arms. +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte saw his face as he kissed her. A moment later she was indoors on her +knees beside her bed, with her face buried in the cover and her hands clutching +it. +</p> + +<p> +A cold wind swept through the house. Front and back the doors stood open. The +sun was already low in the west and the evening promised to be chill. Presently +Charlotte rose. She closed the front door carefully, wrapped Hope in a cloak, +and, with her child on her arm, passed out at the back. +</p> + +<p> +Blake had stretched his wife on the back porch and was bending over her. He +looked up, and at sight of Charlotte’s face he straightened himself. +</p> + +<p> +She paused an instant. “I’m starting to harness the horse,” she said. “You can +catch the night train at Antioch if I drive fast.” +</p> + +<p> +He stood silent, his face working. It was as if strength were being born in him +to say something in his own defence. +</p> + +<p> +“She has plans,” Charlotte added. “You’d better pick up some of your things in +the house.” +</p> + +<p> +She passed on, and laying Hope in the bottom of the wagon, harnessed the horse +with swift, shaking hands. The sun was out of sight when she drove back to the +house. Nettie sat on the steps staring dazedly around her. Blake was not in +sight. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you ready?” Charlotte called. +</p> + +<p> +He came out, carrying an old handbag. At the step he hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +She pointed to the back seat, where he was to sit with Nettie and the child, +and after an instant he helped them in. +</p> + +<p> +The ride was long and cold. Night fell, and the stars came out in remote, +hostile legions. The children slept. Occasionally Nettie and Blake advised +together in hushed voices. Charlotte whipped the horse. +</p> + +<p> +As they drew near to the end of their journey Blake leaned forward and touched +her arm. +</p> + +<p> +“What about the store?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +Charlotte broke her long silence harshly. “Your stock will cover what you owe +on it, I guess.” +</p> + +<p> +At the station she stayed in the wagon. Blake took his wife and Dorcas into the +waiting-room and came back for his bag. Charlotte had it ready for him, resting +on the wheel. +</p> + +<p> +He did not offer to take it at first, but stood in the beam from the station +window, trying to speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“I guess there’s not much I can say,” he choked out. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time she made no answer. Then her breath came with an unexpected +gasp. “It wasn’t your fault—I made you do it.” For a moment more they were +silent. Then she shifted the sleeping baby towards him. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you want to kiss her?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +He bent his face to the child with a sudden passionate tenderness. As he looked +up, his wet eyes met Charlotte’s, which were full of tears. +</p> + +<p> +She put out her hand to him. “I guess I’ve been hard on you,” she said. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a> +ELIZABETH AND DAVIE</h2> + +<h3>BY MURIEL CAMPBELL DYAR</h3> + +<p> +When the town doctor, coming out to Turkey Ridge, had given as his verdict that +Elizabeth’s one chance of life—he could not say how slim the chance in that +plain room, having within it the pleasant noise of bees and the spring sun on +the floor—lay in her going to the great hospital in the city, it was Davie who +fell to sobbing in his worn hands. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll jest die at home, Davie,” she said in her quiet voice. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll take the money put away for our buryin’ an’ go, dearie!” Davie cried +out fiercely. His gaunt frame, stooped as a scholar’s, shook so pitifully with +his grief, she had not the heart to gainsay him, but after she promised him it +only shook the more. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Davie,” she chided, brightly, “ain’t I always been a-wantin’ to see the +city streets with the hurryin’ people, ’n’ tall houses, ’n’ churches with +towers on ’em? They ain’t many folks on th’ Ridge’ll hev sech a lettin’-out as +mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I only had ’nough saved to go too,” he mourned. +</p> + +<p> +She answered him simply: “An’ who’d I hev to write to me, with you goin’ ’long? +It’ll seem terrible nice to hear from somebody. I always did love letters. +Sence Cousin Tabby died I ain’t had one.” +</p> + +<p> +“You won’t be afeard travellin’ so far by yourself?” he asked then, awestruck. +Davie had the diffidence of the untravelled. Few men ever left the small +farming district of Turkey Ridge for a journey; but if one did so, and the trip +were long, he had thereafter a bolder bearing. +</p> + +<p> +“Afeard?” She gave a little trembling laugh which would have deceived no one +but a dull old man, now smitten suddenly by sorrow. “The idee o’ my bein’ +afeard! They ain’t a mite o’ danger o’ gettin’ run over er lost er nothin’—not +a mite.” +</p> + +<p> +Under the pretext of bending to hunt for a lost pin she hid the sad fear in her +eyes—a fear of all the greater world which was beyond Davie, from whom she had +not been parted since her marriage. +</p> + +<p> +But throughout the time of her preparation she went bravely. She would herself +have put in order for leaving the house kept spotless even while her disease +had crept upon her, but the news of the doctor’s words had gone up through the +group of farmhouses, huddled like timid sheep on the road, and the kindly +neighbor women left their own work, very heavy in the spring-time, to take her +household burdens. In a community where no great things ever came save two, and +these two birth and death, misfortune drew soul to soul. Because of her +gathering weakness she yielded that others should do the tasks which had always +hitherto been hers, but she could not be prevented from the packing of the +little leather trunk that had held her wedding things. “You’re jest makin’ me +out a foolish, lazy body,” she said, her lips seen quivering for the first +time. Then, fearful lest she should seem ungrateful for the kindness of her +friends, she made haste to ask where, in the trunk, to put her staid, coarse +linen, and where her best cap with its fine bow of lavender ribbon, and would +they if they were she take her mending-basket along in hopes there might be +moments for Davie’s socks? +</p> + +<p> +Many a loving offering was tucked in with her belongings to go with her. Now +blue-eyed Annie Todd knocked at the door, bringing a bunch of healing herbs +from her mother, who could not leave for reason of her nursing baby. Then old +Mr. Bayne drove into the dooryard with a pair of knitted bedroom slippers, +wrapped carefully in a newspaper. Next Kerrenhappuch Green, perturbed in his +long jaw, pottered down to fetch the pinball which his daughter had forgotten +when she came to help. Mrs. Glegg, who had lately lost her idiot son, Benje, +gave a roll of soft flannel. Miss Panthea Potter contributed a jar of currant +jam, three years sealed, and pretended that she was not moved. The minister +copied out a verse from the Psalms and fixed it so cunningly about a gold piece +that, proud as a girl in her poverty, Elizabeth could not refuse the gentle +gift. It was he, too, possessing the advantage of a clerkly hand, who arranged +for Elizabeth’s admission to the free ward of the hospital, and wrote to his +niece Mary, living by good fortune in the city, to have a care over her while +there. He told that Mary had a kind, good-humored face, and was herself country +born. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll be better able to thank ye all fittenly,” the white-haired old woman +said, “when I come back to ye well ’n’ strong.” +</p> + +<p> +The last day before she was to start, all that was possible being done for her, +she and Davie were left to themselves, at the minister’s suggestion. Forty +years before, Davie had brought her to the house, yet in her soft marriage +dress. The wedding journey had been the coming up at sunset to the Ridge from +her home in the valley, behind his plough-horses, lifting their plodding hoofs +as in the furrows. On the clean straw in the back of the wagon rested her small +trunk and a hive of bees, shrouded in calico. Tied to the tail-piece was a +homesick heifer. While he unhitched the horses and placed her dowry, she +entered his door to lay off her bonnet tremulously in the living-room. +</p> + +<p> +Alone with the clumsy carpet-loom which made his winter’s work, and his tired +week-day hat hanging from a peg against the wall, she had a deep moment. +Joining him on the door-step, they sat side by side watching in silence the +light die over the scanty fields handed down to him by his father, who had +grown bent and weary in wrenching a living from them as he was aging. Neither +was young; both were marked by the swift homeliness of the hard-working; but +the look on their faces was that which falls when two have gotten an immortal +youth and beauty in each other’s hearts. +</p> + +<p> +It had been their custom on each succeeding spring to go, if the anniversary +ware pleasant, to sit again at evening on the door-step with the sweetness of +the straggling spice-bush upon it. Now as they sat there a silence came upon +them like that of their wedding-day. Elizabeth broke it first. +</p> + +<p> +“Davie,” she whispered, “if I’d say I’d jest like to run through the house a +minute by myself, you won’t think it queer?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” answered Davie, something gripping his chest. +</p> + +<p> +She went slowly, her slippers flapping back and forth on her heels. She sought +first the tidy kitchen with its scoured tins, then the living-room with the old +loom still in the corner, then the parlor. Here she drew a long, shaken breath. +Every Ridge woman loved her parlor with an inherited devotion. Many unrecorded +self-sacrifices furnished it. Elizabeth’s lay hallowed to her. It was her Place +Beautiful. There was a pale, striped paper on the sacred walls, and on the +floor an ingrain carpet, dully blue. At the windows were ruffled white +curtains—the ruffles and sheer lengths of lawn had lain long in her dreams. The +mantel-piece held a row of shells, their delicate pink linings showing, and on +either end china vases filled with sprays of plumy grass. Above was the +marriage certificate, neatly framed. On the centre-table were sundry piteous +ornaments, deeply rooted in her affections. The chairs and the single sofa, +angular and sombre, were set about with proud precision. They had been the +result of years of careful hoarding of egg-money, and were, to Elizabeth, the +achievement of her living. +</p> + +<p> +Holding on to the banister, she climbed the stairs forlornly to the upper +chambers. In her own room Davie found her by and by. She was sitting up very +straight in her rocker, a baby’s long clothes on her lap. Her expression of +pain was gone, and in its stead was the strange peace of a woman who sees her +first-born. She looked up absently at her husband. +</p> + +<p> +“Melindy Ethel,” her voice crooned, “was so little ’n’ warm.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must jest lay down ’n’ rest, dearie,” he urged, anxiously. He took the +things from her and laid them back, one by one, in the lower drawer of the +high, glass-knobbed bureau whence she had taken them. The thin stuff of the +little, listless sleeves and yellowed skirts clung to his roughened fingers; he +freed them with gentleness. +</p> + +<p> +“An’ her hair would hev curled,” she said, when the last piece was in. +</p> + +<p> +Davie had been kneeling among his vegetables that summer-time long since that +Elizabeth had come to stand beside him in their garden, pushing from her +forehead her heavy falling hair, then dark, in the way she had if very glad. +Seeing that she had something to tell him, and wondering at her eyes, he waited +for her to speak. She did not keep him long. For an instant her serene glance +went up to the blue sky. Then her hands stretched out to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Davie,” she began, “that old cradle of your ma’s—” She broke off shyly. +</p> + +<p> +Davie stayed on his knees. He could not at once answer her, but could only +grope toward her blindly. Presently her touch calmed him. +</p> + +<p> +“It rocks from head to foot,” he quavered in joy, “’stead o’ from side to +side—the motion’s better for ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +Striving to go well through her troubled months until her hour should come, +Elizabeth smiled often at Davie, and sometimes the smile was a tender laugh in +her throat—Davie clumping excitedly over the farm about his work; Davie +bringing home from town the cautious purchase of a child’s sack, and crying out +in exultation, “It’s got tossels on it!” Davie storing singular treasures in a +box in the garret—seed-pods which rattled when you shook them; scarlet +wood-berries, gay and likely to please; a tin whistle, a rubber ball, a doll +with joints, and a folded paper having written on it, “For Croup a poultis of +onions and heeting the feet”; and Davie, his importance dropped from him as a +garment, coming to put his head down against her shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“I dun’no’,” he said to her, “as a man better feel too uppity ’bout becomin’ a +pa. It’s an awful solemn undertakin’, an’ the more you think it over the +solemner it gets. Seems to me it’s somethin’ like playin’ the fiddle. There +can’t jest anybody rush in an’ play a real good time on a fiddle—takes a +terrible lot o’ preparin’ ’n’ hard work to tech them little strings to music. +An’ mebbe the man that can tech ’em the best is him that’s always been clean +’n’ honest ’n’ real grave. I’m beginnin’ to feel so no ’count—why, I dun’no’ a +note o’ fiddle music!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Davie,” she had comforted, “it don’t seem to me that the man jest +<i>born</i> good ’d play the sweetest, but the one who had fought for things.” +</p> + +<p> +While she turned the tiny hems and ran the wonderful seams, Davie, +winter-bound, sat on the tall stool before his loom, the bobbins wound with +rags for a hit and miss. Weaving eked out a slender income. His father’s +finger-tips, too, had become stained by colors of warp and woof after the end +of the pig-killing had been announced by the children racing with the bladders +through the thin snow. +</p> + +<p> +On Christmas day he brought down the cradle from the garret, and wiped its +gathered dust from it with a white cloth. To please him, Elizabeth spread it +ready with the sheets and blankets. The sight of the pillow unmanned him. “The +idee o’ that stove smokin’ so Christmas!” he choked. She turned to him quickly. +Their seamed hands met as in that joyous moment among the vegetables, but this +time they clasped above a dusted cradle. In view of the increased expenses +before the household they made each other no gifts; only Davie put a fir bough +and a teething-ring in his box. +</p> + +<p> +Then he wove as though the clack of his shuttle were the beat of a drum going +by, then in a vast impatience, then with the bridle hanging on the rim of the +manger by the plough-horse which had a saddle gait. +</p> + +<p> +The morning that he clambered, frightened, into the saddle a great cold wave +was on the Ridge, with a fierce wind continually blowing. Smoke curled up from +the chimneys to perish against the sunny sky. Cattle left in the open crowded +in the lee of the straw-stacks, their rough flanks crawling, and in the folds +the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their +weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse’s hoofs toward town there was no +sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he +started in his carriage for Davie’s house, drew his robes closely about him and +scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows +flying wildly up and down, did not know that he had forgotten to fasten his +shabby overcoat. Crouched by the silent loom, he clutched helplessly at the hit +and miss as Elizabeth went down into that loneliest of all earth’s agonies. +</p> + +<p> +But from the beginning the child hung a doomed thing on her breast. After three +months they followed her up to the burying-ground, the murmuring of its cedars +never again to be wholly out of their ears. Away from the grave Davie gave an +exceedingly bitter cry—“She’s little to leave!” But Elizabeth’s tears fell back +in her heart unshed. She waved her handkerchief to Melindy Ethel. “But she’s +brave like her pa,” she said. And Davie stiffened. +</p> + +<p> +Memories of these and other days, mingled with forebodings for the parting, +were so heavy upon him that he could get no farther in the night’s devotions +than the reading of the Bible chapter. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t pray to-night, ’Lisbeth,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +Propped with pillows for the last rest before her journey, she was still +faithfully brave. “Mebbe the Lord’ll jest take care o’ me, anyway, bein’ as +I’ve tried to do his ways.” The old man did not know how wistful was her +speech. +</p> + +<p> +In the morning she was early dressed in her decent black. To those who came for +the leave-taking she bade good-by with gentle courtesy. Kerrenhappuch Green +lent his buggy because of its comfortable seat, but Davie drove her carefully +over the six miles to the station. No shriek of an engine’s whistle disturbed +the quiet of Turkey Ridge; to go into wider ways one must needs start from the +nearest town. Once she looked back at the house, set like an ancient brown +bird’s nest on the narrow fields. +</p> + +<p> +The yellow-bodied stage, going every other day across the country, brought the +minister the letter from his niece with the happy tidings of Elizabeth’s safe +arrival, under her guidance, at the city hospital. The stage-driver viewed the +missive with professional interest as he delivered it. The majority of his +passengers paid him monotonously in butter or eggs for his services, his trips +were tedious, and his ideals were limited. To read and digest all postals and +to conjecture at the contents of all envelopes were his reward for handing out +the mail at the turning of the lanes. The minister jogged down instantly to +Davie’s in his sulky, slapping the lines vigorously, if ineffectually, over the +back of his brown mare, which understood, with a truly feminine insight, his +perplexity before her character. Davie dropped his hoe and ran stumbling to +meet him. He read the pages in a tremble. There was something for him from +Elizabeth at the bottom of the last one. “Dear Davie,” it ran, “are you well +an’ lookin’ jest the same? Don’t get lonesome for me. I ain’t missin’ you a +mite.” +</p> + +<p> +During the period that she was resting for the operation Mary wrote daily, and +every time the letter came the minister jogged down to the farmhouse, for the +words were really from the old wife to Davie. Very cheerful words they were for +the most part. “If Davie’s askin’ how the streets look, tell him I can’t jest +tell, for I come in the night, but the noise is amazin’.” “Tell Davie I can see +a church tower from the window, an’ it’s higher ’n’ we ever dreamt of its +bein’, an’ sweeter.” “Tell Davie to lay listenin’ to feet goin’ up and down on +stones is grand.” “Tell Davie I hev seen the surgeon an’ that I never thought a +great man’d be so kind. I was all in a flutter over him, but when he’d come ’n’ +had seen me, whatever’d I do but tell him ’bout him ’n’ Melindy Ethel, an’ the +meetin’-house, an’ how the road runs by in front o’ the farm. An’ he said he +knew, an’ not to mind—as ma ust to. Ain’t it strange ’bout his knowin’?” +</p> + +<p> +The letters to Elizabeth were a tremendous labor, for Davie was no speller, and +always bashful in the presence of ink. He had only little happenings for his +pen—he wrote with his tongue forming the painful syllables about his mouth. But +to her they were infinite things—the May rose was blossomed in the garden, and +a pair of robins were nesting on a ledge of the loom on finding the room so +still; the speckled hen scratched up the pease, and the black cow’s calf was +lamed; the house dog pined for her and whimpered at the doors, letting the cats +lick the edges of his dish; the neighbors had sent donations of a loaf of rye +bread, a pitcher of broth, and the half of a new pressed cheese; Kerrenhappuch +Green sat with him in the evenings, and he, Davie, was not getting lonesome nor +missing <i>her</i> at all. But the one blotted “’Lisbeth, ’Lisbeth,” told the +true tale of the empty house. +</p> + +<p> +When no letter came from Mary he toiled, white as lint, in his potato-field. +There followed two days of sick suspense; then the minister waved to him at the +gray fence-rails. So greatly did he dread to hear the news he longed to know, +he could not stir from the spot where he stood, but waited, a strained, +pathetic figure, for him to make his way across the even furrows. On the +fatherly, near-sighted countenance, as he drew nearer, was to be seen such a +shining brightness that straightway Davie knew that she whom he loved had +issued from her trial. The two men, alike weather-beaten and seamed by a humble +work—the shepherd no less than the sheep of his flock anxiously tilling a rocky +farm,—had the reticence which is learned in hill solitudes, but in the “Thank +God, Davie,” and the breaking “Yes, sir,” much was spoken. +</p> + +<p> +Now Davie slackened his toil and opened all the windows of the house to freshen +the low-ceilinged rooms for Elizabeth’s returning. Every morning he picked +bunches of spring flowers and arranged them in stiff bouquets on the tables and +old bureaus. He took out his Sunday suit from the closet and rebrushed it +carefully and laid it with a clean collar and his musty tie. He began to carry +himself all at once with something of an air, and he developed a reckless and +unnatural enthusiasm about the weather; for to be darkly critical of the season +after the thaw was a local point of masculine etiquette which hitherto he had +scrupulously observed. The spring had always been in his judgment, +sympathetically received, “too terrible warm,” or “pointin’ right to a late +frost that’ll kill everything,” or, were it not palpably a failure, “so durned +nice now that the summer’ll be mean.” But with the good news coming from the +hospital he was ready to declare in response to friendly greetings: “It’s the +beatin’est time I ever come ’cross. Dun’no’ when I hev heerd so many bluebirds +or sech chirky ones. An’ the sky’s wonderful an’ the ground’s jest right. It’s +goin’ to be a dreadful good year for farmin’.” +</p> + +<p> +There was in his mind no premonition of trouble on his receiving from the +lumbering stage an envelope directed to him in Elizabeth’s own hand. It was +only that she was getting able to write to him herself. He took it unopened up +to the bench by the May rose to read its contents at his leisure away from the +stage-driver’s curious gaze. “Dear Davie,” the letter said, “the city streets +is so wearyin’ an’ I’m comin’ home. If I ain’t so well as we hoped, don’t mind. +’Tain’t like I was young to leave. Mary’s comin’ with me, for she’s long been +wantin’ to visit the Ridge. Could you meet me with your wagon, Davie?” +</p> + +<p> +She could not tell, what she did not know, that the money for Mary’s journey +had been sent to her by the minister for his old friend’s needs. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The afternoon was very soft and fair when Davie met the train incoming to town +from the city. The farms on Turkey Ridge were illumined with growing things +like the faint, precious pages of a missal. Doves fluttered on the lowly roofs. +Everywhere was the calling of birds and the smell of broken earth. The minister +and Mary fell behind along the way. Kerrenhappuch Green, caught walking +westward to the creek, his stale pockets bulged by bait, hid with a simple +delicacy in the roadside bushes from Davie’s face. Only the children hastening +from school nodded to him as he passed them, nor hushed the loud clatter of +their burring tongues. +</p> + +<p> +It was not for young children to be stricken by that sight upon the road—the +pair of patient horses drawing slowly homeward in the shining of the sun a +wagon fresh lined with straw, on which lay a homely mother, smiling with old +lips; and above her, on the seat, humbly bowed in his Sunday suit, a +gray-haired man whose cheeks were wet with tears. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a> +BARNEY DOON, BRAGGART</h2> + +<h3>BY PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS</h3> + +<p> +The nine dusty citizens of Bitter Hole, having one and all proposed, +unsuccessfully, for the hand of Miss Sally Wooster, had about concluded that +Bitter Water Valley was a desert, after all, when they finally thought to turn +their attention once again to Barney Doon, the cook. +</p> + +<p> +Let it here be stated, nevertheless, there was one thing to prove that the +valley was a desert, despite the presence of Barney, and that was the face of +the country itself. One-half of that whole Nevada area was a great white +blister, forty miles long and fifteen wide, acrid with alkali, flat, barren, +and harsh as a sheet of zinc. The valley’s remaining territory was covered with +gray, dry scrub, four inches high, through which the dusty Overland stage-route +was crookedly scratched. +</p> + +<p> +Bitter Hole was the station for the stage. In it flourished the nine dusty +citizens, a dusty dog, and a dusty chicken, in addition to Barney and the buxom +Miss Sally, whose father was among the citizens enumerated. At the end of the +street was a hole, or well, the waters of which, being not precisely fatal to +men and horses, had occasioned the growth of the place, there being no other +water for leagues along the road. +</p> + +<p> +Here in this land, even when Sally had scorned them, each in turn, the men of +the Hole were still agreed there could be no desolation where Barney Doon had +residence. Purely and simply they loved the little cook for the fiery +suddenness of his temper and the ingenuity of the insults of which he was never +guiltless. The sulphurous little demon was, as the miners and teamsters +estimated, “only two sizes bigger than a full-grown jack-rabbit.” What he +lacked in size, however, he more than supplied in expression of countenance. +His eyes were centres of incandescence, while the meagre supply of hair he grew +bristled redly out from beside his ears like ill-ordered spears. Indeed, such a +red-whiskered, bald-headed little parcel of fireworks as Barney was is rarely +created. +</p> + +<p> +Calmly considered, it is hardly a matter for marvel that Barney had, from time +to time, accommodated every individual in the Hole with a quarrel. Moreover, he +had challenged each to mortal combat. Indeed, he had never been known to do +anything less. Barney was a challenger first and a cook incidentally. But, +ancient and modern tradition through, there never was chronicle of actual +encounter in which the fierce little cook cut figure. +</p> + +<p> +And, as a matter of fact, the men esteemed him perhaps somewhat more for the +skill and adroitness with which he invariably squirmed out of impending +engagements, than they did for all the alacrity and pyrotechnics with which he +was wont to surround himself with duelsome entanglements. The boys well knew +that if blood were unlet till the bragging, hot little rogue of a Barney +stained his record, they would all forget the color of a wound. +</p> + +<p> +It was not without some elemental enthusiasm that the camp, one evening, +extended its welcome to a mule-driver newly mustered to their company. The +sobriquet by which the man was duly introduced was Slivers. He was swiftly +appraised and as quickly assimilated, after which there was only one process +required to complete his initiation, namely, that of preparing his mind for a +“racket” with Barney Doon. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t lose no time, but git right in at supper,” instructed John Tuttle, for +the group. “Jest bang him with any old insult you can think of, and leave the +rest to Barney. Trot out a plain, home-made slap at the fodder he’s dishin’ up, +fer instance. And when he comes at you with a challenge, don’t fergit your +privilege of pickin’ out the weapons—savvy?” +</p> + +<p> +It chanced that the moment selected for the entertainment was most propitious, +inasmuch as Barney had that day declared his devotion to Sally Wooster, and had +duly desired her big red hand for his own, only to hear a wild peal of laughter +in reply, and to find himself boosted bodily out of the window by the hearty +young lady herself. He was not, therefore, exactly in a mood of milk and honey. +</p> + +<p> +It never had failed, and it did not fail to-night, that Barney should conceive +himself more than half insulted merely by the sight of a stranger appearing at +the board and calmly requiring the wherewithal to satisfy a mountain appetite. +Accordingly, when the miners and teamsters all came filing in, dusty, angular, +raw-looking of countenance, Barney instantly detected the presence of Slivers +among them, and his eyes “lit up shop” without delay. +</p> + +<p> +Slivers, to speak the truth, was easily seen. He was framed like a sky-scraping +building, with the girders all plainly suggested. Not without a certain +insolence of deliberation, he stared about the room before assuming his seat, +and provoked himself to a sneer of opera-bouffe proportions. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re his meat already,” whispered one of the men. “Set down.” +</p> + +<p> +Comrade Slivers thereupon proceeded to comport himself with a studied +indifference to the cook which was duly galling. In a grim silence that all who +knew him comprehended, Barney went about the table glowering with ferocity. +Edging closer and closer to Slivers, the little man seemed itching in his ears +to catch some careless word that might, by dint of inventiveness, be construed +as a personal affront. +</p> + +<p> +“I can see you ain’t got no cook in the camp,” said Slivers, loudly, to his +neighbor, when Barney was directly behind his chair. “Has that pizened little +boy I seen a while ago been playin’ keep-house with the grub?” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter with the grub, you scion of the wild-ass family?” demanded +Barney, exploding like a fulminate. +</p> + +<p> +Slivers looked around and scowled. “Git out, you yawping brat,” said he. “You +must have been losin’ hair for years—one hair a day—for everything you don’t +know about decent grub. Go look at yer head, and figure out your ignorance.” +</p> + +<p> +Sensitive concerning the trackless Sahara which his pate presented, Barney +clapped his hand upon it instantly. He could scarcely speak, for rage. +</p> + +<p> +“You—dead lizard!” finally spurted from his safety-valve. “You mongrel viper! +Low-bred ooze, disowned and outcast, I’ll spoil a grave with your carcass for +this! You jelly of cowardice, meet me to-morrow for satisfaction, or I’ll swing +you about by the tongue, and hurl you to pulp against the sty of a pig!” +</p> + +<p> +Even Slivers somewhat gasped. +</p> + +<p> +“Meet you?” he retorted, arising, to tower above his foeman like a mast. “Iron +me, Johnny!—if I can crawl in the hole to find you where you’re hidin’ I’ll +make you wish for hair a mile long, to stand on your head in your pitiful +scare!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, fie! Oh, bah!” said the cook, scanning the teamster’s length with +ill-concealed awe. “Buzzard, you toy with languages. To-morrow I shall throw +tomato-cans in scorn to build your monument.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” answered Slivers. “To-morrow suits me, and we’ll fight it out +bareback on buckin’ broncos, out in the small corral, each feller armed with a +stockin’ full of rocks for a weapon.” +</p> + +<p> +Barney stared for a moment in consternation at the man before him. He had +previously grown accustomed to the horrors suggested by pistols, knives, +red-hot branding-irons, and even pitchforks, but rocks in a stocking—that +smacked of barbarism. Moreover, to mount on the back of a bronco, wild or +tame—the very meditation made the walls drop out of his stomach. However, he +smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Child’s play!” he answered, with fine disgust. “You warty infant! No matter, +an odious child would become a more detestable reptile! Till to-morrow, don’t +speak to me—don’t speak to me! Or I shall cheat myself of the morning’s +pastime.” And with that he strode haughtily away. +</p> + +<p> +“Howlin’ coyotes!” said Slivers, when he met the gaze of a dozen pair of +gleaming eyes. “Take him dose for dose he’s worse than pizen! By gar! just see +if he burned any holes in my shirt.” +</p> + +<p> +Nearly all night long, however, little Barney lay awake, wildly fashioning +excuses to avoid that horrid duel in the morning. He had always escaped by a +margin so narrow that no precedent of the past gave assurance of luck for the +future. He was mortally afraid that at last he had challenged such a monster of +brute courage, malignity, and strength that nothing terrestrial could avert his +untimely demise. +</p> + +<p> +Then in the morning the first sight that met his troubled gaze was that of +Slivers rounding up a pair of unbroken ponies, as wild as meteors, in the field +of honor, hard by the camp. Every cell in Barney’s structure was in a panic. +How he managed to walk to the water-bench to wash was more than he knew. After +that there was no retreat. The citizens of Bitter Hole surrounded him, +according to preconcerted arrangement, and began to coach him for his fight. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney, you’d better have a jolt of whiskey in yer vitals,” suggested one. +“Slivers is a regular expert with a stockin’ of rocks.” +</p> + +<p> +“If I was you, Barney,” said Tuttle, “I’d leave my bronco throw me right at +him. Then. I’d turn in the air and soak my heels into Slivers’s grub-basket and +knock him into pieces small enough to smoke in a cigarette.” +</p> + +<p> +“Barney,” counselled another, “you take my advice and fight standin’ up on your +hoss, so you can jump over onto Slivers’s bronco and cram your stockin’ of +rocks down that there mule-driver’s neck and choke him clean to death.” +</p> + +<p> +They were “herding” the speechless Barney toward the corral, in which the two +vicious ponies had now been confined. Slivers himself came forward. +</p> + +<p> +“Leave me see how much the little scarecrow has shrunk in the night,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +Barney’s wrath was kindled by this. He opened his mouth to deliver a broadside +of verbal grape and canister, when he was suddenly interrupted. +</p> + +<p> +A shot and a yell, from down the road, startled every man in camp. Two, three, +five more shots barked in swift succession. Miss Sally Wooster herself was +drawn from the house by the fusillade. +</p> + +<p> +With Comanche-like whoops, a horseman came dashing madly toward the men, +brandishing two huge revolvers as he rode. +</p> + +<p> +“Skete, and drunk in the morning,” said Tuttle. +</p> + +<p> +A moment later the rider scattered the population as he rode his weltering pony +through the group. +</p> + +<p> +“You lubbers, celebrate!” he yelled, discharging a weapon three times in a +second. “There’s been a baby born at Red Shirt Canyon! We git in the census! We +git on the map! Big Matt Sullivan’s wife has got a little boy!” +</p> + +<p> +“A boy!” said Sally Wooster. “Oh my!” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that all?” inquired John Tuttle, on behalf of his somewhat indignant +townsmen. “Red Shirt’s thirty-seven miles away. We’ve got something more +exciting than that right here in camp.” +</p> + +<p> +“Red Shirt’s in this same county,” protested the horseman, a trifle +crestfallen. “I thought you fellers was patriotic.” +</p> + +<p> +Barney Doon threw out his chest and swaggered forward. +</p> + +<p> +“Patriotic?” he echoed. “Doggone us, we’re the biggest patriots on the coast! +No man is a gentleman who wouldn’t be a gentleman on such an occasion as this. +Skete, you’ve saved the life of yonder braggart,” and he pointed to Slivers. “I +couldn’t be a gentleman and slay him when a child’s been born in this here +county. Slivers, you can go your way, without alarm.” +</p> + +<p> +“What!” demanded Tuttle. “No fight? All on account of a baby?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I ever!” added Sally Wooster. +</p> + +<p> +A third disgusted person queried, “What’s a baby got to do with a duel, and the +kid near forty miles away?” +</p> + +<p> +To this one Barney turned with pitying scorn. “You don’t know how easy it is to +disturb a new-born baby,” said he. “There ain’t a man but me in camp knows how +to behave himself in a holy moment like this here, and I ain’t a-goin’ to kill +no man when a sacred thing like that has went and happened.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, durn his slippery hide!” grumbled Tuttle. “He’s gittin’ too smart!” +</p> + +<p> +The men were all grinning, including Slivers. +</p> + +<p> +“I reckon Barney knows as much about a baby as a hop-toad knows about +arithmetic,” said Wooster, winking prodigiously. “He’s got us all square beat +on kids.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know about that,” replied a lanky individual who had sobered amazingly +at the news from Red Shirt Canyon. “I’ve saw a kid or two myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“That so, Moody?” said Slivers. “Well, say, maybe we could work up a bet +between you and Barney, to see which knows the most about a youngster.” +</p> + +<p> +Barney broke in abruptly. “I’ll bet a million dollars I know more about +children than all you cusses put together! There ain’t a one of you knows how +many teeth a baby’s got when he’s born.” +</p> + +<p> +The challenge produced a solemn stillness. +</p> + +<p> +“W-e-l-l, I know they don’t git their eyes open for a week,” asserted Moody. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re clear off, first crack,” retorted Barney. “It’s nine days, instead of a +week.” +</p> + +<p> +Again the men were awed to silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, that’s right—Barney’s correct,” presently admitted citizen Wooster. +</p> + +<p> +“You old ninnies!” said his daughter Sally, and she turned away to go to the +house. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, anyway,” said Slivers, after a brisk bit of widespread conversation with +Tuttle, “we’ve got a scheme. Barney wants to match himself against the whole +shebang in knowin’ about a kid, and we’re goin’ to fetch a young un to the Hole +and leave him prove his claim.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not Sullivan’s?” gasped Barney, suddenly overwhelmed at the prospect of +proving his erudition on an infant so tender, with a father so brawny. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind whose,” replied the teamster. “You sit quiet and look pretty, and +we’ll provide the kid.” +</p> + +<p> +This they did. The following morning, at daylight, Tuttle and Slivers +reappeared at camp, from a pilgrimage, and the mule-driver held in his arms a +little red Indian papoose, as fat, dimpled, and pretty as a cherub, and as +frightened as a captive baby rabbit. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, then,” said the man, placing his charge on the floor, in the midst of a +circle of wondering citizens, “there’s your kid. Never mind where we got +him—there he is. Barney takes charge of him every other day, and the rest of us +by turns in between—all that cares to enter the race.” +</p> + +<p> +The news having spread, Miss Sally Wooster was among the astonished spectators +who beheld the tiny, half-naked, frightened little chieftain-to-be, gazing +timidly about him as he sat on the planks, gripping his own little shirt as his +one and only acquaintance. +</p> + +<p> +“Lauk!” she said, and laughing immoderately, sped for the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Sally, you ain’t to help neither Barney nor us!” called Tuttle. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you worry,” she answered. “It ain’t no pie of mine.” +</p> + +<p> +The men continued to look at their “young un” in no small quandary of +helplessness. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a pretty little cuss,” said one of the miners, after a moment. “I +wouldn’t guess him for more than a yearlin’.” +</p> + +<p> +Moody coughed nervously. “One of the first things to do for a child,” he +ventured, “is to git a thimble to rub on his teeth.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s right,” said a friend. “My mother used to do that regular.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter with putting pants on him fairly early in the fight?” +inquired the next man of wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +“First thing my mother always done for us was to make us a bib,” drawled one +fidgety fellow, tentatively. +</p> + +<p> +“He’d orter be told never to drink, ner chew, ner smoke, ner swear, ner gamble, +’fore it gits too late,” added a miner who carefully eschewed all and sundry of +these virtues. +</p> + +<p> +“Stub-tailed idiots!” said Barney, in huge disgust. +</p> + +<p> +All eyes focussed on the fiery little cook. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then,” demanded Tuttle, “what is the first thing to do for a little kid +like him?” +</p> + +<p> +“The first thing?” answered Barney. “The first thing is—Do you think I’m going +to tell you lop-eared galoots all I know about a baby? What I want to know is +if he’s had a bite to eat?” +</p> + +<p> +“What did you think we’d feed him?” asked Slivers. “Do we look like his +mother?” +</p> + +<p> +“Git away, you venomous scum, and let me have him!” demanded Barney. +</p> + +<p> +“Hold on,” interrupted Tuttle. “The first day he goes to the feller he picks +out himself, only you come last, bein’ the challenger. We’ll arrange things +alphabetical. Adams, you git first shot, to find out if you’re popular with the +little skeesicks.” +</p> + +<p> +Adams turned redder than usual, which is saying much. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah—I don’t know nuthin’ about kids,” he confessed. “Catherwood—see what he can +do.” +</p> + +<p> +Catherwood also proved to be modest. After him Farnham and Lane waived their +alphabetical privilege. +</p> + +<p> +Moody, as nervous as a girl, approached the dumb little man on the floor, and +twisting the corner of his coat, inquired in a trembling voice, “Does Bunny +love old Goo-goo?” +</p> + +<p> +The child looked up with a frightened little query in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d hate to scare him,” Moody added. “I don’t mind seein’ how he takes to +Barney.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, give Barney a show,” said Wooster. +</p> + +<p> +Something had been happening to the cook. The tenseness had gone from his +usually wiry little body; his eyes were milder; a curve was softening his +mouth. Kneeling before the child, he held forth his arms. +</p> + +<p> +“Baby want to go by-by?” he said, and tenderly lifting the little man, he bore +him away, while the men looked on in silence. +</p> + +<p> +Half an hour later the man who peeked through the keyhole reported that Barney +was singing the youngster to sleep. The words of the song are not readily +conveyed, but they sounded like— +</p> + +<p> +<br/> + “Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,<br/> + Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,<br/> + Allonsum sum-sum bill-din,” +</p> + +<p> +repeated times without number. Barney called it an Indian lullaby. As sung it +was equally good Cherokee, Chinese, or Russian, being Barney’s clearest +recollection and interpretation of a song which his mother once had droned. +</p> + +<p> +On the third day following, Slivers, Tuttle, and others held a council of war. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney’s goin’ to clean up the whole works of us,” said the mule-driver, +“unless we can manage to work some better combination.” +</p> + +<p> +“What can we do?” inquired Tuttle. “The kid sure likes him best.” +</p> + +<p> +“That wasn’t the point. It’s a game of how much we all know about a young un as +against little Barney. Now, Moody, on the square, do you think you know as much +as him?” +</p> + +<p> +“He knows more than you’d think,” confessed Moody. “The—the only little kid I +ever had—she died—ten months old.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—that was hell, sure.” +</p> + +<p> +Some of the men puckered their lips as if to whistle, but made no sound. +</p> + +<p> +“If only we could paint Barney’s face an Irish green, or do something so’s the +kid would be scared to see him, we might win out yet, perhaps,” resumed +Slivers, presently. “Got any ideas?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think Barney could scare him if he tried,” answered Wooster. “Anyhow +the pore little scamp ain’t cried since he come.” +</p> + +<p> +“He ain’t laughed any, either,” added Moody. +</p> + +<p> +There was neither a cry nor a smile that day, though Barney yearned to hear +either one of these baby sounds. The little brown captive clung as always to +his tiny shirt, and watched Barney’s face with big, brown, questioning eyes. +The cook had forgotten his boast. To hold the wee bit of babyhood against his +heart, to coax him to eat, to yearn over him, love him, fondle him—these were +his passions. A fierce parental jealousy grew in Barney’s nature. +</p> + +<p> +But the hour arrived when jealousy changed to a deeper emotion—to worry. All +Barney actually knew of a child came through the intuitions of a natural +father’s heart, but little as this amounted to, Barney was aware that a tiny +scamp like this should eat and sleep and creep about and crow. And the little +brown “Bunny” had done not one of the pretty baby tricks. +</p> + +<p> +The fiery little cook’s new concern was at first concealed. With growing +reluctance every time, he resigned the little man to Moody’s care as the +“contest” required. One night, however, when the dumb, sad bit of an Indian was +with Moody, the man was aroused from his dreams by some one’s presence. It was +Barney, too worried to sleep, surreptitiously come to the tiny captive’s +fruit-box cradle, and gently urging the wee bronze man to eat of some gruel +prepared at that silent hour of the darkness. He was willing that Moody should +have the credit of taking good care of the motherless baby, if only the child +could be made a little more happy. Thereafter, by night and day, the cook was +hovering about the uncomplaining little chieftain; and Moody understood. +</p> + +<p> +By some of the mystic workings of nature, Barney’s love and worry extended to +Sally. Hiding her feelings from all the men, even from Barney himself, she +could not quell the upgush of emotion in her bosom, as she snatched the little +Indian once, in secret, to her heart. Without the courage, as yet, to hear the +men ridicule her weakness, she nevertheless contrived to place a hundred little +comforting things in Barney’s path, as he went his rounds of mothering his sad +little wild thing from the hills. Her heart began to ache, as it swelled to +take in the child and Barney Doon. +</p> + +<p> +The men had lost all spirit of fun in the contest, even to Slivers, who strove, +however, to see it through in a bluff, rough-hearted way. +</p> + +<p> +Unexpectedly all of it came to a crisis. It was early in the morning. After a +sleepless night Barney had gone in desperate parent-care to receive his +foundling back from Moody. In one keen glance he had finally perceived what all +their folly was leading to, at last. +</p> + +<p> +With the dumb little chap on his arm he hastened to the dining-shed, where all +the men, save Tuttle, were awaiting breakfast. +</p> + +<p> +“You brutes had no right to steal this child!” he cried out, passionately. +“He’s starving! He’s pining away! Look at his thin little legs! Look at his +poor little eyes—getting hollow!” Tears were streaming from his own tired eyes +as he spoke. “Slivers, you did this!” he charged, angrily. “You tell me where +you got him, or I’ll shoot you down like a dog!” He had hastened up to the +teamster, against whose very breast he thrust a pistol a foot in length. +</p> + +<p> +“By God! he’d do it!” said Slivers, unmoved by the push of the loaded weapon. +“Uncock it, Barney. You’d ought to know I wouldn’t harm the kid, any quicker +than you. I’d do as much as any man if we had to save his life.” +</p> + +<p> +“He may not live through the day!” cried Barney. “I’m going to take him +home—back to his mother! And if you don’t tell me where she is—” +</p> + +<p> +“Hold on, now; I call,” interrupted Slivers. “We’ll see if you’ve got any sand. +The Injun camp is over across the desert, in Thimbleberry Cove.... Do you +reckon you’ve got the nerve to pack him across?” +</p> + +<p> +A peculiar silence followed this announcement. Barney stood like an animal at +bay. His face became deathly white. He fully comprehended the awfulness of that +great white dead-land just outside. +</p> + +<p> +Wooster broke the silence. “It looks as if the wind is going to blow harder +to-day,” he said. “It’s stirring up the desert some already. A man could never +get two miles out from here, unless the breeze goes down.” +</p> + +<p> +Barney, with a crazed, wild look on his face, hastened away to the kitchen. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad he didn’t take you up on that,” said Moody, gazing forth from a +window. “Get on to the way the whirlwinds are kickin’ up the smoke already.” +</p> + +<p> +“I reckon it won’t blow no worse than yesterday,” replied Slivers. “But I +knowed he wouldn’t tackle it anyhow. He’ll be back here in a minute, to squirm +out of the game.” +</p> + +<p> +They drummed on the table for fifteen minutes, as they waited. A brisk wind was +blowing; the desert began to deliver up its cohorts of dust-clouds, where +powdered alkali billowed and eddied and swept across the valley in +ever-increasing volumes. +</p> + +<p> +“Peek in the kitchen and see what Barney’s up to now,” prompted Slivers, +nudging Adams as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, he’ll be back directly,” said Adams. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s somebody comin’ now,” added Catherwood, presently. “Maybe it’s—” +</p> + +<p> +“Sally,” muttered Slivers, who meditated proposing for the hand of the buxom +Miss Wooster. +</p> + +<p> +She came toward them almost fiercely. Her face was white. She too had detected +the change come upon the tiny Indian captive. All night she had accused herself +of neglect and heartlessness. +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s Barney? Where’s the baby?” she demanded. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney’s maybe striking off for Thimbleberry Cove,” answered Slivers, +smilingly. “He was running a bluff on taking the kid to its mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“But Tuttle told me the mother’s up at Red Shirt Canyon,” said the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” agreed Slivers, uneasily. “We—told him about the Cove to test his +sand.” +</p> + +<p> +Sally gazed at him wildly. “Then—it must have been a man—Barney!—I saw—on the +desert!” she cried, disjointedly. “They’ll die! Oh no, he wouldn’t—” She ran +outside to scan the fearful expanse of alkali, with its gathering blizzard of +dust. +</p> + +<p> +The men, suddenly grown nervous, followed her out of the house. Apparently +there was nothing, far or wide, on the desert, save the sweeping clouds of +white, like drifting snow. +</p> + +<p> +“My God! he wouldn’t tackle that!” said Slivers. +</p> + +<p> +“I hear some one out in the kitchen now,” said Tate. “It must be him.” +</p> + +<p> +Sally ran to see. It was only the dog. She darted forth once more. +</p> + +<p> +“Not there!” she said. “But surely Barney wouldn’t—There! There!” +</p> + +<p> +Her cry rang out so shrilly that even Slivers started. She was pointing +stiffly. The men all stared at the storm of dust. For one brief second the +swirling clouds were reft, revealing, far out eastward, in the dead-land of +white, a small dark object—the form of a man. +</p> + +<p> +One poignant sob was the only sound that Sally made, as she ran toward the +stable. +</p> + +<p> +“Good Lord! it’s him!” said Adams. “Was he heading back this way?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he was,” answered Catherwood. +</p> + +<p> +“He couldn’t—do anything—else,” stammered Slivers. +</p> + +<p> +For a moment no one spoke. +</p> + +<p> +“I reckon I’ll just mosey over to the desert,” drawled the fidgety man. “I’d +hate to have anything go wrong with Barney.” +</p> + +<p> +“Guess I’ll go along myself,” said Adams. +</p> + +<p> +“Boys!” said Slivers, hoarsely, “I’m going to saddle up and git him back! I +didn’t mean no harm when I told him wrong. I didn’t think he’d go. I’d ride +through hell for Barney—or the little Injun, either. You fellers know I didn’t +mean no harm.” +</p> + +<p> +He started at once to get his horse. Before he had covered half the distance to +the stable, Sally suddenly rode forth, bareback, on a buckskin pony, and +heading for the desert, spurred her bronco to a gallop, crying to him wildly as +she went. +</p> + +<p> +“Sally!—Sally—I’ll go!” yelled Slivers. +</p> + +<p> +She seemed not to hear, but ran her pony out upon the white expanse, where the +wreathing dust seemed to swallow both herself and the animal immediately. +</p> + +<p> +Her horse, fleeing swiftly before the wind, carried Sally a mile or two out +from the camp before she reined him in. Believing Barney could have come no +farther than this, she began to search and to call. +</p> + +<p> +At every turn of her head her eyes were blinded by the acrid dust. The stuff +choked her breathing; already her throat was dry. Dust and powder and +snow-of-alkali came from everywhere. It was blowing up her sleeves. It filtered +into and through her clothing. Her ears were quickly coated; her hair was +heavy. +</p> + +<p> +She turned her head from side to side for a breath. The air was thicker than +smoke with dust as heavy as flour. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney!” she called, from time to time, but the alkali coated her tongue. On +either side she could see for a distance of twenty feet, or less. It seemed far +less, in all that terrible drift of white. +</p> + +<p> +She rode across the wind, doggedly, crying Barney’s name. A nameless +hopelessness began to grow upon her. Now this way, now that, she urged her +horse. How far could Barney hear her calling? How far could he wander? How far +would she ride? There were forty miles in length and fifteen in width of this +reek of wind-driven alkali. God keep them if ever they got more than two miles +away from the Hole! +</p> + +<p> +It was aimless riding, presently, but she still persisted. A sickening +conviction that Barney and the little captive would both be dead before she +could find them made her desperation unendurable. With eyes starting hotly, +with every breath seeming like a struggle for existence, in the dust, she +galloped, calling, calling, till at last she could call no more. +</p> + +<p> +Dazed, she halted her horse at last, and sat staring blindly at nothing. The +pony turned about, unheeded, and began to fight his way against the storm, his +head down between his legs. +</p> + +<p> +Sally’s head also came down, by instinct more than by design. She felt past +thinking. For a time she rode thus, heedlessly. Then abruptly she clutched at +the reins and drew the horse to a halt. The animal pricked up his ears +peculiarly. +</p> + +<p> +Weirdly out of the wind and dust came a sound—not a moan, not a croon, but like +them both, yet a song, uncertain, apparently coming from no definitive point. +She even caught the words: +</p> + +<p> + “All on some lonesome bill-din<br/> + The swallow makes her nest; +</p> + +<p> + All on some—lonesome bill-din<br/> + The—swallow makes—her nest.” +</p> + +<p> +Sally tried to call out. She made but a croaking noise. Slipping from her +horse’s back, she groped her way forward, leading the pony, and trying to +shout. +</p> + +<p> +For a rod or more she battled against the driving dust, then halted as before. +Not another sound would the desert render up—only the strange dry swishing by +of the particles of stuff rasping the desert’s surface as they passed and rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney!” she called, by a mighty effort. There was no response. +</p> + +<p> +Crying now, in her anguish and plight, she led the pony this way and that, up +and down, listening, trying to force a shout through her swollen lips. At +length, in despair, she knew she could search no more. A lifelessness of +feeling was creeping upon her. Mechanically she walked beside her pony, and it +was the animal that was leading. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed as if she had plodded onward thus for hours, when at length she +stumbled upon a gray little mound in the drifting alkali. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney!” she said, in a voice scarcely more than a whisper. Crooning and +sobbing, she lifted him up—unconscious, but clinging to the still, little form +that was hugged to the shelter of his breast. +</p> + +<p> +“Hang on—oh, hang on to the horse, dear, please,” she coaxed, in all the tender +strength of a new-born love. “Barney—try—try, dear, please. I’ll be your +wife—I’ll do anything—if only you’ll try.” +</p> + +<p> +She had raised him bodily to the pony’s back. Stiffly as a man that freezes he +straddled the animal. He made no answer, no movement. She feared he must be +dead. She dared not look at the little papoose. Barney’s weight rested +partially upon her shoulder. She tossed away the reins. +</p> + +<p> +“Go on, Sancho—go on home,” she croaked to the horse, passionately. +</p> + +<p> +The pony seemed to comprehend. With some faint fragrance of the waters of +Bitter Hole in his nostrils, the willing creature fought slowly, steadily +forward, against the terrible drift. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +John Tuttle and Henry Wooster descried a group, like a sculpture in whitened +stone endowed with life, creep strangely out from the blizzard of alkali. A +blinded horse, with head bent low, bearing on its back a motionless man, and +led by a stumbling, blinded girl, against whose shoulder the helpless rider +leaned, came with ghostlike slowness and silence toward them. +</p> + +<p> +And all day long, one by one, more men came forth, like ghosts, from the +dead-land. But the twilight had come and the wind had died away before teamster +Slivers limped from the desert. He came afoot. He had ridden his horse to +death, in his desperate quest. He could barely see—and his hair was white, even +below the coating of the dust. +</p> + +<p> +Moody ran to meet him. +</p> + +<p> +“Barney?—Sally?—the kid?” the teamster demanded, raucously. +</p> + +<p> +“Back—and goin’ to live,” said Moody. “The Injuns up to Red Shirt heard where +the little feller was and was goin’ on the war-trail, sudden, but the mother +came down on the stage to-day,—and got her pretty little kid.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, God! I didn’t deserve it!” said Slivers, and letting himself fall limply +to the earth, he lay with his face in the curve of his arm and shook with +emotion. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a> +THE REPARATION</h2> + +<h3>BY EMERY POTTLE</h3> + +<p> +He looked up from the desk where he had been sitting for the last hour, his +head down on his arms, trying to shut out the brave, old cry of life coming in +through the open windows, pulling gently at his heart, cheeping through the +darkened room as lightly and as blithely as the birds in the horse-chestnut +tree just outside—the brave cry of life that, somehow, for all its clamorous +traditions, seemed just then something peaceful, something that held release, +freedom. +</p> + +<p> +He stared about him, furtively, for an instant, as if instinctively on his +guard against an unwelcome eye. Then, presently, he smiled, and going to a +window, pushed open the blinds, leaning, with elbows on the sill, gratefully +out into the rectangular enclosure, walled in high by houses, where the late +afternoon sun glanced with uncertain warmth on the horse-chestnut. +</p> + +<p> +There was now, he told himself, no use of evading or denying it longer; right +or wrong, things had come to a point with him where anything but the truth was +unbearable; it was there, like a live thing with him in the room, and out in +the court, too,—almost as if he could put out his hand and draw it in close to +him. Freedom, that was it. His lips made the word noiselessly, again and again, +fascinated with the sensation. “Free, free,” he kept whispering, stretching out +his hands greedily, drawing in full breaths of the late September air. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad, that’s all there is to it—glad. I can’t help being glad—I’ve tried, +too, but now, to-day, it’s bound to come out. Glad! It’s like being let out of +school.” +</p> + +<p> +That word—school—brought him back sharply. It seemed to precipitate all the old +worry in the solution that but a moment ago was so clear. He came back +hesitatingly from the window and threw himself down before the desk again, +unable to restrain something he vaguely named his conscience from its weary +accusations. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s an awful thing. It’s true, it is. I’m a beast. I’m all wrong to be like +this. It’s a terrible thing to be glad a person is—” He shivered as he withheld +the end of the sentence, though he realized his cowardice in so withholding. +“And that person your—” Again he hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +Haldane, by the desk, was a figure to make, involuntarily, demands on one’s +sympathy. It seemed all his life—perhaps thirty years long—he had been doing +this in one way or another, and by no effort of his. People had a fashion of +“looking out for him.” Not that he had grown up particularly incapable or +helpless; it might rather have been due to a certain appealing gentleness of +bearing, something that was the resultant of a half-shy manner, expanding into +boyish confidence winningly; a shortish, slender figure, scarcely robust; +eager, friendly brown eyes behind his glasses; and a keen desire to be liked. +It might be seen, in the present sharp nervous play of emotion over his face, +how utterly he was unsuited to the weight of mental discomfort,—how it fretted +and galled him. That he was a gentleman, and by nature of a morbidly just and +fair disposition, only made his present distress the more intolerable to him. +</p> + +<p> +“Lord God,” he muttered, hopelessly, “why, <i>why</i> had it all to be?” And +this question might, in the end, be taken as an aimless appeal to the Almighty +to know why He had deliberately led him into a wretchedly miserable condition +of mind and left him there. +</p> + +<p> +It was the day after Ida’s burial—Haldane’s wife’s burial. A week ago he had +taken her to a city hospital, and she had died there—she and her baby—in the +night, away from Haldane. He had gone dazedly, very conscientiously, through +the dreadful, relentless activity that follows immediately on the heels of +death; there was some alleviation in the thought that everything had been done +just as <i>she</i> would have liked to have it. To-day the house was free of +the grieving, sickening smell of flowers; the last of the people had mercifully +fulfilled their duty to Ida and him and had gone, leaving him the humiliation +of their honest, warm-hearted words and halting phrases of sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +“Great God!” he had kept saying to himself as he listened to them, “if you +<i>knew</i>,—if you <i>knew</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +At times he felt, as he thought of those friends, secretly resentful. “If it +hadn’t been for them, I don’t believe I,” he caught himself saying—“I’d ever +have married.” But again he stopped his mental train abruptly. It was such a +wearisome business, this “being fair”—he put it so—to <i>her</i>; this +conscientious erasing of self-justification which he felt to be so unworthy. It +would have been such a relief to Haldane to be, for an hour, obliviously +selfish in his estimate of his two years of marriage with Ida. +</p> + +<p> +There had been nothing, after all, remarkable in Haldane’s experience—save for +him; nothing very far removed from the commonplace. His father—a simple-hearted +musician—had trained his son in music since the days when the lad could first +hold a violin under his little chin. He had died when the boy was twenty, and +Haldane had gone on, contentedly enough and absorbed, to take his father’s +place among the violins of an orchestra, and to teach music. As he grew older +his father’s friends told him he was leading a wretchedly lonely life; that he +ought to marry. And at this Haldane smiled his deprecating, affectionate +smile—a smile that, somehow, convinced his advisers in their own wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +When Ida Locke came to live in a hall bedroom of the untidy boarding-house +Haldane for years had called home, it was not long before she, too, quite +unaffectedly, took to the idea that the good-natured musician needed “looking +after.” And since, all her life, she had tremendously given herself to the care +of people around her, it was no unusual experience—she sought it frankly, +importantly. +</p> + +<p> +It is scarcely probable that, in the beginning, any thought of ultimate +marriage entered her head. Those who knew her invariably said, “Ida is a +sensible girl.” Rather, her “looking after” Haldane took itself out in the +hearty channels of dry boots, overshoes, tea of late afternoons, candid +suggestions as to proper winter underwear, remedies for his frequent colds. +This solicitude—which was, in essence, quite maternal—made a bond between the +two; this and the fact that they both were workers—for Ida taught English in a +private school. +</p> + +<p> +It is hardly necessary to elaborate their romance, if it was such, from this +point. Gradually, hastened by the awful propinquity in a third-rate +boarding-house, Haldane really came to believe—as along the line of least +resistance—in his personal incapacity and his loneliness; gradually Ida Locke +began to realize that, for the first time, this Love she had read of and +dreamed of doubtfully had become a reality for her. She was not a little amazed +and gratified at its plain practicability—its <i>sensibleness</i>, she put it. +</p> + +<p> +That she so liked him—indeed, he liked <i>her</i> enormously, he +considered—assured Haldane in his moments of misgiving. The very largeness in +her ample effect of good looks, her genius for managing his affairs and hers, +her prim neatness of dress, her utter freedom from any sort of weak dependence +on him, her uncompromising rigidity of moral attitude, and, above all, her +<i>goodness</i> to him—this convinced him of her ultimate fitness to be a wife +to him; and it must be said that he had never heretofore given anything but the +scantest attention to the matter of sentimental attachments; it had not +occurred to him, definitely, that he was even likely some day to fall +splendidly in love. +</p> + +<p> +So when he asked her, shyly, gently, to marry him she consented frankly—too +frankly, Haldane almost admitted. And since, in the world as she knew it, men +did not ask women to marry them unless they loved them really, she took much +for granted, and began, at once, to look for a cheap flat. +</p> + +<p> +Ida gave up her teaching when they married and went to their Harlem flat. +Indeed, she considered this her domestic right; now, after almost a dozen +years—she was older than Haldane—of instruction, she wanted “to rest, and keep +house,” she told her husband. +</p> + +<p> +Then, suddenly, illogically perhaps, after not more than three months of it, +Haldane knew it was all quite intolerable to him. Before the desk to-day, Ida’s +desk, he saw luminously just how intolerable it had been—these two years of +marriage. +</p> + +<p> +The more irritatingly unbearable, too, it was because of the excellence of +Ida’s qualities—qualities he had taken humorously before marriage, but which +later he had to take seriously. He began to hate her constant and intimate +possession of his motives and tastes, her inquiries as to what he ate for +lunch, and whether he considered his flannels quite adequate. He childishly +resented her little nagging economies—and especially because he knew they were +generally necessary. He chafed at the practical, sensible view he was argued +resolutely into on every matter. What made it hard was that Haldane could not +decently account for his revulsion of feeling toward Ida, now she was his wife. +Worse than all, he saw how lightly she held in esteem his music—his one real +love. To her it was a graceful trade to earn a living by—nothing else. And when +she finally made it out that in his position in the orchestra he was likely +never to rise much higher, unconsciously the fiddling seemed to her rather more +of a small business. She told him he ought to be more ambitious. +</p> + +<p> +One night Haldane had played to Ida—he resented so her name Ida—parts of the +score of a light opera he had been at work on for years;—he would never play it +on the boarding-house piano. +</p> + +<p> +The moment was as vivid for Haldane now as it was then. He could hear again her +brisk cheerful voice when he had finished and was waiting—more hopeful than he +had ever yet been with her: “That’s <i>pretty</i>. It’s funny—isn’t it, +dear?—to think you made it up out of your own head. I never <i>could</i> +understand—Leonard, have you got entirely rid of your sore throat?—Why don’t +you try to sell some of your little tunes?” +</p> + +<p> +The disappointment of it all, for an instant, had brought angry tears to his +eyes. He remembered now just the bitter hopelessness of feeling how she had +failed him—and the remembrance hurt anew. That night he had seen almost clearly +how it was to be with him and her in all the years to come. +</p> + +<p> +There was, in Haldane’s subsequent attitude toward the question of his marriage +to Ida Locke, nothing worth the name of heroic. Indeed, looked at from the +commonplace, critical standpoint, the situation was not so bad. It was +Haldane’s personal conception of it which caused the difficulty. Probably it +was his sense of fairness to <i>her</i> which made him accept matters +quietly—as he did accept them. It was his comfort to-day, out of all the ruck +of his artificial self-reproach, that Ida had never known—as he said—how he +felt toward her. +</p> + +<p> +“She never knew,” he repeated often, “she never knew. She couldn’t, I’m sure. +Thank God for that!” +</p> + +<p> +What she had never known was, in Haldane’s mind, his real idea of her as his +wife. For he had been very kind; he had patiently let her look out for him; he +had kept the fret of his heart off his tongue, and the sulkiness of his temper +off his face. What he had not succeeded in doing, however, was to keep the hurt +of his soul out of his eyes. So they had gone on with it for the two years, +with a prospect of going on with it forever, Haldane growing daily quieter, +more reserved, if anything more gently kind, and more pathetically hopeless. +With Ida it was, rather, a large, legitimate outlet for all the sensibleness, +practicality, capable qualities, she so generously possessed. It seemed to her, +when she knew her child was coming, that she was wonderfully reaching the +culmination of womanhood and wifehood. Yet, after all, it had been but just +death for Ida. +</p> + +<p> +All this was running through Haldane’s brain as he sat, on the day after his +wife’s burial, before her little oak desk. And the result he had to make out of +it was always the same: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m glad it’s over. I’m <i>glad</i>.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The room seemed less burdensome when he came back to it late that night. +Oppressed with the hatefulness of his attitude of the afternoon, Haldane had +seized his hat and had fled out into the streets. He had dined at a restaurant, +a thing he had not done in years, and had listened to a bad orchestra play +cheerful tunes—tunes that somehow livened him up, stayed comfortably in his +mind afterwards. Every one he saw seemed so happy. He assured himself that +happiness—a quiet content, at least—was to be <i>his</i> now. Why not? Why +disguise the fact that he was really, underneath, glad? So he smiled and +lingered and sipped his coffee, feeling suddenly the beautiful realization that +he was again of the world—irresponsible, careless. Coming back into the dull +flat was not half the gloomy effort he had fancied it was going to be. For one +blessed thing, he came when he chose. Besides, something had given him a sense +of his right, his cheerful right, to be as he liked, what he liked. Haldane +went about the tiny rooms humming gently; he played softly on the piano some +old love-songs he had composed when he was twenty—things <i>she</i> had never +heard. +</p> + +<p> +Presently he sat down, lighted a fresh cigarette, and set himself to thinking +out matters anew. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a mistake, that’s all,” he said, at last. “And that’s plain. A mistake +for me. But now it’s all over and done with. There’s nothing to be got out of +this endless accusing and regret over something that couldn’t be helped—helped, +at least, after it was once started.... I’ll always wear my hurt of it; that I +know. It hurts like the devil to think I didn’t—couldn’t—give her the love she +ought to have had. If there were any way—any possible way of reparation, ... +but I suppose there isn’t. Nothing except to live decently and honorably—if +that’s reparation. Thank God, ’tisn’t as if there were any other woman mixed up +in it—I haven’t got that to worry me at any rate. I wonder whether a man gets +his punishment for—but no, you can’t help feeling, and being, and loving, just +as it comes. It’s this dreadful unconventionality of—not really liking—loving a +person you are supposed to love that warps your judgment. And we lie about it +to ourselves and to others till when we have to face the real truth we go all +to pieces.... But, just the same, I’d feel so much easier if there <i>were</i> +only some way I could make it up to Ida now that she’s gone. Poor Ida, poor +Ida.” +</p> + +<p> +Haldane’s eyes strayed to the little, cheap desk again, and for a moment the +distress of the afternoon was renewed. But he resolutely threw off the accusing +mood he so feared. There was a pile of letters lying there—letters that he had +had neither the time nor the heart to look into for the past week. He picked +them up now with relief at finding something tangible to be done. Most of them +were letters of consolation and sympathy for him from his friends and hers; the +worn phrases one can so little avoid in such missives touched him with a sense +of their dual ineffectuality. Other letters were addressed to Ida—commonplace +messages and bills which she had not been able to open. And there was one from +her mother—written evidently before she had heard of her daughter’s imminent +illness and death. This last Haldane laid aside until he had finished the +others; and even then he looked at it long and somewhat tenderly before he +opened it. +</p> + +<p> +“It must have come very hard to her; Ida was all she had,” he considered. “It +must have been very hard.” He thought of the tear-stained, illegible letter +Ida’s mother had sent him after she had had his telegram. An illness had +prevented her from coming to the funeral; and she lived so far away, somewhere +in Iowa. Her heart was bleeding for <i>him</i>, she wrote. Her own loss was +almost blotted out in the thought of <i>his</i> terrible grief. He had never +finished it—that letter; he could not. Such words had seemed too sacred for him +to read, feeling as he did. So he had torn it up. +</p> + +<p> +“Ida was very good to her mother,” he reflected; “at least she was +conscientiously always trying to do her best by her, support her and all that. +She took it awfully as a duty—but she did it.” +</p> + +<p> +Once, after they were married, Ida had gone back, for six months, to the +private school that she might have money to send her mother in a sudden +financial stress. Haldane thought of that, too, with keen regret that he had +not been able to earn the necessary money himself—he was ill that winter. Yes, +surely, Ida had been splendid in the matter of her mother. “It’s a pity that +things weren’t so that Ida’s mother could have come to see us here in New +York,” Haldane said, as he opened the envelope—“come before Ida died.” The +letter itself was not long. When he had finished with it—and this only after a +third reading—he laid it down slowly and stared silently at the fine +old-fashioned characters. +</p> + +<p> +“Great God!” he said at last, gently, “the poor old lady!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear daughter,” ran the letter, “mother is so sorry to have to tell you +this now when all your thoughts and energies must be centred on the wonderful +event so soon to happen. It seems to me I’ve always been calling on you for +help and you have done so much. Oh, it hurts me to have to worry and distress +you now, dear. +</p> + +<p> +“The truth is that Mr. Liddell is going to foreclose the mortgage on the house. +He says he cannot wait longer than a week or two. I’ve tried every way to get +the interest, but I can’t do it. The little I had left, your cousin George +invested for me, and now he tells me—I don’t understand it at all—that it’s +quite lost. I know you’ll say I was foolish to let George have it, but he +promised so much—and George has been so good to me. I won’t ask you and Leonard +to give me a home; that would be unfair to you both. I’m so distressed and +upset. Write me, if you can, and tell me what you think is best.” And there was +more in the same distressed key. +</p> + +<p> +Haldane was as near his decision, perhaps, when he laid down the letter as +hours afterward when he stumbled to bed. It was strangely clear to him—the +attitude he was to assume. Not that he did not make a fight of it, and a sharp +fight. But, after all, he knew from the first how it was destined to end. +</p> + +<p> +“I asked for my chance to make it up to her,” he muttered. “Well, I’ve got it, +haven’t I? Isn’t this it? If where <i>she</i> is she knows to-night that I +never loved her—sometimes even hated her—then she knows that I’ll try to pay it +back to her in the only way I can. I’ll bring her mother here to live with +me.... My God! and I wanted so the <i>freedom</i> of it all again, just to feel +<i>free</i>.... No, this is it—my way—I’ll take it. It’s what I owe Ida. I +can’t reason it out logically and I dare say the world would put it straight +that I didn’t have to do this—take her mother—but I will. I wouldn’t feel right +about it in this life or in any next if I didn’t. Yes, that’s the reparation.” +</p> + +<p> +Haldane’s last thought before he slept that night, as it was in the fortnight +before she came, was, “What is Ida’s mother like? I wonder if—she is like—like +Ida?” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It had been six months—a whole winter and more—since Ida’s mother had come to +live with Leonard Haldane. And altogether unexpectedly it had been, for +Haldane, quite the most beautiful winter he had ever spent. As for Ida’s +mother—well, when she was alone her eyes were constantly filling with +tears—tears of thankfulness that the Lord had sent her, in the language of her +frequent prayers of gratitude, a son to stay the declining years of her life—a +son to her who had so wanted a son all these years. +</p> + +<p> +Haldane could never forget that night he had gone, with sharp misgivings, to +the station to meet Mrs. Locke. “I suppose I’m a fool,” he had muttered, as he +paced miserably up and down the draughty, smoky enclosure where her train, +already very late, was to come in. “But it’s my debt to the dead I’m going to +pay.” He added a moment later: “What I shall hate most of all, what will be +hardest to bear, will be her endless sympathy. For she won’t know—she’ll never +know—just how it was between Ida and me.” +</p> + +<p> +He was to look for a “little dried-up, frightened woman in a black bonnet, with +a handkerchief in her left hand”—so Mrs. Locke had written him. Haldane had +smiled at the frank characterization—that, somehow, didn’t sound like Ida’s +spirit in her mother. +</p> + +<p> +She was the last to come out through the iron gate. Almost he had given her up, +she had delayed so long. A little, dried-up, frightened woman in a black +bonnet—that was she. Like a tiny, stray cloud, very nervous and out of place. +Her face was white with fatigue, the excitement of the journey, and the thought +of how she should meet—ought she to call him Leonard? And when Haldane saw her +he suddenly smiled boyishly—as if there could be such a thing as a problem over +this scared, half-tearful, ridiculously pathetic, white-haired old woman with a +black-bordered handkerchief in her shaking left hand. +</p> + +<p> +Before he considered it he had said gently, “Well, mother—” +</p> + +<p> +The tears in her eyes welled over as she gasped in a whisper, “My boy!” +</p> + +<p> +So, after all, there was no awkward, conscious period of adjustment for the +two. They took up their life simply and quite as if it were no new thing to +them both—as if they had come together again after a long separation. And it +was, perhaps, in a way, just that—a coming together of elements that had long +been kept apart. “She’s not like Ida,” Haldane kept saying to himself. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re just like a mother in a storybook; the kind you always want when you +read about them,” Haldane often told her. “You know, I never had one—one that I +remember; mine died so long ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you—you’re—quite my son,” she would answer shyly, her voice trembling with +the joy of it. It was such a regret to her that she hadn’t Leonard’s readiness +of speech and the courage to break down her reserve—for she wanted to tell him, +as she said to herself, just how she felt, just how good he was to her. +</p> + +<p> +So it was a beautiful winter for them both. Naturally there was the fact of Ida +that had to be faced. That was tremendously hard at first. He constantly felt +her grieving for him, for the failure of all his hopes, the wreck of all a man +holds so precious. And there were all the details of Ida’s sickness and death +to be gone over with her mother—the things she had done just before. How she +looked; the quantity of flowers; even what she wore for her burial. +Instinctively Haldane knew how dear these matters were to her, and he went over +them faithfully, effacing his own bitterness of memory as best he might. When +Mrs. Locke hesitatingly asked him one evening if—if Ida had—had <i>said</i> +anything—left any message for <i>her</i>, Haldane’s heart ached for her; Ida +had left no message. He softened it as best he might. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, she didn’t know, couldn’t know, that—that she was going to die. It +was all so sudden, you know, so awfully sudden.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Locke nodded. “Yes—I see. Poor Ida! She did so much for me always.” +</p> + +<p> +After a month or so, quite unconsciously, they ceased to mention Ida. Haldane, +when he thought of it at all—and that with relief—wondered vaguely why Ida’s +mother did not talk more about her. “Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t want to +keep hurting me,” he thought it out, “bless her!” +</p> + +<p> +Gradually the intimacy between Haldane and his mother—for she was quite that to +him—grew into a relation that was as rare as it was tender. They both felt it +keenly. Their talk was all of him, his affairs, his music. He played to her for +hours in the evenings he was not at the orchestra; when he was teaching in the +mornings she would steal into the room, and sit, sewing, in a corner, listening +gratefully to the dreary routine of his pupils’ exercises. She seemed never to +tire of “being near Leonard.” And always she was asking, “Won’t you play a +little from <i>the opera</i>, Leonard?” +</p> + +<p> +Once she said to him, with her timid smile: “It’s like heaven, having so much +music all the time. Seems as if all my life I’ve been just starved to death for +tunes.” +</p> + +<p> +Haldane bent and kissed her white hair. “Well, mother,” he laughed, “it’s quite +a real piece of heaven to have you around the place.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re spoiling me,” she cried; “how can I ever go back to Iowa?” +</p> + +<p> +“Who said Iowa in this house?” he demanded of her. “You’re to stay always—as +long as you can stand me—<i>always</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“My son!” she kept murmuring after he had gone, as if she loved the words on +her lips. “He’s just the kind of son I used to hope I might have,” she sighed. +“I don’t see—it’s so strange why he’s so good to me. I’m not at all like +<i>her</i>. Ida was so sensible always, and I’m not at all—Ida always told me I +couldn’t take care of myself, that I was very foolish. I don’t see why Leonard +is so kind to me. It must be just because I’m her mother. Leonard must have +loved her so much, and understood her. Poor Ida!” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The spring had broken through its first slender greenish film into the +freshness of its young beauty. The sense of faint, far voices endlessly calling +was in the air. Again the windows of the little flat were opened and again the +afternoon sun warmed to golden green the new growth of leaves on the +horse-chestnut in the rectangular enclosure outside. +</p> + +<p> +Haldane had never felt so splendidly the birth of new things—in himself and in +the world. All the morning he had been constantly picking up his violin, +playing what he called his “Spring-feelings”—unrhythmic wild snatches of +melody. +</p> + +<p> +“God! it’s good, good, <i>good</i>,” he cried, throwing back his head. “Good to +have lived out of it all into this.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mother,” he called presently, “what on earth are you doing there all alone? +Come out and play with me. You’ve looked over those old books and papers, +spring-cleaned your old closets, too long. If you don’t come out at once, I’ll +come and drag you out bodily—I will indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +He ran to her door in another moment, and flinging it open wide, he called: “If +you will insist on being led forth—Why, mother, what is it? what’s the matter? +<i>What is it?</i> Are you <i>ill</i>? Why—” +</p> + +<p> +She sat on a low stool drawn up close to her bed. Her hands were clasped +straight out before her over a little book bound in faded imitation red +leather—a little book Haldane, on the instant, with curious alertness, knew as +one of Ida’s old school note-books. On her face was a look so bewildered, so +grieved, so terror-stricken almost, that Haldane suddenly ceased to speak. She +raised her eyes to him with the pleading of a hurt animal. For a time neither +uttered a word. And then, all at once, it seemed to Haldane as if he +<i>knew</i>. His gaze fell hesitatingly. When, at last, he spoke, it was in a +very gentle voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Mother—is it anything we can talk out together—now?” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head dumbly, the tears gathering in her eyes. “Oh, Lennie!” she +whispered, finally, as if he were a little boy. “It isn’t true, is it?” +</p> + +<p> +Haldane did not reply. She reached out the little red book to him slowly. +“You’d—you’d better read it. I—found it—this afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +He took the book, without wonder, and went back, softly closing the door on +her. Unconsciously he sat down before the little, cheap, oak desk—Ida’s +desk—and began to read. It was, perhaps, two hours afterward when he had +finished. The room was dark and very still. +</p> + +<p> +“So she knew,” he said, slowly. “After all, she knew. And I never guessed.” His +head sank down on his arms. +</p> + +<p> +It was a curious inconsistency in the mind of Ida Locke which had prompted her +to write in that red-covered note-book just what she had written. No one would +have guessed the secret strain of introspection in her, nor guessed the impulse +which led her to put into writing her hidden life. Unless, indeed, that +introspection and that impulse are always part of the intuitions of +love—yielded to or not, as may be. The entries were scattered—as if put down +when the stress of feeling had overcome her. They ranged over the two years of +their married life. In each one she had seemed, with a startling lucidity, to +have apprehended exactly her husband’s state of mind toward her. She had +written freely, baldly, without excess of sentimentality. “I know he hates me +sometimes; I see it in his eyes.” Again: “He is hideously kind.” “He lives in a +mental room that I can’t break into.” In another place it ran: “Why is it? I am +his mental equal; his superior in education. I’m his wife and he asked me to +marry him. And yet he can’t bear to have me near him. He hates me to-day.” “I’m +afraid,” she wrote again, “how Leonard will regard our child. If he should hate +it, too. Perhaps we shall both not live through it.” And so it ran on, with +awful candor. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m so sorry she had to know,” Haldane sighed again and again. “And, now, +what’s to be the end of it? What will Ida’s mother do? Lord God, she’ll never +forgive me—never.” +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Late that night Mrs. Locke came in. Haldane had scarcely stirred from his +chair. The note-book lay open before him on the desk. He looked at her +compassionately, for now his thoughts were all for the shrinking, hurt woman +beside him. She had never before seemed so fragile, so dependent, and yet he +could not but mark in her hearing a new resolution of forces, a dignity as of a +stern decision. Haldane did not wait for her to question. +</p> + +<p> +“You will want to know,” he began, wearily, “if all this written here is true. +All this Ida wrote down. You want to ask me that? It’s—it’s all true, quite +true.” He waited, but she gave no sign. “Quite true; I—I suppose it wouldn’t be +worth while for me to explain things now. You will think I’ve lied to you all +along. In a way, I have. No, I suppose you don’t want to hear me make futile +explanations, excuses.” +</p> + +<p> +“If there—there is anything to be said, Leonard, you had better say it—now,” +she answered, nervously, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers. +</p> + +<p> +He hesitated painfully. “Everything I might say seems to be trying to shift the +load from my shoulders on to—another’s,” he said, at last. “It was a +mistake—that’s all. A mistake for us. Before it began—our marriage—it was +different, but afterward—She was very good to me; looked after me and all that, +but—Oh, I’m afraid I’m only hurting you the worse by saying all this. You +won’t, you can’t understand. Let it be that it was all my fault. It was, it +was. Believe that, please.... And I know you won’t want to stay here with me +any longer—after this. I quite understand that. A man who—who felt as she wrote +it all down here—such a man you wouldn’t, you couldn’t—” He stopped hopelessly. +“I can’t bear to have you go,” he burst out, impulsively. “Where will you go? +Back there to Iowa?” +</p> + +<p> +She nodded sorrowfully. +</p> + +<p> +“And have no more music? And—and—oh, it’s cruel. <i>Why</i> had you to find it +out? It didn’t matter anyway when it was all done with. Why <i>did</i> you have +to know? ... And you haven’t any money. You must let me help you. Let me do +that—just that. Can’t you forget it all enough for that? Surely you’ve liked +me—for what you’ve liked in me, let me help you. Great heavens, if I thought of +you alone out there, without money—<i>Must</i> you go?” +</p> + +<p> +Haldane was fast losing control of himself. With an effort he pulled himself +together and tried to smile. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re right to go,” he said. “Right. You wouldn’t want anything to do with me +now.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked up at her, though loath to meet her eyes. There was a wonderful pity +in her face. “Don’t!” he cried, sharply, not understanding. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to say this,” he broke out again, almost roughly. “I never guessed that +she knew how I felt toward her. I wasn’t cruel or beastly—I was kind. They say +that’s cruelty, too. I tried—my God! how I tried!—never to let her know the +truth. That’s all I can say for myself; ... you’d better go.” +</p> + +<p> +She was so silent that at last he faced her again. She was crying softly, and, +it appeared, without bitterness. Haldane stared at her curiously. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to know that—that last you said,” Mrs. Locke gasped, with difficulty. +“I—I—I’ve been thinking it all over in my room. It’s very hard to say—please +let me go on with it just as I can, I—I’ve said I wanted to hear that last. But +I knew it—in my heart—all the time. I knew you couldn’t be cruel to a living +thing. And—and—somehow—it changed—things. I’ve had such a terrible struggle all +alone. I’ve tried to pray over it and—oh, I’m afraid I’m very wrong and very +wicked—I almost know I am.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “But—oh, Leonard ... +somehow I just seemed to feel inside me just how you felt, just how—it was with +you those two years. Oh, it’s a dreadful thing to say, isn’t it? Poor Ida! She +was so good to me, and yet sometimes—” The trembling old woman’s voice faltered +and broke. +</p> + +<p> +Haldane’s eyes were full of tears. A great light was slowly breaking for him. +He dared not speak. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t think I’m a wicked old woman, Leonard; I never even guessed—till I came +here—how I felt. And then you were like a son—my son—the boy I wanted so, and—I +loved the music so, and being with you, more than anything I ever knew—it +doesn’t seem as if—” +</p> + +<p> +Haldane put his hand on hers gently, “As if you could go away now?” +</p> + +<p> +She turned to him with a little sad smile, and in her face was a sweet dignity. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I cannot go—now, my son.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a> +THE YEARLY TRIBUTE</h2> + +<h3>BY ROSINA HUBLEY EMMET</h3> + +<p> +“For science is a cruel mistress. She exacts a yearly tribute of flesh and +blood like the dragons of ancient pagan mythology.” +</p> + +<p> +The eminent scientist paused momentarily here and viewed the earnest young +faces before him. In this poetic figure of speech he saw fit to present to them +the hardships of the life they had chosen to embark upon. It was a hot June +morning, and the heavy scent of syringa came in through the high uncurtained +windows of the lecture-hall. All the students stared with reverence at this +distinguished stranger, who had come a long distance to speak to the graduating +class; and one of its members sighed deeply and turned his eyes to the window, +and watched some maple leaves moving languidly against the blue sky. The +lecturer heard his sigh, saw him fall into abstraction, realized the peculiar +character of his face; and marked him as a man who would serve to the end, +possibly becoming one of the victims of that cruel mistress. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Pilchard and Swan had stopped to rest in the middle of the plaza. The black +Mexican night was falling and a few stars blossomed in the sky, but there was +no abatement in the heat which had held since sunrise; rather, indeed, the +thickness of the atmosphere seemed intensified. The two Americans, who had +spent a whole year in Mexico and become accustomed to the climate, attempted to +make themselves comfortable. Pilchard sank to a dilapidated bench and lighted a +cigarette; and Swan, not having even sufficient spirit to smoke, stretched +himself bodily on the flat stones which paved the plaza, and placed his old hat +upon his upturned face. +</p> + +<p> +Both young men seemed depressed, and without speaking they listened to the +moaning of the ocean which heaved and glistened in the distance; and when +Pilchard finally said, “So poor Murphy is gone too,” and Swan responded, “His +troubles are over, poor fellow,” it showed how completely they had been +absorbed in the same thought. +</p> + +<p> +“And Mulligan last week,” Pilchard continued, “and all the others who went +before, and Peele taken sick this afternoon. Swan, we’re the only white men +left.” +</p> + +<p> +“And we’ve only got ten days left.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I guess we can do it, so long as we’re out of the swamp.” +</p> + +<p> +“So long as the swamp isn’t in us.” +</p> + +<p> +They were alluding to the railroad they had come to Mexico to build. The +time-limit given in the contract would expire in ten days, and it would be a +race to get the tracks through the town and down to the new docks in that time. +Swan, whenever he thought of it, became restless, and now he sat up with a +jerk, and his old hat slipped off his face. Even in that dim light Swan’s +ugliness was apparent. He measured over six feet and was loose-jointed and +ungainly; he had big flat feet, and big bony, capable hands; and his features, +which were big and bony too, seemed in proportion to nothing but his general +ungainliness. Swan was an inventive Yankee with no background and no tradition. +He could not even claim the proverbial Connecticut farm. His people had been +dreary commercials in a middle-sized New Hampshire town, and he had worked his +way through college to fit himself for a scientific career. His memory of his +deceased parents was so colorless that it seemed to Swan as if they had never +existed, and his contacts had been so dull, his outlook so dreary, that he had +almost no conception of beauty. His plain college room, where, by the hour, he +had worked out mathematical problems, and a grimy engine-room (which was the +next stage of his advancement), where he had stood in a greasy black shirt, +surrounded by an unceasing whir of machinery, and bossed a gang of men—these +had been the things which had substituted for him romance and passion and life; +and finally, when Pilchard, a college friend, had persuaded him to come down to +Mexico and build a railroad, he had taken off his greasy black shirt and gone, +principally because this was such a big undertaking, and it would undoubtedly +in the end lead to something very much bigger. +</p> + +<p> +The company which was causing the railroad to be built had established large +exporting-houses in San Francisco, which sent down certain articles of +merchandise to Mexico, and the railroad was designed to transport this freight +from one of the southwestern seaport towns to the city of Mexico. The +undertaking included the erection of docks with swinging elevators to lift the +freight from the vessels and deposit it in the cars, and as the pay was very +large and Pilchard was an adventurous soul, he undertook the job when it was +offered to him, and going to the manager’s office, impressed him with his +boldness and ability, and signed his name to the contracts without reading them +through; then gayly, and feeling no uneasiness, he buttoned his coat over the +neatly folded paper and went to see Swan. +</p> + +<p> +Swan, in a greasy black shirt, was in the engine-room, hard at work, and he was +just about to reprimand one of the men when Pilchard came in. Although it was +early in May, a spell of precocious heat had taken New York by the throat, and +what with the whir of rapidly turning wheels, and the smell of hot machine-oil +and perspiring men, there was something filthy and degraded about the +atmosphere. Swan suddenly realized this, although it was the only atmosphere he +knew anything about. Glancing upward, he saw a little patch of blue sky through +the top of one of the grimy windows ... a white cloud sailed past ... and then +another ... something akin to longing welled in his heart, something like a +wave of despair and hope, a desire to lift himself into a higher and less +degraded world.... He looked toward the door and saw Pilchard, and crossing the +room, he greeted him warmly and read the contract Pilchard pulled from his +pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a queer business,” said Swan, when he had finished. +</p> + +<p> +“How so?” +</p> + +<p> +“Man alive, haven’t you read what you’ve signed your name to?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly I’ve read it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you think you can put the job through in a year?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” asked Pilchard, with his “cock-sure” smile. +</p> + +<p> +Swan, like every one else, was taken in by this smile, and to convince himself +he read the contract again, out loud this time, and in a thoughtful way. +Pilchard listened. +</p> + +<p> +The contract guaranteed that a railroad covering two hundred and fifty miles, +between the city of Mexico and the little seaport of Zacatula, on the Pacific +Ocean, would be built and completed in one year’s time, work starting on the +25th of June. Docks and freight-elevators were included in the work, and if the +tracks were not in fit condition for the trains to run by the date specified, +every penny of the very large pay would be forfeited by the builders. A strange +contract, indeed! Pilchard, however, as he heard it read, betrayed by no sign +that he was as much surprised as Swan. +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said Swan, looking up and meeting that “cock-sure” smile, “you think +you can do it in a year?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m certain I can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” Swan continued, not yet convinced, “it’s the worst country on +earth; full of swamp and yellow fever.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll run in a gang of Mexican Indians to lay the ties. They can stand their +own climate.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you’ll have to take down some white men, too, good fellows who know the +business. You can’t be the only man to do the bossing. It’d kill you.” +</p> + +<p> +All this time Pilchard was closely watching Swan, and almost unconsciously +something had been growing in his mind. Swan had an ugly, resolute face, and +endurance seemed to be expressed in every line of his body. Behind him the +engine roared, and spit steam, and ground out the produce of a great city +factory; his face and hands were grimy and covered with grease, and the black +cinders around his deep-set eyes gave him a terrible, deathly look. Pilchard +saw instantly that he must have Swan to do the work. He must take him down to +Mexico or else the railroad would never be built. Swan would come, too, because +there was a look of tragic fatigue in his deep-set eyes, an expression of sick +nausea in the lines about his mouth, that showed how gladly he would change, +how completely he had come to the end of his hopes here; so Pilchard suggested +with a careless smile that they go down to Mexico together. “Of course,” he +said, “I don’t say that it mightn’t be better for me to do it alone—two heads +to a job, you know, isn’t always a good arrangement; but you’ve got a pretty +mean berth here. It’ll take years for you to get a rise, and you’re wasting +your youth and health shut up with this filthy gang of men. This job of mine +would push you right along, and you’ll get others like it. Better come.” +</p> + +<p> +Swan reflected. His work was the only thing on earth that he cared for, and to +progress in his work, to keep putting through more and more difficult jobs, was +what he had always aimed to do. But had he a right to take advantage of +Pilchard’s generosity? He glanced around the room, conscious of the incessant +chattering of the different parts of the engine, which he must keep going in +order to turn out the produce of a great city factory. He was no more here than +one of the many parts of that engine, and if some day he should be absorbed +into the midst of those whirring wheels and ground up like corn, who would ever +be the wiser? +</p> + +<p> +So he went. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“Had a letter from the company today,” Pilchard observed, suddenly. +</p> + +<p> +“That so?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re going to send a fellow down from Frisco on the steamer that touches on +the 25th. Everything plays into their hands. Steamer reaches here the day the +contract expires.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s all right.” +</p> + +<p> +“They request that I meet the fellow and show him around.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s easy, too.” +</p> + +<p> +Pilchard breathed smoke through his nose in his self-possessed way, and said +nothing more, until Swan suddenly broke out: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I for one won’t be sorry to get out of this hole. I’ll get the job done, +of course, but we’ve just had a terrible setback. I think Peele’s dying.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lord!” +</p> + +<p> +“I came away from him only half an hour ago. He may last through the night, but +I doubt it. Anyhow, if he lives or dies, we’re devilish pressed for time. I’m +beginning to think we’ll have to work at night, too.” +</p> + +<p> +“At night?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a full moon. Here she comes now.” Swan looked at the full moon, which, +as the darkness increased, grew in radiance. +</p> + +<p> +Pilchard breathed more smoke through his nose, then said with a sigh: “That’s +hard luck, Swan. I’m sorry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hey?” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet it’s a lucky thing that you’re as strong as you are. It’s a lucky +thing you haven’t got the responsibilities at home that I have.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see what you mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you know I’m engaged! I’m as good as married. That poor girl’s got +everything ready for the wedding. You met her that day last year you came up to +Maine before we left New York.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I met her.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you remember how much she thought of me?” Pilchard spoke slowly. It was +impossible to tell why he did so. Was it because he did not care to discuss the +woman he loved with an outsider like Swan, or was it because he was going on +tiptoe, because he wondered what he must say next, because he was waiting, +hoping that something unexpected would develop? +</p> + +<p> +Swan, however, dropped the question of Pilchard’s marriage. +</p> + +<p> +“You mean, I suppose, that you won’t work at night.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t. I’m not well enough.” +</p> + +<p> +Swan grunted and sighed and stretched all his limbs, shaking his great +shoulders as if he were trying to shake out the ague. Then he cleared his +throat again and turned to Pilchard. +</p> + +<p> +“See here, Pilchard, it’s time we came to some understanding.” +</p> + +<p> +“Understanding?” Pilchard queried in a surprised voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, about this job. About the pay—m—not so much the pay as the credit. This +job ought to give a man a name. It’s been a big piece of engineering and +devilish hard work to put it through. I’ve planned the whole thing and watched +every stroke of what’s been done, and I deserve at least half the credit, if +not all.” +</p> + +<p> +Swan spoke in a brutal, masterful way. Perhaps he realized as he did so how +completely the acknowledgment of his services depended on Pilchard’s +generosity. Pilchard alone had signed the contract, and Swan’s existence was no +more to the company than the existence of the other workmen. Moreover, the +eleven mechanics they had brought down had all been carried off by fever, and +there was no one else who, in case of necessity, could testify to the splendid +work Swan had done, practically alone. All this was in Pilchard’s mind as well +as Swan’s, and all this suddenly showed Pilchard how completely Swan was in his +power. He must play a careful game. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, what the devil do you mean?” he asked, speaking rather angrily. +</p> + +<p> +“What do I mean? I mean that this is all too unbusinesslike. It’s too vague. +I’m risking my life to put this business through, and I want to get what I +deserve. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done, and I won’t do it for nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“For nothing? Man alive, you’re almost accusing me of dishonesty! I told you +when we started out that I’d give you half the pay. If I’d ever supposed you +didn’t trust my word I’d have had it drawn up on paper. And as for the credit, +you deserve it all, and you’ll get it all ... and that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +Pilchard ended with a self-conscious laugh, and got up to go indoors and take a +few drinks before he went to bed. He stood for a moment, uncertainly, before +Swan, wondering with a strange distrust, which lately had been growing upon +him, what Swan really thought. Swan was so silent and reserved, and he worked +with such unflinching constancy, that Pilchard often felt as if he too must be +developing some plan. It was fortunate, he told himself, that there were only +ten days more. His nerves could not have held out much longer; but after he had +filled himself with several drinks and was sitting in gauzy pajamas beside an +open window, things began to look brighter. Ten days might develop unheard-of +things. To work all night on the borders of a swamp in this rainy season, which +is almost certain death for a white man—Pilchard closed his eyes and peacefully +slept.... +</p> + +<p> +Swan continued to sit on the bench, and throwing back his head, looked at the +sky. A full moon swung above him, huge and tropical and red, seeming to garnish +the black depths that lay behind it and that great black mouth that opened +immeasurably into the west. All his actual surroundings faded away, and, as is +often the case with men at these moments, he thought of a woman that he had +seen once and had never forgotten. +</p> + +<p> +That cool summer day just a year ago that he had spent on the coast of Maine, +whither he had gone to see Pilchard about some final arrangements for their +journey to Mexico—Pilchard had introduced him to the girl he was going to +marry, and it had somehow happened that he and she had taken a short walk +together along a cliff where some pines were growing, and which looked +forlornly enough across the solitary ocean. Nothing but the most commonplace +words had passed between them; they had talked of Pilchard and his enterprise, +and had stopped to look at the view, and had gazed out over the rolling waves. +He had scarcely dared look at his companion, but once he had helped her over +some rocks, and he remembered that her foot had slipped, and for an instant her +body had swayed against his. He remembered, too, that she had pale cheeks and +dreamy eyes, and a slim hand laden with rings that held back her skirts. This +slight experience had made a changed man of him. New senses existed for him, +new hopes for the future that turned him dizzy, a splendid and deeper insight +into life. The sordid realities of his life no longer claimed all his thoughts; +they were beautified by rare and exquisite dreams, and by repetitions of that +strange welling of hope and despair which had come to him in the grimy +engine-room. After all, there were things in the world other than engines and +boilers and steel tracks; there were plenty of uses for him besides calculating +and experimenting and bossing a lot of filthy men. He, too, could serve and +wait and hope and ... die! +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Swan spent the remainder of that night with Peele, and as the sick man was +still alive at sunrise, and Swan was obliged to oversee the men, he swallowed +some coffee and went off, leaving Pilchard in charge. About noon Pilchard came +out to him with a white face. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter?” Swan asked, full of apprehension. +</p> + +<p> +“Peele died before you’d been gone an hour.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must see to having him buried at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s underground already.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where we’ll all be if we stay much longer.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where I feel as if I ought to be,” Pilchard groaned. +</p> + +<p> +“What d’ye mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean that I’m about ready to give up. If it wasn’t for you I would give up. +I’m as weak as water. I just saw Peele die, and that finished me. Ugh! It was +awful!” +</p> + +<p> +And Pilchard, who certainly was pale, drew a flask from his pocket and took a +long drink. He seemed to drink to his own weakness. He seemed to glory in the +fact that he had given up, and that he knew Swan never would. +</p> + +<p> +Swan realized this and looked wearily across the swamp they had just covered. +It was all his work. A narrow mound of solid earth ran back as far as eye could +reach, and on it two shining steel rails glittered in the blazing sun. On +either side lay wet, poisonous ground covered with deadly growths and exuding +fearful odors and devitalizing forces which even the heat could not dissipate. +In that noonday light which burned and burned and made no impression on the +moisture, Swan’s face was wilted like a white flower which is dead and turning +yellow. His eyes, too, were like things once living and now dead. The muscles +around his mouth twitched like electric wire. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t possible for me to finish it alone,” he told himself. He knew that he +could finish the job by working both night and day, but could he stand the +strain? Had he, after all, a stronger physique than any other white man had +ever had before? He leaned far back as if he were trying to fold himself up, +and then bent forward in the same manner, trying, with a desperation like +death, to relieve the weakness that was numbing his limbs. He suddenly felt +dizzy as he looked at the hot distance where some big leaves were waving—dizzy +as he knew that he must fail. +</p> + +<p> +“By God!” he exclaimed, striking the pile of dirt. “By God! I’ll do it!” +</p> + +<p> +Pilchard put on his hat and smiled. He had been waiting for this. “If you say +you will, I bet you will!” he told Swan. “That’s why you’ll always come out +ahead.” As he said this he looked intently at Swan, who was still sitting on +the pile of dirt. He noticed for the first time the peculiar look in his eyes +and the trembling of his whole body. +</p> + +<p> +Swan sat silent. He saw the dark perspiring bodies of the Indians who were +laying ties, and his lifelong ambition to be a great engineer suddenly +presented itself to him in the old strong unemotional way. +</p> + +<p> +“For science is a cruel mistress. She exacts her yearly tribute of flesh and +blood like the dragons of ancient pagan mythology.” +</p> + +<p> +This had been said by an eminent scientist who had addressed his graduating +class. Swan had heard it then and remembered it now. He clearly remembered that +hot June morning ten years ago. Some young maple leaves had made a lovely +pattern on the blue northern sky outside the uncurtained windows of the +lecture-hall. He remembered that he had looked through the window and vowed +that he would never give up. +</p> + +<p> +He organized two bands of men, one to work by moonlight and one by sunlight; +but it was necessary for him to overlook them both, day and night, so it +happened that there were just two hours in the twenty-four when he could find +any rest. This was when the daily tropical storm broke, late in the afternoon, +and all the workmen scampered for shelter. Swan crawled into a shanty the men +had put up to hold their tools, and wrapping himself in a blanket, slept until +the storm was over. That is to say, for three or four times he slept, but +gradually he found it impossible to get any rest, and nobody knew the agonies +he endured fighting off the fever, which he felt had marked him for its own. He +never looked forward longer than twelve hours, thinking always that the next +day would decide his fate, and the next day never did. “If I can keep it off +till to-morrow, I guess it won’t come back,” he repeated, mechanically, +standing in the moonlight and dosing himself and bossing the men. But in the +morning there was never any abatement in those deadly symptoms which told him +that the period of incubation would soon be over; and it almost seemed to him +as if his cruel mistress was saving him in some miraculous way to complete her +work, for it was not until the evening of the ninth day, when the railroad was +finished and the last man paid off, that his temperature rose to fever-heat, +his pulse quickened, and his tongue became congested, and this demon of the +tropical swamp claimed him for its own. +</p> + +<p> +Early on the morning of the 25th, a Pacific mail-steamer touched at the little +port of Zacatula, and a man was put off who came down from San Francisco to do +business for the company in the event of the railroad not being completed. He +was greatly astonished when Pilchard showed him that the last day’s work had +been done. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said the agent, mopping his perspiring bald head, “we may say that +you’ve carried out the contract to the letter, to the very minute. You say you +only paid off the men last night?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Pilchard, with his engaging smile, and casting a possessive +glance down the front of his white trousers. “And it was an awful rush to get +the job done.” But in spite of Pilchard’s sleek figure and social smile, he +looked pale that morning. The hot sunlight that bathed the end of the dock met +no responsive glow in his cheeks. +</p> + +<p> +The agent hung his handkerchief over the top of a post to dry it, and looked +more closely at his companion. “Anything the matter?” he asked, kindly. “You +certainly haven’t lost anything on the job?” +</p> + +<p> +“No—no.” Pilchard brought out that ever-ready smile that was so delightful. +“But it’s about time to go home. This is a terrible climate. We’ve lost every +white man that came down, eleven all told, except myself and—and—one other, +who’s dying over in that shed now. Maybe—maybe—he’s dead—” Pilchard jerked with +his thumb towards a shanty just where the docks joined the land.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In this rude shanty, knocked together by the workmen to hold their tools, on a +heap of sacks and blankets, Swan lay as he had dropped the night before. +Pilchard had found him there, and the full moon coming in at the wide opening +had revealed a fearful sight—Swan in the throes of terrific fever, his face +scarlet, his eyes ferrety and congested, and his swollen tongue lolling between +his lips. When he saw Pilchard he asked in a strange voice for water. Pilchard +brought him some and felt his forehead. It seemed on fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Pilchard,” began Swan, in a deliberate voice, as if he were trying to fight +off the delirium, “the swamp got into me, after all. I’ve taken the fever.” +</p> + +<p> +Pilchard, appalled by the terrible sight before him, and the things it +suggested, which he could not help but see, leaned against the rude wall, and +for once his self-possession deserted him. “Swan,” he faltered, “Swan—for God’s +sake—” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush,” Swan interposed, in that same deliberate voice. “Don’t lose your head. +I’m keeping mine. Am I talking sense?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes, Swan. Perfectly correctly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ll tell you what to do.” Swan spoke more and more slowly as the fire +mounted to his brain and besieged it. “There’s every symptom of fever. You +can’t deny that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Symptoms, Swan? I don’t see any. You’re worn out, poor fellow. That’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what’s this?” Swan opened his mouth and showed his scarlet tongue. “And +this?” He tore open the breast of his shirt and showed the congested condition +of his skin. “But I’ll fight death as I fought the fever! I’m not going to die. +There’s too much for me to do in the world! I’ll be a great engineer. I’ll make +her proud. I vowed it when we looked out over the waves and I wanted to take +her in my arms. See here!” and suddenly seizing a pickaxe from the ground +beside him, he swung it around his head and sent it whizzing past Pilchard’s +ear, out through the opening of the shanty. “I’ve got my muscle and I’ve got my +brain and I’ll keep my life. I deserve to live. I deserve it as payment for +putting the job through. I’ll keep my wife here, too, here in the engine-room, +with the pines behind us, and I can look after the men then. Who’s that leaning +against the wall? Pilchard? Poor fool! Why did you boast you were the only man +who had ever loved a woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“Me boast! Heaven forbid,” faltered Pilchard. +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” shouted Swan, suddenly sitting up and striking out with both arms, +“take these things away. All these little black things that are pouring over +me. It’s a regular shower. It must be a whole city. No! No! They’re sparks! +They’re fire! They burn! They burn! Take the wheels away from me! They’re +grinding me like corn—oh, Lord! it’s heavy, it’s heavy! There, there! It +crushes me! Now, now it’s over. This is—death—” And he sank back, oppressed by +a sudden, and overwhelming load of oblivion. +</p> + +<p> +Swan grew worse toward morning, and though the disease had only attacked him at +sunset the night before, so rapid and terrible were its onslaughts that by the +time the sun rose a complete physical collapse had occurred. His pulse had +fallen below normal, and his skin assumed a strange yellow hue, the color of a +lemon, and in these signs and the constant hiccough which convulsed the +death-stricken frame Pilchard guessed properly what the termination must be. +The end would come easily. Swan had ceased to suffer. +</p> + +<p> +When light crept gray and silent into the shanty, Pilchard stood and looked at +Swan’s prostrate form. No sound came to them but the gentle lapping of the +waves. Sober as a dove Day hovered in the sky, and that solemn change which is +Death was somewhere near, hiding and waiting; and Pilchard and Death and the +breaking Day were for one second alone. And Pilchard was overwhelmed with +terror. Some spectre had seized him, and he could not shake it off. He looked +once more at the dying man, at his closed eyes and his still body, momentarily +convulsed by the final signs of life, like a great piece of machinery when the +steam power is gradually running down. Then he turned and broke away, to take a +bath and to take a drink and then go to meet the steamer from San Francisco.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“Eleven? You don’t say. Fever, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. We tackled three swamps on our way down from Mexico.” +</p> + +<p> +“That so? Well, it’s worth some sacrifice. It’s a good job. I wouldn’t ’a’ +undertaken it myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t do it again.” +</p> + +<p> +They walked down the dock.... +</p> + +<p> +Swan opened his eyes and looked through the wide opening of the shanty out to +where the blazing sun struck the hot water of the little harbor. He hardly +remembered where he was. Oh yes! He must get up and go down-town. In a minute, +when he was fully awake. And he closed his eyes again and heard the accustomed +whir of machinery, and knew that he was in the engine-room. One of the workmen +needed to be spoken to; he was the filthiest of the lot, and Swan was the only +man who could control him. Suddenly Swan opened his eyes again and saw that +this same workman had entered the shanty and was standing beside him. He +instantly recognized the man’s greasy black shirt. +</p> + +<p> +“For science is a cruel mistress,” the man said. “She exacts her yearly tribute +of flesh and blood.” +</p> + +<p> +But, singularly enough, these words meant something entirely different. Swan +looked curiously at the workman and saw that he too was really somebody else. +The man smiled and, leaning over, gently raised him up, and for the first time +in his life Swan felt himself encircled by a woman’s arms, and he tasted a +strange, delicious joy awakening deep within him that knowledge of reciprocal +love which slumbers in the heart of every man. +</p> + +<p> +“And you did it all for me,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Did what?” he asked her. +</p> + +<p> +“Built the road?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he whispered, closing his eyes again, filled with this new strange joy. +</p> + +<p> +“And now we’ll go home together to the North, where the maple leaves make a +lovely pattern against the blue sky.” +</p> + +<p> +He knew nothing for a minute, and then she spoke again: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it’s a good job. I’ll see that you get pushed along. The company ’ll +have plenty more work; big pay, too. This business has made your name. You’re a +wonderful fellow! You say you worked night as well as day?” +</p> + +<p> +“For eight days, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +It was Pilchard’s voice. He was talking to another man. They were leaning +heavily against the rough wall of Swan’s shanty. A horrible sensation came over +the sick man, that sensation experienced by men who emerge from some unnatural +mental condition, who are recalled by one sentence, often by one word, which +acts like a key and opens again to their terrified vision the horrible +realities of actual life. Swan raised his arms to bring that woman’s face close +to his, but he could not find it. He opened his eyes, and tears of weakness +watered his cheeks. He was alone in the hovel knocked together by the men to +hold their tools, and the work for which he had given his life was being +claimed outside by another man.... +</p> + +<p> +The agent leaned against the side of the shanty, gazing reflectively at his +steamer, which was anchored half a mile from shore. “I’m going clear round to +New York. You’d better get aboard and come with me,” he proposed to Pilchard, +to whom he had taken a fancy. “Good Lord!” he suddenly shouted, leaping +forward. “Is this the shed where you said a workman was dying of fever? Let’s +get out quick or we’ll take the infection.” +</p> + +<p> +But Pilchard, pale as death, put up a warning hand. “Yes, let’s clear out—let’s +get to sea before I go crazy! But—but—don’t speak so loud. <i>He may hear</i>!” +</p> + +<p> +He had heard every word. His faculties, numb with death, sprang instantly into +life. He leaped to his feet and left the shanty, momentarily endowed with his +full strength, and facing the two men, spoke three times: “My work! My work! My +work!” His eyes were on Pilchard all the time, and that look pierced like a +sword; it penetrated to the very foundations of his being.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Pilchard caught the body as it fell and lowered it to the ground, and then +looked at the agent with a scared face to see how much he knew. The agent had +leaped still farther away, and now was crouching, livid with fear, before this +man whose last words had been words of delirium. No, he knew nothing. Pilchard +alone knew the extent of his own deceit, which dead lips could never disclose. +He alone knew of that half-formed idea he had not dared to mature, which had +come to him a year ago when he looked at Swan’s resolute face in the +engine-room; and he alone in all the world could ever know of the terror which +had possessed him at daybreak in the shanty when he had turned in a panic and +run away—from what? ... +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a> +A MATTER OF RIVALRY</h2> + +<h3>BY OCTAVE THANET</h3> + +<p> +It was the fifth afternoon of St. Kunagunda’s fair. An interlude of semi-rest +had come between the clearing up last night’s debris of crowd and traffic, +which had filled the morning, and the renewed crowd and traffic that would come +with the lamps. The tired elderly women in charge of the supper had sunk into +chairs before their clean linen and dazzling white stone-china dishes and fresh +bunches of lilacs. The pretty young girls at the “fancy table” were laughing +and prattling rather loudly with two amiable young men who had been tacking +home-made lace handkerchiefs and embroidered “art centres” in the vacant spaces +left on the pink cambric wall by the departure of last night’s purchases. A +comely matron kept guard simultaneously over the useful but not perilously +alluring wares of the “household table” and the adjacent temptations of the +flower-stand and the candy-booth. The last was indeed fair to see, having a +magnificent pyramid of pop-corn balls and entrancing heaps of bright-colored +home-made French candy; and round and round its delights prowled a chubby and +wistful boy, with hands in his penniless pockets, waiting for the chancellor of +the exchequer. +</p> + +<p> +Across the hall, the walls whereof were lavishly decked with red, white, and +blue festoons of cambric, and had the green and gold of Erin’s flag intertwined +with the yellow and black of Germany, stood a table which had been the centre +of interest for four nights, but which now was entirely deserted. There was no +glory of color or pomp of bedizenment about it; nothing more taking to the eye +than a ballot-box and a small show-case (the contents of the latter draped in +newspapers at the present) and a neatly lettered sign above a blackboard, to +one side. The sign simply demanded, “Vote Here!” The blackboard in less trim +script announced that “For most popular business man” Mr. Timothy G. Finnerty +had 305 votes, and three or four other candidates so few that there was no +interest in deciphering the chalk figures; and that “For most popular young +lady” Miss Norah Murray had 842 votes, and Miss Freda Berglund had 603. At +intervals some one of the score of people in the hall would saunter up to the +show-case or to the blackboard, to peer into the one or to study the figures on +the other—although, really, there was no one in the hall who did not know every +line on the board, and who had not seen both the gold watch and the gold-headed +cane of the show-case. Two women came from different quarters of the room at +the same instant to look at the blackboard. One was a comely dame in a silken +gown that rustled and glittered with jet. She had just entered the hall, and +was a little flushed with the climb up the stairs. The other was a stunted, +wiry little Irish woman in black weeds of ancient make. She caught sight of the +one in silk attire and paused. The first-comer also paused. Her color deepened; +her head erected itself more proudly on her shoulders. Then she continued her +progress, halting, with a dignified and elegant air, before the blackboard. The +little Irish woman tossed her own head and appeared about to follow; however, +her intention changed at a few words from the guardian of the apron table. She +inclined her head, and with a glance of scorn at the silken back passed on over +to the aprons and quilts. +</p> + +<p> +The matrons at the supper-table had viewed the incident with interest. A little +sigh of relief or regret rippled about the board. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis a great pity, that’s sure,” said one. +</p> + +<p> +“I was there when they had the words,” said another. “Mrs. Conner was saying +this voting business was all wrong—” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sure she ain’t far out of the way, with this time,” interjected a voice; +“bad blood more’n in this instance it’s raised; the whole town’s taking sides +on it, and there was two fights yesterday. Why didn’t they jest raffle the +watch off decent and peaceable?” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s some objects to raffling.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s some objects to drinking tea an’ coffee, they’re so bigoted! In a +raffle there’s nobody pays more’n their quarter, or maybe a dollar or two—” +</p> + +<p> +“And that’s it. Look at the power o’ money we’re gettin’, Mrs. O’Brien dear! +We’d <i>niver</i> ’a’ got nigh on to four hundred dollars for a gold watch +rafflin’; and well you know it!” +</p> + +<p> +“Maybe,” agreed Mrs. O’Brien, grimly, “but neither would we have got fightin’ +out of the church and fightin’ in it; nor Pat Barnes be having his head broke. +’Twas hurted awful bad he was. His own mother told me; and she said Fritz +Miller was sick in bed from it; Pat paid him well for talkin’ down ould +Ireland; and poor Terry Flanagin, he lost his job at the saw-mill for maddin’ +the boss that’s Dutch, and infidel Dutch at that; and there’s quarrels on ivery +side, God forgive ’em! They talk of it at the stores, and they talk of it at +the saloon, where they do be going too often to talk it; and ’tis a shame an’ a +disgrace, down to that saloon the dirty Dutchman—” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Whisht</i>!” three or four mouths puckered in warning, and Mrs. O’Brien +caught the smouldering gaze of a flaxen-haired woman in very full black skirts +and black basque of an antique cut, who had but now approached the group; with +her race’s nimbleness of wit she added, “Sure there’s dirty Germans and there’s +dirty Irish.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dere is,” agreed the new-comer, with displeasing alacrity, “und some is in +<i>dis</i> parish und dis sodality. I vas seen dem viping dishes mit a +newsbaber. Dot’s so. Yesterday night.” +</p> + +<p> +An electric thrill ran through the circle, and two matrons, suddenly very red, +answered at once: +</p> + +<p> +“Would you have us wipe them on our <i>handkerchiefs</i>? The towels were all +gone!” +</p> + +<p> +“’Twas the awful crowd did it; an’ ’twas only some saucers for the ice-cream.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. O’Brien waved her hands, very clean, not very shapely, and worn by many an +honest day’s toil, persuading and pleading for peace at once. “Sure,” says she, +“if you’d wurrk at fairs you’d know that you can’t be doing things like you’d +do them at home; and ’twas only for a minit they wiped the saucers with the +paper napkins, clean tishy-paper napkins, Mrs. Orendorf; ’twas only two or +three saucers got wiped with the newspaper, because the napkins was give out +and they was shrieking and clamoring for saucers; and they’re <i>terrible</i>, +them young girls! waving their hands and jumpin’ an’ squealin’. ‘Me first, Mrs. +O’Brien!’ ‘It’s <i>my</i> turn, Mrs. O’Brien!’ ‘Oh, Mrs. O’Brien, wait on +<i>me</i>. I’ve got six people haven’t had a bite in half an hour; and they’re +so cross!’ Till your mind’s goin’! No doubt we’re makin’ money, but I’m for a +smaller crowd an’ more good falein’.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s for der voting dey kooms,” grumbled the German woman, only half pacified. +“Dot vas bad mistake haf dot votin’. Vot vas dot dirty Deutchman you call him +do dot make you so mad?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it wasn’t so <i>much</i>”—Mrs. O’Brien was still bent on peace—“he jist +telephoned to the next door an’ got the returns, as he called them, and had ’em +posted up in his saloon. An’ if they was daughters of mine—I ain’t got anny +daughters, praise God! for since I seen the way these waiters go on, I’m +misdoubtin’ I niver could manage thim—but if they was daughters of mine, +’twould be the sorry day for me whin they’d their names posted up in a saloon!” +</p> + +<p> +“Meine fader in der old country kept a saloon,” said the German woman, with +extreme dryness of accent, “und does you mean to say vun vurd against Freda +Berglund?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, indade,” cried Mrs. O’Brien. +</p> + +<p> +“And do <i>you</i> mean to say one word against Norah Murray?” a bolder +partisan on the Celtic side struck in, with a determined air. Three or four +voices murmured assent. +</p> + +<p> +The German stood her ground. “I nefer seen her till yesterday”—thus without +committing direct assault on the Murray supporters she avoided concession; “all +I know of her is dot she nefer haf dot gold vatch!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then you know more than <i>we</i> do. Norah’s ahead, and she’ll be <i>more</i> +ahead this evening,” retorted a Murray voter; “there’s plenty more money to +spend for old Ireland—ain’t there, ladies?” +</p> + +<p> +“Whisht!” called the peace-maker, in her turn. “Ain’t it easy to see how Mrs. +Conner and Mrs. Finn come to words and hard falein’ when we’re nigh that same +ourselves, we that determined to kape out of the worry? They are both awful +nice, pretty young ladies, and I’m sorry such a question come up between them; +and ’tis <i>dreadful</i>, O’Brien says, the way the young men was spinding +their money for Norah last night. Sure, an’ it is that. ’Tis all a bad thing; I +think that like Mrs. Conner.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Orendorf was unable to adjust her mental view to the varying argument; she +cast a sullen and puzzled eye on the amiable Irish woman, and said, grimly: +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t joost yoong mans vot kan spend money. Freda don’t have got no yoong +mans, ’cause her Schatz vent to der var und die py der fever in Florida—” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure he did that!” cried Mrs. O’Brien, “an’ ’twas a fine man an’ a fine +carpenter he was. Aw, the poor girl! I mind how she looked the day Company E +marched out of town, him turnin’ his eyes up sidewises, an’ her white as paper +but a-smilin’!” +</p> + +<p> +“God pity her!” chimed in another matron, with the ready response to sympathy +of the Celt. There was a little murmur of assent. Mrs. Orendorf’s swelling +crest fell a little; her tone was softer. +</p> + +<p> +“But Freda got a fader, a goot man, <i>too</i> goot and kind; he say he vunt +haf his dochter look down on like she don’t got no friends. He go and mortgage +his farm, und he got drie—tree hunterd dollar”—she tapped the sum off her palm +with solemn deliberation—“und he svear he vill in der votin’ all, all spend, +an’ sie git dot vatch. <i>Ach Himmel! er ist verruckt!</i> He say he got his +pension and he got der insure on his life, und he ain’t got nobody ’cept +Freda, und he vunt haf Freda look down on. Und <i>sie</i> don’t know. Mans +don’t can talk mit him; he git mad. He git mad at <i>me</i> ’cause I talk. +<i>Dot’s</i> vat der fine votin’ do!” +</p> + +<p> +A little gasp from the audience meant more than agreement; their eyes ran to +Mrs. O’Brien, who faced the German and could see what they saw; then back of +Mrs. Orendorf to the crimson face of a young girl. Mutely they signalled +consternation. +</p> + +<p> +But the young girl did not speak; she walked away quickly, not turning her head +as she passed the voting-booth. She was a pretty girl, with fresh skin, the +whiter and fresher against her abundant silky black hair and black-lashed +violet eyes. She carried her dainty head a little haughtily, but her soft eyes +had a wistful sweetness. Her big flowered hat and her white gown, brightened by +blue ribbons, were as fresh as her skin and became her rich beauty. She walked +with the natural light grace often seen in girls of her race, whatever their +class. No one could watch the winsome little figure pass and not feel the charm +of youth and frank innocence and immeasurable hopes. More than one pair of +elderly eyes that had seen the glory and freshness of the dream fade followed +it kindly and with a pensive pride. +</p> + +<p> +“Ain’t she pretty and slim!” sighed a stout lady in silk (Mrs. Conner, the most +important supporter of the parish, no less), “and think of me having a waist as +little as hers when I was married! But I wish she hadn’t let them drag her into +this voting business, for it has caused trouble.” +</p> + +<p> +“Norah’s as good and sweet’s she’s pretty,” another elderly woman replied. +“Just to think of that young thing supporting her mother and educating her +brother for a priest with only those pretty little hands! But she won’t be +doing it long if the boys can one of them get their way. And what will we do +for a dress-maker then? We never <i>did</i> have such a stylish one!” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s so,” Mrs. Conner agreed, cordially; “she’s the only one I ever went to +didn’t make me look fleshier than I am. But I say it is all the more shame to +make that innocent young creature talked about and fought over, and have jokes +made in the saloon and at the stores, and quarrels outside the parish and in +it, too.” +</p> + +<p> +“I guess it has gone farther than we thought,” said the other. “Look! there’s +Father Kelly and the Vicar-General; they’re looking at the blackboard. I wish I +could hear what they are saying.” +</p> + +<p> +Norah, indeed, was the only person who did not look at the two quiet gentlemen +before the blackboard, curiously, and wonder the same, since the voting-booth +had become a firebrand menacing the peace of the parish. Norah was too busy +with her own thoughts even to see them; she only wanted to get past her +wellwishers and be alone with her perplexities. If she did not see her +spiritual guides, they saw her, and Father Kelly’s tired face brightened. “You +really can’t blame the boys,” he said, smiling; “and she’s as good a daughter +and sister, and as good a girl, too, as ever stepped.” +</p> + +<p> +The Vicar-General smiled faintly, but his eyes were absent. The parish at +Clover Hill was the newest in the diocese—a feeble folk struggling to build a +church, or rather help build it, and holding its first bazar. There were no +rich people of their faith—unless one except the Conners, who owned the +saw-mill and were well-to-do—not even many poor to club their mites; more +disheartening yet, the parish roll held about an equal proportion of Irish and +German names. The Vicar-General and the Bishop shook their heads at the yoking +of the two races; but there was no church nearer than Father Kelly’s, five +miles away, and Father Kelly was not young, and his own great parish growing +all the time; so the parish was made, and a young American priest, who had more +sense than always goes with burning enthusiasm, was sent to guide the souls at +Clover Hill and keep the peace. He kept it until the fair, when in an evil hour +he consented to the voting-booth. He expected—they all expected—that the +excitement would focus on the gold-headed cane, and that Mr. Michael Conner +would lead the poll, although the popular Finnerty might give him a pretty race +for his honors; the gold watch was but an incidental attraction to please the +young people and attract outsiders; nor was there any suggestion of names. +Alas! Michael Conner, a blunt man, dubbed the voting scheme a “d—- +weather-breeder,” and would not give the use of his name; hence there was a +walkaway for Finnerty; and somehow, before any of the elders quite realized how +it began, the Irish girl and the German girl were unconsciously setting the +whole town by the ears, and imported voters from Father Kelly’s were joyously +mixing in the fight. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no question about the <i>need</i> of stopping it,” said the +Vicar-General, continuing his own train of thought aloud, “but how are we to do +it? The feeling is a perfect dynamite factory now, and the least stumble on our +part will bring an explosion. If we tried to give them the money back—and you +know women have a tight grip on money—we shouldn’t know where to give it. +Positively we’re like the family of the poor fellow who had the fit—one doctor +said it would kill him to bring him to his senses, and the other said he would +die if they didn’t!” +</p> + +<p> +“And Father Martin safe in his bed with pneumonia!” groaned Father Kelly. +</p> + +<p> +Norah had found her progress barred by new-comers, and she had fled back to +avoid them. Her cheeks reddened again, and the tears burned her eyelids; she +went past too fast for more than a hurried salutation, at which Father Kelly +shook his head. “That’s the girl, isn’t it?” said the Vicar-General. “I’m +afraid the situation is a little too much for her, too; she looks excited.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not a bit, not a bit,” cried Father Kelly, undaunted; “she’s a bit impulsive, +but she’s got good sense.” +</p> + +<p> +“She wears too much jewelry.” +</p> + +<p> +Norah did not hear this; she was out of the hall, speeding back to Mrs. +Conner’s gown that awaited her finishing touches. Her mother, a little creature +with sweet temper that made amends for an entire lack of energy, was rocking +over some bastings, sawing the air with her forefinger as she discoursed on the +weighty splendor of the gold watch and chain, ending in gush of parental +complacency, “And Norah says it’ll be as much mine ’s hers!” +</p> + +<p> +Norah could hear her chirping on, happily, while she laid away her hat in the +bandbox and girt herself with a protecting apron. +</p> + +<p> +The talk turned her cold. “It ain’t only for myself I want it,” she declared to +an invisible suggester, “though I <i>do</i> want something real. I never had a +real gold chain, or even a real gold breastpin, in my life—or a ring. Oh, I did +want one!” She looked scornfully at the gay prism gleaming from her pretty +fingers (fingers as daintily kept as any lady’s); they had flashed like rubies +and sapphires and diamonds from the white velvet drifts of the show-case in the +great department store where she bought them when she went to the city; but now +they were cheapened and dimmed by her memories of the “real” watch. She peeled +them roughly from her hands. +</p> + +<p> +She had no morsel of news ready for the hungry ears awaiting her. To her +mother’s questions she answered briefly that the only thing she heard was that +Freda Berglund would have a great number of new votes in the evening. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Murray tossed back a confident: <i>“Let</i> her! I know some boys that’s +going to go this night, with a hundred dollars in their pockets each of ’em. +Let her bring on her votes, I say. It’s a good cause gits the money. But it’s +you’ll be wearin’ the watch next Sunday, and not Freda Berglund!” +</p> + +<p> +Norah bit her lip. She was not used to silence, but she sewed silently (Norah, +who was so sweet-tempered that she had been known to work a whole day with a +machine that skipped stitches, never getting cross, and stopping four times to +wrestle with the bobbin before she subdued it). Her mother did not know what to +make of her. Her own nickering complaints of Norah’s “glumness” sank into dumb +anxiety. She stole timid glances at the bowed black head and the frowning black +brows; after a glance she would sigh, a prolonged, patient sigh. There are +times when a sigh is to strained nerves like a blast of hot air on a burn. +Norah jumped up and ran away from her own irritation before it exploded. She +made a pretext of looking at her skirt (which was new) in the parlor +cheval-glass; but in the parlor, behind the door, she did not give a glance to +the picture in the mirror. The “pire glass,” as Mrs. Murray called it, was a +relic of the family’s better days when Norah’s father was alive and kept a +grocery-store and owned a horse and wagon; its florid frame of black-walnut +etched with gilt, its tall mirror, very little marred by water-spots on the +back, long had been reverently admired by Norah; it showed that the family had +“had things”; but she passed it without a glance, just as she passed the +cabinet organ decked in flowered plush which she had bought with her own +savings. Never until that day had she stood in the parlor without a sensation +of pleasure over its fresh paint and paper and the many gilt frames on the +wall; but to-day she went, unnoting, to the crayon picture of a man, and looked +through tears at a plain, smiling, kindly face. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you hadn’t died,” was all she said; but the tears rolled down her +cheeks and her frame shook with sobs that she forced to be noiseless. At last +she dried her wet cheeks and tossed her head. “I don’t see that <i>I</i> need +do <i>anything</i>,” she muttered, while she hurried round the house outside, +in order that she might reach the bedroom and efface the traces of her weeping. +“I’m a great fool to think of doing anything,” she declared. “I didn’t put +myself up, and I won’t put myself down—and disappoint mother and all my +friends. It’s none of my business.” Therewith she assumed a light and cheerful +air, which she carried securely through the remainder of the afternoon. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The fifth evening of St. Kunagunda’s fair opened with a stifling crowd. +Protestants, Catholics, and Germans who never had seen the interior of an +American church jostled the buyers at the booths, and the faithful dutifully +ate turkey and cold rolls for the fifth time at the supper-tables. The +outsiders did not linger at the booths; they were come to vote or to witness +the voting, and their jests and comments buzzed noisily above the talk. Every +moment the note of the buzz grew more hostile. More than a few ears were +tingling; at every turn there were scowls and sullen eyes and ugly smiles. The +matrons’ cheeks were burning; their eyes flashed; every now and again one of +their voices shrilled defiantly above the hoarse hum of the crowd. The young +Irish girls were laughing, enjoying the excitement, and admiring the young men +flaunting their banknotes with the swing of their father’s shillalahs. The +young German girls curled their lips and whispered together. There was a +significant herding of the contending races apart, while the visiting +Anglo-Saxons wore an air of safe and dispassionate enjoyment, such as pertains +of right to the boy on the fence waiting for the fight. +</p> + +<p> +Norah Murray had a circle of young men about her, who laughed rapturously at +her sallies. She wore her chain and a new rhinestone brooch and all her rings. +She looked very handsome with her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. She raised +her voice to be heard above the din. Mrs. Murray’s new bonnet nodded its red +roses and black ostrich tips among the lace handkerchiefs and embroidery of the +fancy table—she being enthroned on the step-ladder for lack of other seat—and +her delighted eyes ran from her daughter to the voting blackboard. She waved a +spangled fan and smiled buoyantly at every familiar face, whether turned +towards her in recognition or not. Mrs. O’Brien, who had slipped away from the +kitchen to be sure the lamps were not smoking, stopped a moment beside her. +Mrs. O’Brien looked tired and worried when she let her own smile of greeting +slip from her face. A tinge of the same expression was on Father Kelly’s kind +old countenance, but the Vicar-General’s features were as inscrutable as a +doctor’s. He had made a genial procession through the room, distributing the +merited praise at each booth, and appreciably softening the atmosphere by his +presence. He halted opposite Norah’s party. Father Kelly’s gaze grew anxious. +“I mind me,” said he—“I mind me of the child when her father died—not six she +was—holding her mother’s hand, not weeping herself, the creature, just stroking +her mother’s hand and petting her; and holding the baby, the one that’s off to +the seminary now. Her father was an honest man. He failed once, and then paid +every dollar with interest—an <i>honest</i> man. I mind me of little Norah at +her first communion—” +</p> + +<p> +The Vicar-General smiled. “Kelly, you’re a good fellow,” said he, not removing +his glance from Norah’s excited face. +</p> + +<p> +“She’ll come out all right, all right,” said Father Kelly, with the hammer-like +gesture of his right fist which his congregation knew well for a storm signal. +“She’s a good girl. This is no fault of hers, this foolish contraption to make +money; I’m one with Conner, there; but the girls aren’t to blame. Freda’s a +good girl, too. That’s she coming.” +</p> + +<p> +The German heroine of this miniature Nibelungenlied was tall and slender, fair +haired and fair faced. Her face wore a placid air; she looked perfectly serene +and had assumed unconsciousness as a garment; she did not talk, only faintly +smiled in return to the greetings that met her on every side. To right and +left, before and behind her, walked her two aunts and her two neighbors, women +of substance and dignity. They walled her about as might a body-guard, sending +eye-blinks of defiance at the hilarious young Irishmen. Mrs. Orendorf, of the +guard, went the length of twisting her head for a final glare of disapproval at +Norah, in passing. Norah laughed. “I used to know Freda Burglund last week,” +said she, “but I guess she has forgotten me.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s too busy with the blackboard, doing arithmetic,” joked one of the young +men. +</p> + +<p> +“You ought to see old Fritz!” cried another; “he’s clean off his base. He’s +mortgaged his farm to Nichols. Nichols didn’t want to lend, but he would have +the money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I guess we’ll give him a run for his pile.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s mortgaged his farm!” said a third young man; when his voiced sounded, the +very slightest of movements of Norah’s head betrayed that she listened. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d mortgage two farms if I had them,” was the gallant comment from the first +man, “if Miss Norah needed votes.” +</p> + +<p> +The third man felt the rustle of every dollar he had, drawn out of the bank +that morning, and now bulging his waistcoat-pocket in company with a bit of +ribbon that had dropped from Norah’s hair; but it was easier for him to make +money than talk; he was ready to push the last of it over the voting-table for +Norah, but he wasn’t ready of tongue; he put his big honest hands in his +pocket, and lest he should glower too openly at the fluent blade, sent his eyes +after Freda Berglund’s yellow head and fine shoulders. Norah could see him. She +stiffened. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think it very nice of her to <i>let</i> her father mortgage his farm,” +said a fourth partisan of Norah’s; “he’d better buy her a watch out and out; +you can get a good one for ten dollars. She’d ought to stop the old man. Her +mother would if she were alive.” +</p> + +<p> +“Fritz ain’t so easy headed off,” said the third man. “Miss Freda is a very +nice young lady; I don’t believe she knows about it.” +</p> + +<p> +He kept his eyes on the yellow head, this unfortunate bungler, who had been in +love with Norah since he had worn knickerbockers, and Norah held her own head +higher in the air. And she let Mr. Williamson, the new book-keeper at Conner’s +(he who would have mortgaged two farms for her), take her to the ice-cream +table, leaving the bungling lover (christened Patrick Maurice, his surname +being Barnes), to jostle dismally over to the apron table, where Freda was. +</p> + +<p> +Norah laughed at Mr. Williamson’s jokes, and asked him questions about the +business college from which he had recently been graduated, and was the picture +of soft animation and pleasure; and the while her heart was like lead, and she +hated Freda Berglund. Sitting at the table she heard snatches of talk, all +tinctured by the strong excitement of the evening. “I can’t help it if they do +quarrel,” she thought, angrily, answering her own accusation; not even to +herself did she say that she hated Freda. +</p> + +<p> +Her eyes wandered a second over the hall; they saw the Vicar-General’s pale, +handsome face, a half-head taller than Father Kelly’s good gray head; they saw +a square-jawed, black-haired, determined, smiling young man behind the +ballot-box turning his eyes from Pat Barnes to an elderly man who held up his +hand, waving a roll of bills. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, I see Berglund has arrived,” said Williamson. “You are going to do a lot +to build the church, Miss Norah.” +</p> + +<p> +Berglund was rather a short man; his hair was gray; he limped from the old +wound received at Shiloh. Something clutched at Norah’s heart as she looked at +him. Williamson made some trivial joke; she did not hear it; she was hearing +over again the words of the German woman to Mrs. O’Brien that afternoon. +Impulsively she sprang to her feet. “Will you excuse me, Mr. Williamson?” she +exclaimed. “I have to go to the voting-booth one moment.” She went so swiftly +that Williamson had much ado to keep pace with her, besides overpaying the +waitress in his hurry. Father Kelly swallowed a groan of dismay at the fresh +strain on his faith when he perceived her beckoning a ring-laden hand at the +custodian of votes; and the Vicar-General involuntarily frowned. They both with +one accord pushed up to the table—to the visible relief of the young man behind +it. “I don’t know what to do,” he confided to Father Kelly, before the latter +could ask the question quivering on his tongue—“I don’t know what to do. Miss +Murray wants me not to take in any more money ’til I hear from her again. +She’ll be back. And here’s old Berglund wants three hundred and fifty dollars’ +worth for Miss Freda, and here’s Barnes with a big bunch for Miss Murray, +trying to scare off the old man. What’ll I do, Father?” +</p> + +<p> +“I guess you better not do anything,” said Father Kelly, with a twinkle in his +eye. “Norah Murray is apt to have a good reason for her asking. Shut the booth +down, and <i>I’ll</i> take charge while you go off for a cup of coffee.” +</p> + +<p> +The Vicar-General nodded approval. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, just’s you say, Father,” said the young man; “it’s kind of +unprecedented.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you suppose it means?” puzzled the Vicar-General, in an undertone, as +the vote-taker disappeared; and the crowd fell back a little on Father Kelly’s +bland announcement that Mr. Duffy had been called off for a few minutes, and +there would be a recess in voting. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis beyond <i>me</i>,” said Father Kelly, “but watch the girl; she’s gone +straight to Freda Berglund. There, they’re talking; they’re going off together +with Mrs. Orendorf. I can’t give a guess, but she’s a good girl. I’m hopeful.” +</p> + +<p> +Norah had indeed gone straight to Freda Berglund. She addressed her in so low a +voice that only Freda and Mrs. Orendorf, bending across Freda’s shoulders at +that instant, the better to cheapen a darning-bag for stockings, could hear her +words. “I want to see you, Freda,” she said. “Won’t you and Mrs. Orendorf come +away somewhere so we can talk? I have got something important to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“I—don’t—know,” faltered Freda. +</p> + +<p> +“I want Mrs. O’Brien, too,” said Norah, firmly. “It’s all right; you’ll think +it all right, Mrs. Orendorf. Come, come; don’t you see those men who have been +drinking? Don’t you hear them? Don’t you see Mrs. Finn, who used to think there +was nobody like Mrs. Conner, looking the other way so’s not to see her? Can’t +you hear the quarrelling all round? They’ve stopped voting, but they haven’t +stopped quarrelling. Come!” +</p> + +<p> +Although she had dropped her voice, the listeners were so close that they +caught snatches of the sentences, and craned their necks forward and hushed +their own talk to listen. Mrs. Orendorf was not of a nimble habit of thought; +but she felt the electric impetus of the Irish girl; besides, was <i>she</i> +not bidden? Could she not protect Freda from the machinations of the enemy? +</p> + +<p> +“Dot’s so, Freda,” she concluded, stolidly. “Koom den, der only blace vere we +can talk py uns is dot coal-closet wo is der eggstry ice-cream freezer. Koom. I +see Meezis O’Breen.” +</p> + +<p> +Amid a startling pause, every eye questioning them, the three picked up Mrs. +O’Brien and sought the coal-closet. Then Norah turned. In the dim light her +face shone whitely. Her full melodious voice shook the least in the world with +haste and excitement. “We’ve got to stop this,” said she, “and I know how. +Freda, I am going to withdraw my name. I wish to Heaven I never had let them +put it on. You may have the watch.” +</p> + +<p> +Freda’s tall figure was only an outline in the shadow; they could not see her +face; but the outline wavered backward. Her voice was stiff and cold. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think that’s fair. You have more votes than I have.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. O’Brien opened her lips and shut them tightly. It was so dark no one saw +her, or Mrs. Orendorf, as she sat on the freezer gulping down inaudible +opinions regarding Norah’s sanity. +</p> + +<p> +“I sha’n’t have,” retorted Norah, impatiently, “when your father spends all his +money that he mortgaged his farm—” +</p> + +<p> +<i>“What!”</i> cried Freda. +</p> + +<p> +“She not know; ve keep it von her,” muttered Mrs. Orendorf. “Fritz make me +promise not to tell.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he didn’t make <i>me</i>,” said Norah. “<i>I’ll</i> tell. He raised the +money, and he was trying to buy the votes, and I saw him. I haven’t any father. +I can’t remember anything of my father except his leading me about when I was a +little thing by the finger, and how kind his voice was; but I miss him—I miss +him all the time; I know he was a good man, and loved me; and he’d have done +anything for me, just as your father is doing; and I couldn’t have borne it to +have him, and I was sure you couldn’t, either. Freda, it’s all wrong, this +spending more money than they can afford on us; I’ve felt it all along. Now +let’s stop it. The church has got enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is it true about papa?” said Freda, in German. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Ach Himmel</i>! Yes, my child. Dost thou not know thy father yet? For all +he seems still and stern, thou art more than all the world to him.” Mrs. +Orendorf spoke in the same tongue; her other listeners could not understand it, +but they marvelled over the soft change in her voice. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s true enough, Miss Freda,” said Mrs. O’Brien, gently. “And maybe you’re in +the right of it, Norah darling, though ’tis a bit hard to give in; but, yes, +I’m sure you’re right.” +</p> + +<p> +“You <i>are</i> right,” said Freda, “and it’s all been wrong, all wrong. But +I’ve got to see my father first. Please come with me.” +</p> + +<p> +As Norah had led them in the first place, Freda led them by an equally potent +although entirely different force now; it was Norah’s turn to follow, blindly. +</p> + +<p> +A hush everywhere in their wake betrayed that a consciousness of their +conference and its importance was in the air. Freda was pale, Norah’s cheeks +burned, but neither girl looked to the right or the left; and both the matrons +following avoided their friends’ curiosity by a soldierly “eyes front.” Freda +walked up to her father, who looked up, not altogether pleased, at her light +touch on his arm. +</p> + +<p> +“This is no place for thee, my child,” said he; something in her face made his +voice gentler than common. She looked, he thought, dimly, as she had looked +when they got the news about Otto. +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>have</i> to say something,” said Freda. +</p> + +<p> +“You beples stand back!” commanded Mrs. Orendorf, with a backward impulse of +her elbows. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, you stand back, ladies and gentlemen, please,” begged Mrs. O’Brien, +smiling; “’twill all be explained to yous.” Only Norah stood her ground; and +Pat Barnes kept in the front rank of the bystanders. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” growled Berglund, bristling at the circle of faces much readier +for peace than war. +</p> + +<p> +“She wants to give the watch to me,” explained Freda, rapidly repeating almost +word for word Norah’s offer. As she spoke suspicion wrinkled the corners of old +Fritz’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Maypi sie know sie vill git peten,” he muttered, loud enough for Norah to +hear. Then, as he saw her color turn, his hard face softened. “No,” he said, +clearly, “it don’t be <i>dot</i>; dot Pat Barnes got his pocket full of moneys; +no, sie is a goot schild, und her fader he vas a goot mans; sie haf a hard dime +mit no fader to look oudt for her.” He turned to Norah, whose swimming eyes met +his full. Pat Barnes tried to cough down his emotion and made a strange squeak; +but nobody smiled; the crowded hall was curiously still as Fritz limped up to +Norah. “No, ve don’t can take it off you; can ve, Freda?” said he. +</p> + +<p> +Freda slipped her hand into her father’s arm. “No, Norah,” she said. “I +withdraw my name. And I’m prouder to have my father than all the watches in the +world!” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure, you’re right there, mavourneen,” cried Mrs. O’Brien. “Whisht, all of +you! These blessid children have got the way out of all this mess; they’re +better Christians than anny of us.” Mrs. Orendorf frowned fiercely, reached for +her handkerchief, and wiped her face. +</p> + +<p> +Father Kelly felt it time for his own word, and stepped into the circle. A +sentence or two from Mrs. O’Brien made the quick-witted old Irishman master of +the incident. +</p> + +<p> +“As I understand it,” his full, rich, Celtic tones purred, “’tis the feeling of +both these young ladies that there is hard feeling and strife and wasteful +spending of money coming out of what was meant to be a good-natured contest for +the good of the church; but this disputing, this spending, are neither for the +good of the church nor the glory of God—far from it—God forgive us our +weakness. So both these young ladies withdrew their names. We have cause to be +proud of them both, as they surely have cause to be proud of the loyalty of +their friends.” (Irrepressible applause.) “And the kindest thing their friends +can do is to shake hands all around.” (A voice—in point of fact, the voice of +the widow Murray: “But what will the sodality do with the watch?”) “The watch +is the property of the parish.” Here Father Kelly paused, his persuasive +argument rolling back on himself; <i>he didn’t</i> know what to do with the +watch. It was too perilous to run the risk of new discords over it. The priest +cast a distress rocket in a look at the Vicar-General; but the Vicar-General +perfidiously smiled and looked away. +</p> + +<p> +Up spoke Norah, her sweet voice not quite steady, her cheeks crimson—but they +all heard her: “It’s a large gold watch. Why can’t we give it to Father Kelly?” +</p> + +<p> +The Vicar-General’s lifted hand stilled the shout that rose. +</p> + +<p> +“Why not?” called he. “Father Kelly is not a young lady, but he is popular.” +</p> + +<p> +And Father Kelly, putting both hands over his blushes, ran away from the +frantic roar of applause and laughter. The Vicar-General pursued him to say: +</p> + +<p> +“You were right, Kelly; she <i>is</i> a good girl—and a wise one!” +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps the only person in the hall who was not either shouting or screaming, +according to sex, was Norah’s mother; and the cloud on her face lightened when +she saw Norah coming to her on Pat Barnes’s arm and Pat’s face aglow. +</p> + +<p> +Freda saw them too; she slipped her hand into her father’s arm. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Liebchen</i>!” said he, stroking it with his rough fingers, “I will get +thee a watch some day, never fear!” +</p> + +<p> +But it was not the thought of a watch that made Freda’s heart lighter than for +many a day. “I don’t want a watch,” said she. “Oh, I’m sorry for Norah, who +can’t even remember about her father!” +</p> + +<p> +THE END +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE AT HIGH TIDE ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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