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Title: Lifted Masks
       Stories

Author: Susan Glaspell

Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7368]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on April 21, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFTED MASKS ***




Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




LIFTED MASKS


STORIES BY


SUSAN GLASPELL

1912





[Dedication]
To
THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND
JENNIE PRESTON




CONTENTS


I   "ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS"

II   THE PLEA

III  FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS

IV   FRECKLES M'GRATH

V    FROM A TO Z

VI   THE MAN OF FLESH AND BLOOD

VII  HOW THE PRINCE SAW AMERICA

VIII THE LAST SIXTY MINUTES

IX   "OUT THERE"

X    THE PREPOSTEROUS MOTIVE

XI   HIS AMERICA

XII  THE ANARCHIST: HIS DOG

XIII AT TWILIGHT




LIFTED MASKS




I

"ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE AMERICANS"


"N'avez-vous pas--" she was bravely demanding of the clerk when she
saw that the bulky American who was standing there helplessly
dangling two flaming red silk stockings which a copiously coiffured
young woman assured him were _bien chic_ was edging nearer her.
She was never so conscious of the truly American quality of her
French as when a countryman was at hand. The French themselves had
an air of "How marvellously you speak!" but fellow Americans
listened superciliously in an "I can do better than that myself"
manner which quite untied the Gallic twist in one's tongue. And so,
feeling her French was being compared, not with mere French itself,
but with an arrogant new American brand thereof, she moved a little
around the corner of the counter and began again in lower voice:
"_Mais, n'avez_--"

"Say, Young Lady," a voice which adequately represented the figure
broke in, "_you_, aren't French, are you?"

She looked up with what was designed for a haughty stare. But what
is a haughty stare to do in the face of a broad grin? And because it
was such a long time since a grin like that had been grinned at her
it happened that the stare gave way to a dimple, and the dimple to a
laughing: "Is it so bad as that?"

"Oh, not your French," he assured her. "You talk it just like the
rest of them. In fact, I should say, if anything--a little more so.
But do you know,"--confidentially--"I can just spot an American girl
every time!"

"How?" she could not resist asking, and the modest black hose she
was thinking of purchasing dangled against his gorgeous red ones in
friendliest fashion.

"Well, Sir--I don't know. I don't think it can be the
clothes,"--judicially surveying her.

"The clothes," murmured Virginia, "were bought in Paris."

"Well, you've got _me_. Maybe it's the way you wear 'em. Maybe
it's 'cause you look as if you used to play tag with your brother.
Something--anyhow--gives a fellow that 'By jove there's an American
girl!' feeling when he sees you coming round the corner."

"But why--?"

"Lord--don't begin on _why_. You can say _why_ to
anything. Why don't the French talk English? Why didn't they lay
Paris out at right angles? Now look here, Young Lady, for that
matter--_why_ can't you help me buy some presents for my wife?
There'd be nothing wrong about it," he hastened to assure her,
"because my wife's a mighty fine woman."

The very small American looked at the very large one. Now Virginia
was a well brought up young woman. Her conversations with strange
men had been confined to such things as, "Will you please tell me
the nearest way to--?" but preposterously enough--she could not for
the life of her have told why--frowning upon this huge American--fat
was the literal word--who stood there with puckered-up face swinging
the flaming hose would seem in the same shameful class with snubbing
the little boy who confidently asked her what kind of ribbon to buy
for his mother.

"Was it for your wife you were thinking of buying these red
stockings?" she ventured.

"Sure. What do you think of 'em? Look as if they came from Paris all
right, don't they?"

"Oh, they look as though they came from Paris, all right," Virginia
repeated, a bit grimly. "But do you know"--this quite as to that
little boy who might be buying the ribbon--"American women don't
always care for all the things that look as if they came from Paris.
Is your wife--does she care especially for red stockings?"

"Don't believe she ever had a pair in her life. That's why I thought
it might please her."

Virginia looked down and away. There were times when dimples made
things hard for one.

Then she said, with gentle gravity: "There are quite a number of
women in America who don't care much for red stockings. It would
seem too bad, wouldn't it, if after you got these clear home your
wife should turn out to be one of those people? Now, I think these
grey stockings are lovely. I'm sure any woman would love them. She
could wear them with grey suede slippers and they would be so soft
and pretty."

"Um--not very lively looking, are they? You see I want something to
cheer her up. She--well she's not been very well lately and I
thought something--oh something with a lot of _dash_ in it, you
know, would just fill the bill. But look here. We'll take both.
Sure--that's the way out of it. If she don't like the red, she'll
like the grey, and if she don't like the--You like the grey ones,
don't you? Then here"--picking up two pairs of the handsomely
embroidered grey stockings and handing them to the clerk--"One,"
holding up his thumb to denote one--"me,"--a vigorous pounding of
the chest signifying me. "One"--holding up his forefinger and
pointing to the girl--"mademoiselle."

"Oh no--no--no!" cried Virginia, her face instantly the colour of
the condemned stockings. Then, standing straight: "Certainly
_not_."

"No? Just as you say," he replied good humouredly. "Like to have you
have 'em. Seems as if strangers in a strange land oughtn't to stand
on ceremony."

The clerk was bending forward holding up the stockings alluringly.
"_Pour mademoiselle, n'est-ce-pas_?"

"_Mais--non!_" pronounced Virginia, with emphasis.

There followed an untranslatable gesture. "How droll!" shoulder and
outstretched hands were saying. "If the kind gentleman _wishes_
to give mademoiselle the _joli bas_--!"

His face had puckered up again. Then suddenly it unpuckered. "Tell
you what you might do," he solved it. "Just take 'em along and send
them to your mother. Now your mother might be real glad to have
'em."

Virginia stared. And then an awful thing happened. What she was
thinking about was the letter she could send with the stockings.
"Mother dear," she would write, "as I stood at the counter buying
myself some stockings to-day along came a nice man--a stranger to
me, but very kind and jolly--and gave me--"

There it was that the awful thing happened. Her dimple was
showing--and at thought of its showing she could not keep it from
showing! And how could she explain why it was showing without its
going on showing? And how--?

But at that moment her gaze fell upon the clerk, who had taken the
dimple as signal to begin putting the stockings in a box. The
Frenchwoman's eyebrows soon put that dimple in its proper place.
"And so the _petite Americaine_ was not too--oh, not _too_--" those
French eyebrows were saying.

All in an instant Virginia was something quite different from a
little girl with a dimple. "You are very kind," she was saying, and
her mother herself could have done it no better, "but I am sure our
little joke had gone quite far enough. I bid you good-morning". And
with that she walked regally over to the glove counter, leaving red
and grey and black hosiery to their own destinies.

"I loathe them when their eyebrows go up," she fumed. "Now
_his_ weren't going up--not even in his mind."

She could not keep from worrying about him. "They'll just 'do' him,"
she was sure. "And then laugh at him in the bargain. A man like that
has no _business_ to be let loose in a store all by himself."

And sure enough, a half hour later she came upon him up in the dress
department. Three of them had gathered round to "do" him. They were
making rapid headway, their smiling deference scantily concealing
their amused contempt. The spectacle infuriated Virginia. "They just
think they can _work_ us!" she stormed. "They think we're
_easy_. I suppose they think he's a _fool_. I just wish
they could get him in a business deal! I just wish--!"

"I can assure you, sir," the English-speaking manager of the
department was saying, "that this garment is a wonderful value. We
are able to let you have it at so absurdly low a figure because--"

Virginia did not catch why it was they were able to let him have it
at so absurdly low a figure, but she did see him wipe his brow and
look helplessly around. "Poor _thing_," she murmured, almost
tenderly, "he doesn't know what to do. He just _does_ need
somebody to look after him." She stood there looking at his back. He
had a back a good deal like the back of her chum's father at home.
Indeed there were various things about him suggested "home." Did one
want one's own jeered at? One might see crudities one's self, but
was one going to have supercilious outsiders coughing those sham
coughs behind their hypocritical hands?

"For seven hundred francs," she heard the suave voice saying.

_Seven hundred francs_! Virginia's national pride, or, more
accurately, her national rage, was lashed into action. It was with
very red cheeks that the small American stepped stormily to the
rescue of her countryman.

"Seven hundred francs for _that_?" she jeered, right in the
face of the enraged manager and stiffening clerks. "Seven hundred
francs--indeed! Last year's model--a hideous colour, and "--picking
it up, running it through her fingers and tossing it contemptuously
aside--"abominable stuff!"

"Gee, but I'm grateful to you!" he breathed, again wiping his brow.
"You know, I was a little leery of it myself."

The manager, quivering with rage and glaring uglily, stepped up to
Virginia. "May I ask--?"

But the fat man stepped in between--he was well qualified for that
position. "Cut it out, partner. The young lady's a friend of
_mine_--see? She's looking out for me--not you. I don't want
your stuff, anyway." And taking Virginia serenely by the arm he
walked away.

"This was no place to buy dresses," said she crossly.

"Well, I wish I knew where the places _were_ to buy things," he
replied, humbly, forlornly.

"Well, what do you want to buy?" demanded she, still crossly.

"Why, I want to buy some nice things for my wife. Something the real
thing from Paris, you know. I came over from London on purpose. But
Lord,"--again wiping his brow--"a fellow doesn't know where to
_go_."

"Oh well," sighed Virginia, long-sufferingly, "I see I'll just have
to take you. There doesn't seem any way out of it. It's evident you
can't go _alone_. _Seven hundred francs_!"

"I suppose it was too much," he conceded meekly. "I tell you I
_will_ be grateful if you'll just stay by me a little while. I
never felt so up against it in all my life."

"Now, a very nice thing to take one's wife from Paris," began
Virginia didactically, when they reached the sidewalk, "is lace."

"L--ace? Um! Y--es, I suppose lace is all right. Still it never
struck me there was anything so very _lively_ looking about
lace."

"'Lively looking' is not the final word in wearing apparel,"
pronounced Virginia in teacher-to-pupil manner. "Lace is always in
good taste, never goes out of style, and all women care for it. I
will take you to one of the lace shops."

"Very well," acquiesced he, truly chastened. "Here, let's get in
this cab."

Virginia rode across the Seine looking like one pondering the
destinies of nations. Her companion turned several times to address
her, but it would have been as easy for a soldier to slap a general
on the back. Finally she turned to him.

"Now when we get there," she instructed, "don't seem at all
interested in things. Act--oh, bored, you know, and seeming to want
to get me away. And when they tell the price, no matter what they
say, just--well sort of groan and hold your head and act as though
you are absolutely overcome at the thought of such an outrage."

"U--m. You have to do that here to get--lace?"

"You have to do that here to get _anything_---at the price you
should get it. You, and people who go shopping the way you do, bring
discredit upon the entire American nation."

"That so? Sorry. Never meant to do that. All right, Young Lady, I'll
do the best I can. Never did act that way, but suppose I can, if the
rest of them do."

"Groan and hold my head," she heard him murmuring as they entered
the shop.

He proved an apt pupil. It may indeed be set down that his aptitude
was their undoing. They had no sooner entered the shop than he
pulled out his watch and uttered an exclamation of horror at the
sight of the time. Virginia could scarcely look at the lace, so
insistently did he keep waving the watch before her. His contempt
for everything shown was open and emphatic. It was also articulate.
Virginia grew nervous, seeing the real red showing through in the
Frenchwoman's cheeks. And when the price was at last named--a price
which made Virginia jubilant--there burst upon her outraged ears
something between a jeer and a howl of rage, the whole of it
terrifyingly done in the form of a groan; she looked at her
companion to see him holding up his hands and wobbling his head as
though it had been suddenly loosened from his spine, cast one look
at the Frenchwoman--then fled, followed by her groaning compatriot.

"I didn't mean you to act like _that_!" she stormed.

"Why, I did just what you told me to! Seemed to me I was following
directions to the letter. Don't think for a minute _I'm_ going
to bring discredit on the American nation! Not a bad scheme--taking
out my watch that way, was it?"

"Oh, beautiful _scheme_. I presume you notice, however, that we
have no lace."

They walked half a block in silence. "Now I'll take you to another
shop," she then volunteered, in a turning the other cheek fashion,
"and here please do nothing at all. Please just--sit."

"Sort of as if I was feeble-minded, eh?"

"Oh, don't _try_ to look feeble-minded," she begged, alarmed at
seeming to suggest any more parts; "just sit there--as if you were
thinking of something very far away."

"Say, Young Lady, look here; this is very nice, being put on to the
tricks of the trade, but the money end of it isn't cutting much ice,
and isn't there any way you can just _buy_ things--the way you
do in Cincinnati? Can't you get their stuff without making a comic
opera out of it?"

"No, you can't," spoke relentless Virginia; "not unless you want
them to laugh and say 'Aren't Americans fools?' the minute the door
is shut."

"Fools--eh? I'll show them a thing or two!"

"Oh, please show them nothing here! Please just--sit."

While employing her wiles to get for three hundred and fifty francs a
yoke and scarf aggregating four hundred, she chanced to look at her
American friend. Then she walked rapidly to the rear of the shop,
buried her face in her handkerchief, and seemed making heroic efforts
to sneeze. Once more he was following directions to the letter. Chin
resting on hands, hands resting on stick, the huge American had taken
on the beatific expression of a seventeen-year-old girl thinking of
something "very far away." Virginia was long in mastering the sneeze.

On the sidewalk she presented him with the package of lace and also
with what she regarded the proper thing in the way of farewell
speech. She supposed it _was_ hard for a man to go shopping
alone; she could see how hard it would be for her own father; indeed
it was seeing how difficult it would be for her father had impelled
her to go with him, a stranger. She trusted his wife would like the
lace; she thought it very nice, and a bargain. She was glad to have
been of service to a fellow countryman who seemed in so difficult a
position.

But he did not look as impressed as one to whom a farewell speech
was being made should look. In fact, he did not seem to be hearing
it. Once more, and in earnest this time, he appeared to be thinking
of something very far away. Then all at once he came back, and it
was in anything but a far-away voice he began, briskly: "Now look
here, Young Lady, I don't doubt but this lace is great stuff. You
say so, and I haven't seen man, woman or child on this side of the
Atlantic knows as much as you do. I'm mighty grateful for the
lace--don't you forget that, but just the same--well, now I'll tell
you. I have a very special reason for wanting something a little
livelier than lace. Something that seems to have Paris written on it
in red letters--see? Now, where do you get the kind of hats you see
some folks wearing, and where do you get the dresses--well, it's
hard to describe 'em, but the kind they have in pictures marked
'Breezes from Paris'? You see--_S-ay!_--_what_ do you think of
_that?_"

"That" was in a window across the street. It was an opera cloak. He
walked toward it, Virginia following. "Now _there_," he turned
to her, his large round face all aglow, "is what I want."

It was yellow; it was long; it was billowy; it was insistently and
recklessly regal.

"That's the ticket!" he gloated.

"Of course," began Virginia, "I don't know anything about it. I am
in a very strange position, not knowing what your wife likes or--or
has. This is the kind of thing everything has to go _with_ or
one wouldn't--one couldn't--"

"Sure! Good idea. We'll just get everything to go with it."

"It's the sort of thing one doesn't see worn much outside of
Paris--or New York. If one is--now my mother wouldn't care for that
coat at all." Virginia took no little pride in that tactful finish.

"Can't sidetrack me!" he beamed. "I _want_ it. Very thing I'm
after, Young Lady."

"Well, of course you will have no difficulty in buying the coat
without me," said she, as a dignified version of "I wash my hands of
you." "You can do here as you said you wished to do, simply go in
and pay what they ask. There would be no use trying to get it cheap.
They would know that anyone who wanted it would"--she wanted to say
"have more money than they knew what to do with," but contented
herself with, "be able to pay for it."

But when she had finished she looked at him; at first she thought
she wanted to laugh, and then it seemed that wasn't what she wanted
to do after all. It was like saying to a small boy who was one beam
over finding a tin horn: "Oh well, take the horn if you want to, but
you can't haul your little red waggon while you're blowing the
horn." There seemed something peculiarly inhuman about taking the
waggon just when he had found the horn. Now if the waggon were
broken, then to take away the horn would leave the luxury of grief.
But let not shadows fall upon joyful moments.

With the full ardour of her femininity she entered into the
purchasing of the yellow opera cloak. They paid for that decorative
garment the sum of two thousand five hundred francs. It seemed it
was embroidered, and the lining was--anyway, they paid it.

And they took it with them. He was going to "take no chances on
losing it." He was leaving Paris that night and held that during his
stay he had been none too impressed with either Parisian speed or
Parisian veracity.

Then they bought some "Breezes from Paris," a dress that would
"go with" the coat. It was violet velvet, and contributed to the
sense of doing one's uttermost; and hats--"the kind you see some
folks wearing." One was the rainbow done into flowers, and the
other the kind of black hat to outdo any rainbow. "If you could
just give me some idea what type your wife is," Virginia was
saying, from beneath the willow plumes. "Now you see this hat
quite overpowers me. Do you think it will overpower her?"

"Guess not. Anyway, if it don't look right on her head she may enjoy
having it around to look at."

Virginia stared out at him. The _oddest_ man! As if a hat were
any good at all if it didn't look right on one's head!

Upon investigation--though yielding to his taste she was still
vigilant as to his interests--Virginia discovered a flaw in one of
the plumes. The sylph in the trailing gown held volubly that it did
not _fait rien_; the man with the open purse said he couldn't
see that it figured much, but the small American held firm. That
must be replaced by a perfect plume or they would not take the hat.
And when she saw who was in command the sylph as volubly acquiesced
that _naturellement_ it must be _tout a fait_ perfect. She would
send out and get one that would be oh! so, so, _so_ perfect. It
would take half an hour.

"Tell you what we'll do," Virginia's friend proposed, opera cloak
tight under one arm, velvet gown as tight under the other, "I'm
tired--hungry--thirsty; feel like a ham sandwich--and something. I'm
playing you out, too. Let's go out and get a bite and come back for
the so, so, _so_ perfect hat."

She hesitated. But he had the door open, and if he stood holding it
that way much longer he was bound to drop the violet velvet gown.
She did not want him to drop the velvet gown and furthermore, she
_would_ like a cup of tea. There came into her mind a fortifying
thought about the relative deaths of sheep and lambs. If to be
killed for the sheep were indeed no worse than being killed for
the lamb, and if a cup of tea went with the sheep and nothing at
all with the lamb--?

So she agreed. "There's a nice little tea-shop right round the
corner. We girls often go there."

"Tea? Like tea? All right, then"--and he started manfully on.

But as she entered the tea-shop she was filled with keen sense of
the desirableness of being slain for the lesser animal. For, cosily
installed in their favourite corner, were "the girls."

Virginia had explained to these friends some three hours before that
she could not go with them that afternoon as she must attend a
musicale some friends of her mother's were giving. Being friends of
her mother's, she expatiated, she would have to go.

Recollecting this, also for the first time remembering the musicale,
she bowed with the _hauteur_ of self-consciousness.

Right there her friend contributed to the tragedy of a sheep's death
by dropping the yellow opera cloak. While he was stooping to pick it
up the violet velvet gown slid backward and Virginia had to steady
it until he could regain position. The staring in the corner gave
way to tittering--and no dying sheep had ever held its head more
haughtily.

The death of this particular sheep proved long and painful. The legs
of Virginia's friend and the legs of the tea-table did not seem well
adapted to each other. He towered like a human mountain over the
dainty thing, twisting now this way and now that. It seemed
Providence--or at least so much of it as was represented by the
management of that shop--had never meant fat people to drink tea.
The table was rendered further out of proportion by having a large
box piled on either side of it.

Expansively, and not softly, he discoursed of these things. What did
they think a fellow was to do with his _knees_? Didn't they
sell tea enough to afford any decent chairs? Did all these women
pretend to really _like_ tea?

Virginia's sense of humour rallied somewhat as she viewed him eating
the sandwiches. Once she had called them doll-baby sandwiches; now
that seemed literal: tea-cups, _petit gateau_, the whole service
gave the fancy of his sitting down to a tea-party given by a little
girl for her dollies.

But after a time he fell silent, looking around the room. And when
he broke that pause his voice was different.

"These women here, all dressed so fine, nothing to do but sit around
and eat this folderol, _they_ have it easy--don't they?"

The bitterness in it, and a faint note of wistfulness, puzzled her.
Certainly _he_ had money.

"And the husbands of these women," he went on; "lots of 'em, I
suppose, didn't always have so much. Maybe some of these women
helped out in the early days when things weren't so easy. Wonder if
the men ever think how lucky they are to be able to get it back at
'em?"

She grew more bewildered. Wasn't he "getting it back?" The money he
had been spending that day!

"Young Lady," he said abruptly, "you must think I'm a queer one."

She murmured feeble protest.

"Yes, you must. Must wonder what I want with all this stuff, don't
you?"

"Why, it's for your wife, isn't it?" she asked, startled.

"Oh yes, but you must wonder. You're a shrewd one, Young Lady;
judging the thing by me, you must wonder."

Virginia was glad she was not compelled to state her theory. Loud
and common and impossible were terms which had presented themselves,
terms which she had fought with kind and good-natured and generous.
Their purchases she had decided were to be used, not for a knock,
but as a crashing pound at the door of the society of his town. For
her part, Virginia hoped the door would come down.

"And if you knew that probably this stuff would never be worn at
all, that ten to one it would never do anything more than lie round
on chairs--then you _would_ think I was queer, wouldn't you?"

She was forced to admit that that would seem rather strange.

"Young Lady, I believe I'll tell you about it. Never do talk about
it to hardly anybody, but I feel as if you and I were pretty well
acquainted--we've been through so much together."

She smiled at him warmly; there was something so real about him when
he talked that way.

But his look then frightened her. It seemed for an instant as though
he would brush the tiny table aside and seize some invisible thing
by the throat. Then he said, cutting off each word short: "Young
Lady, what do you think of this? I'm worth more 'an a million
dollars--and my wife gets up at five o'clock every morning to do
washing and scrubbing."

"Oh, it's not that she _has_ to," he answered her look, "but
she _thinks_ she has to. See? Once we were poor. For twenty
years we were poor as dirt. Then she did have to do things like
that. Then I struck it. Or rather, it struck me. Oil. Oil on a bit
of land I had. I had just sense enough to make the most of it; one
thing led to another--well, you're not interested in that end of it.
But the fact is that now we're rich. Now she could have all the
things that these women have--Lord A'mighty she could lay abed every
day till noon if she wanted to! But--you see?--it _got_ her--those
hard, lonely, grinding years _took_ her. She's"--he shrunk from the
terrible word and faltered out--"her mind's not--"

There was a sobbing little flutter in Virginia's throat. In a dim
way she was glad to see that the girls were going. She _could_
not have them laughing at him--now.

"Well, you can about figure out how it makes me feel," he continued,
and looking into his face now it was as though the spirit redeemed
the flesh. "You're smart. You can see it without my callin' your
attention to it. Last time I went to see her I had just made fifty
thousand on a deal. And I found her down on her knees thinking she
was scrubbing the floor!"

Unconsciously Virginia's hand went out, following the rush of
sympathy and understanding. "But can't they--restrain her?" she
murmured.

"Makes her worse. Says she's got it to do--frets her to think she's
not getting it done."

"But isn't there some _way_?" she whispered. "Some way to make
her _know_?"

He pointed to the large boxes. "That," he said simply, "is the
meaning of those. It's been seven years--but I keep on trying."

She was silent, the tears too close for words. And she had thought
it cheap ambition!--vulgar aspiration--silly show--vanity!

"Suppose you thought I was a queer one, talking about lively looking
things. But you see now? Thought it might attract her attention,
thought something real gorgeous like this might impress money on
her. Though I don't know,"--he seemed to grow weary as he told it;
"I got her a lot of diamonds, thinking they might interest her, and
she thought she'd stolen 'em, and they had to take them away."

Still the girl did not speak. Her hand was shading her eyes.

"But there's nothing like trying. Nothing like keeping right on
trying. And anyhow--a fellow likes to think he's taking his wife
something from Paris."

They passed before her in their heartbreaking folly, their tragic
uselessness, their lovable absurdity and stinging irony--those
things they had bought that afternoon: an _opera cloak_--a
_velvet dress_--_those hats_--_red silk stockings_.

The mockery of them wrung her heart. Right there in the tea-shop
Virginia was softly crying.

"Oh, now that's too bad," he expostulated clumsily. "Why, look here,
Young Lady, I didn't mean you to take it so hard."

When she had recovered herself he told her much of the story. And
the thing which revealed him--glorified him--was less the grief he
gave to it than the way he saw it. "It's the cursed unfairness of
it," he concluded. "When you consider it's all because she did those
things--when you think of her bein' bound to 'em for life just
because she was _too faithful doin' 'em_--when you think that
now--when I could give her everything these women have got!--she's
got to go right on worrying about baking the bread and washing the
dishes--did it for me when I was poor--and now with me rich she can't
get _out_ of it--and I _can't reach_ her--oh, it's _rotten!_ I
tell you it's _rotten!_ Sometimes I can just hear my money _laugh_
at me! Sometimes I get to going round and round in a circle about it
till it seems I'm going crazy myself."

"I think you are a--a noble man," choked Virginia.

That disconcerted him. "Oh Lord--don't think that. No, Young Lady,
don't try to make any plaster saint out of _me_. My life goes
on. I've got to eat, drink and be merry. I'm built that way. But
just the same my heart on the inside's pretty sore, Young Lady. I
want to tell you that the whole inside of my heart is _sore as a
boil_!"

They were returning for the hats. Suddenly Virginia stopped, and it
was a soft-eyed and gentle Virginia who turned to him after the
pause. "There are lovely things to be bought in Paris for women who
aren't well. Such soft, lovely things to wear in your room. Not but
what I think these other things are all right. As you say, they
may--interest her. But they aren't things she can use just now, and
wouldn't you like her to have some of those soft lovely things she
could actually wear? They might help most of all. To wake in the
morning and find herself in something so beautiful--"

"Where do you get 'em?" he demanded promptly.

And so they went to one of those shops which have, more than all the
others, enshrined Paris in feminine hearts. And never was lingerie
selected with more loving care than that which Virginia picked out
that afternoon. A tear fell on one particularly lovely _robe de
nuit_--so soothingly soft, so caressingly luxurious, it seemed
that surely it might help bring release from the bondage of those
crushing years.

As they were leaving they were given two packages. "Just the kimona
thing you liked," he said, "and a trinket or two. Now that we're
such good friends, you won't feel like you did this morning."

"And if I don't want them myself, I might send them to my mother,"
Virginia replied, a quiver in her laugh at her own little joke.

He had put her in her cab; he had tried to tell her how much he thanked
her; they had said good-bye and the _cocher_ had cracked his whip
when he came running after her. "Why, Young Lady," he called out,
"we don't know each other's _names_."

She laughed and gave hers. "Mine's William P. Johnson," he said.
"Part French and part Italian. But now look here, Young Lady--or I
mean, Miss Clayton. A fellow at the hotel was telling me something
last night that made me _sick_. He said American girls sometimes
got awfully up against it here. He said one actually starved last
year. Now, I don't like that kind of business. Look here, Young Lady,
I want you to promise that if you--you or any of your gang--get up
against it you'll cable William P. Johnson, of Cincinnati, Ohio."

The twilight grey had stolen upon Paris. And there was a mist which
the street lights only penetrated a little way--as sometimes one's
knowledge of life may only penetrate life a very little way. Her cab
stopped by a blockade, she watched the burly back of William P.
Johnson disappearing into the mist. The red box which held the
yellow opera cloak she could see longer than all else.

"You never can tell," murmured Virginia. "It just goes to show that
you never can tell."

And whatever it was you never could tell had brought to Virginia's
girlish face the tender knowingness of the face of a woman.




II

THE PLEA


Senator Harrison concluded his argument and sat down. There was no
applause, but he had expected none. Senator Dorman was already
saying "Mr. President?" and there was a stir in the crowded
galleries, and an anticipatory moving of chairs among the Senators.
In the press gallery the reporters bunched together their scattered
papers and inspected their pencil-points with earnestness. Dorman
was the best speaker of the Senate, and he was on the popular side
of it. It would be the great speech of the session, and the prospect
was cheering after a deluge of railroad and insurance bills.

"I want to tell you," he began, "why I have worked for this
resolution recommending the pardon of Alfred Williams. It is one of
the great laws of the universe that every living thing be given a
chance. In the case before us that law has been violated. This does
not resolve itself into a question of second chances. The boy of
whom we are speaking has never had his first."

Senator Harrison swung his chair half-way around and looked out at
the green things which were again coming into their own on the
State-house grounds. He knew--in substance--what Senator Dorman
would say without hearing it, and he was a little tired of the whole
affair. He hoped that one way or other they would finish it up that
night, and go ahead with something else. He had done what he could,
and now the responsibility was with the rest of them. He thought
they were shouldering a great deal to advocate the pardon in the
face of the united opposition of Johnson County, where the crime had
been committed. It seemed a community should be the best judge of
its own crimes, and that was what he, as the Senator from Johnson,
had tried to impress upon them.

He knew that his argument against the boy had been a strong one. He
rather liked the attitude in which he stood. It seemed as if he were
the incarnation of outraged justice attempting to hold its own at
the floodgates of emotion. He liked to think he was looking far
beyond the present and the specific and acting as guardian of the
future--and the whole. In summing it up that night the reporters
would tell in highly wrought fashion of the moving appeal made by
Senator Dorman, and then they would speak dispassionately of the
logical argument of the leader of the opposition. There was more
satisfaction to self in logic than in mere eloquence. He was even a
little proud of his unpopularity. It seemed sacrificial.

He wondered why it was Senator Dorman had thrown himself into it so
whole-heartedly. All during the session the Senator from Maxwell had
neglected personal interests in behalf of this boy, who was nothing
to him in the world. He supposed it was as a sociological and
psychological experiment. Senator Dorman had promised the Governor
to assume guardianship of the boy if he were let out. The Senator
from Johnson inferred that as a student of social science his
eloquent colleague wanted to see what he could make of him. To
suppose the interest merely personal and sympathetic would seem
discreditable.

"I need not dwell upon the story," the Senator from Maxwell was
saying, "for you all are familiar with it already. It is said to
have been the most awful crime ever committed in the State. I grant
you that it was, and then I ask you to look for a minute into the
conditions leading up to it.

"When the boy was born, his mother was instituting divorce
proceedings against his father. She obtained the divorce, and
remarried when Alfred was three months old. From the time he was a
mere baby she taught him to hate his father. Everything that went
wrong with him she told him was his father's fault. His first vivid
impression was that his father was responsible for all the wrong of
the universe.

"For seven years that went on, and then his mother died. His
stepfather did not want him. He was going to Missouri, and the boy
would be a useless expense and a bother. He made no attempt to find
a home for him; he did not even explain--he merely went away and
left him. At the age of seven the boy was turned out on the world,
after having been taught one thing--to hate his father. He stayed a
few days in the barren house, and then new tenants came and closed
the doors against him. It may have occurred to him as a little
strange that he had been sent into a world where there was no place
for him.

"When he asked the neighbours for shelter, they told him to go to
his own father and not bother strangers. He said he did not know
where his father was. They told him, and he started to walk--a
distance of fifty miles. I ask you to bear in mind, gentlemen, that
he was only seven years of age. It is the age when the average boy
is beginning the third reader, and when he is shooting marbles and
spinning tops.

"When he reached his father's house he was told at once that he was
not wanted there. The man had remarried, there were other children,
and he had no place for Alfred. He turned him away; but the
neighbours protested, and he was compelled to take him back. For
four years he lived in this home, to which he had come unbidden, and
where he was never made welcome.

"The whole family rebelled against him. The father satisfied his
resentment against the boy's dead mother by beating her son, by
encouraging his wife to abuse him, and inspiring the other children
to despise him. It seems impossible such conditions should exist.
The only proof of their possibility lies in the fact of their
existence.

"I need not go into the details of the crime. He had been beaten by
his father that evening after a quarrel with his stepmother about
spilling the milk. He went, as usual, to his bed in the barn; but
the hay was suffocating, his head ached, and he could not sleep. He
arose in the middle of the night, went to the house, and killed both
his father and stepmother.

"I shall not pretend to say what thoughts surged through the boy's
brain as he lay there in the stifling hay with the hot blood
pounding against his temples. I shall not pretend to say whether he
was sane or insane as he walked to the house for the perpetration of
the awful crime. I do not even affirm it would not have happened had
there been some human being there to lay a cooling hand on his hot
forehead, and say a few soothing, loving words to take the sting
from the loneliness, and ease the suffering. I ask you to consider
only one thing: he was eleven years old at the time, and he had no
friend in all the world. He knew nothing of sympathy; he knew only
injustice."

Senator Harrison was still looking out at the budding things on the
State-house grounds, but in a vague way he was following the story.
He knew when the Senator from Maxwell completed the recital of facts
and entered upon his plea. He was conscious that it was stronger
than he had anticipated--more logic and less empty exhortation. He
was telling of the boy's life in reformatory and penitentiary since
the commission of the crime,--of how he had expanded under kindness,
of his mental attainments, the letters he could write, the books he
had read, the hopes he cherished. In the twelve years he had spent
there he had been known to do no unkind nor mean thing; he responded
to affection--craved it. It was not the record of a degenerate, the
Senator from Maxwell was saying.

A great many things were passing through the mind of the Senator
from Johnson. He was trying to think who it was that wrote that
book, "Put Yourself in His Place." He had read it once, and it
bothered him to forget names. Then he was wondering why it was the
philosophers had not more to say about the incongruity of people who
had never had any trouble of their own sitting in judgment upon
people who had known nothing but trouble. He was thinking also that
abstract rules did not always fit smoothly over concrete cases, and
that it was hard to make life a matter of rules, anyway.

Next he was wondering how it would have been with the boy Alfred
Williams if he had been born in Charles Harrison's place; and then
he was working it out the other way and wondering how it would have
been with Charles Harrison had he been born in Alfred Williams's
place. He wondered whether the idea of murder would have grown in
Alfred Williams's heart had he been born to the things to which
Charles Harrison was born, and whether it would have come within the
range of possibility for Charles Harrison to murder his father if he
had been born to Alfred Williams's lot. Putting it that way, it was
hard to estimate how much of it was the boy himself, and how much
the place the world had prepared for him. And if it was the place
prepared for him more than the boy, why was the fault not more with
the preparers of the place than with the occupant of it? The whole
thing was very confusing.

"This page," the Senator from Maxwell was saying, lifting the little
fellow to the desk, "is just eleven years of age, and he is within
three pounds of Alfred Williams's weight when he committed the
murder. I ask you, gentlemen, if this little fellow should be guilty
of a like crime to-night, to what extent would you, in reading of it
in the morning, charge him with the moral discernment which is the
first condition of moral responsibility? If Alfred Williams's story
were this boy's story, would you deplore that there had been no one
to check the childish passion, or would you say it was the inborn
instinct of the murderer? And suppose again this were Alfred
Williams at the age of eleven, would you not be willing to look into
the future and say if he spent twelve years in penitentiary and
reformatory, in which time he developed the qualities of useful and
honourable citizenship, that the ends of justice would then have
been met, and the time at hand for the world to begin the payment of
her debt?"

Senator Harrison's eyes were fixed upon the page standing on the
opposite desk. Eleven was a younger age than he had supposed. As he
looked back upon it and recalled himself when eleven years of
age--his irresponsibility, his dependence--he was unwilling to say
what would have happened if the world had turned upon him as it had
upon Alfred Williams. At eleven his greatest grievance was that the
boys at school called him "yellow-top." He remembered throwing a
rock at one of them for doing it. He wondered if it was criminal
instinct prompted the throwing of the rock. He wondered how high the
percentage of children's crimes would go were it not for
countermanding influences. It seemed the great difference between
Alfred Williams and a number of other children of eleven had been
the absence of the countermanding influence.

There came to him of a sudden a new and moving thought. Alfred
Williams had been cheated of his boyhood. The chances were he had
never gone swimming, nor to a ball game, or maybe never to a circus.
It might even be that he had never owned a dog. The Senator from
Maxwell was right when he said the boy had never been given his
chance, had been defrauded of that which has been a boy's heritage
since the world itself was young.

And the later years--how were they making it up to him? He recalled
what to him was the most awful thing he had ever heard about the
State penitentiary: they never saw the sun rise down there, and they
never saw it set. They saw it at its meridian, when it climbed above
the stockade, but as it rose into the day, and as it sank into the
night, it was denied them. And there, at the penitentiary, they
could not even look up at the stars. It had been years since Alfred
Williams raised his face to God's heaven and knew he was part of it
all. The voices of the night could not penetrate the little cell in
the heart of the mammoth stone building where he spent his evenings
over those masterpieces with which, they said, he was more familiar
than the average member of the Senate. When he read those things
Victor Hugo said of the vastness of the night, he could only look
around at the walls that enclosed him and try to reach back over the
twelve years for some satisfying conception of what night really
was.

The Senator from Johnson shuddered: they had taken from a living
creature the things of life, and all because in the crucial hour there
had been no one to say a staying word. Man had cheated him of the
things that were man's, and then shut him away from the world that
was God's. They had made for him a life barren of compensations.

There swept over the Senator a great feeling of self-pity. As
representative of Johnson County, it was he who must deny this boy
the whole great world without, the people who wanted to help him,
and what the Senator from Maxwell called "his chance." If Johnson
County carried the day, there would be something unpleasant for him
to consider all the remainder of his life. As he grew to be an older
man he would think of it more and more--what the boy would have done
for himself in the world if the Senator from Johnson had not been
more logical and more powerful than the Senator from Maxwell.

Senator Dorman was nearing the end of his argument. "In spite of the
undying prejudice of the people of Johnson County," he was saying,
"I can stand before you today and say that after an unsparing
investigation of this case I do not believe I am asking you to do
anything in violation of justice when I beg of you to give this boy
his chance."

It was going to a vote at once, and the Senator from Johnson County
looked out at the budding things and wondered whether the boy down
at the penitentiary knew the Senate was considering his case that
afternoon. It was without vanity he wondered whether what he had
been trained to think of as an all-wise providence would not have
preferred that Johnson County be represented that session by a less
able man.

A great hush fell over the Chamber, for ayes and noes followed
almost in alternation. After a long minute of waiting the secretary
called, in a tense voice:

"Ayes, 30; Noes, 32."

The Senator from Johnson had proven too faithful a servant of his
constituents. The boy in the penitentiary was denied his chance.

The usual things happened: some women in the galleries, who had boys
at home, cried aloud; the reporters were fighting for occupancy of
the telephone booths, and most of the Senators began the perusal of
the previous day's Journal with elaborate interest. Senator Dorman
indulged in none of these feints. A full look at his face just then
told how much of his soul had gone into the fight for the boy's
chance, and the look about his eyes was a little hard on the theory
of psychological experiment.

Senator Harrison was looking out at the budding trees, but his face
too had grown strange, and he seemed to be looking miles beyond and
years ahead. It seemed that he himself was surrendering the voices
of the night, and the comings and goings of the sun. He would never
look at them--feel them--again without remembering he was keeping
one of his fellow creatures away from them. He wondered at his own
presumption in denying any living thing participation in the
universe. And all the while there were before him visions of the boy
who sat in the cramped cell with the volume of a favourite poet
before him, trying to think how it would seem to be out under the
stars.

The stillness in the Senate-Chamber was breaking; they were going
ahead with something else. It seemed to the Senator from Johnson
that sun, moon, and stars were wailing out protest for the boy who
wanted to know them better. And yet it was not sun, moon, and stars
so much as the unused swimming hole and the uncaught fish, the
unattended ball game, the never-seen circus, and, above all, the
unowned dog, that brought Senator Harrison to his feet.

They looked at him in astonishment, their faces seeming to say it
would have been in better taste for him to have remained seated just
then.

"Mr. President," he said, pulling at his collar and looking straight
ahead, "I rise to move a reconsideration."

There was a gasp, a moment of supreme quiet, and then a mighty burst
of applause. To men of all parties and factions there came a single
thought. Johnson was the leading county of its Congressional
district. There was an election that fall, and Harrison was in the
race. Those eight words meant to a surety he would not go to
Washington, for the Senator from Maxwell had chosen the right word
when he referred to the prejudice of Johnson County on the Williams
case as "undying." The world throbs with such things at the moment
of their doing--even though condemning them later, and the part of
the world then packed within the Senate-Chamber shared the universal
disposition.

The noise astonished Senator Harrison, and he looked around with
something like resentment. When the tumult at last subsided, and he
saw that he was expected to make a speech, he grew very red, and
grasped his chair desperately.

The reporters were back in their places, leaning nervously forward.
This was Senator Harrison's chance to say something worth putting
into a panel by itself with black lines around it--and they were
sure he would do it.

But he did not. He stood there like a schoolboy who had forgotten
his piece--growing more and more red. "I--I think," he finally
jerked out, "that some of us have been mistaken. I'm in favour now
of--of giving him his chance."

They waited for him to proceed, but after a helpless look around the
Chamber he sat down. The president of the Senate waited several
minutes for him to rise again, but he at last turned his chair
around and looked out at the green things on the State-house
grounds, and there was nothing to do but go ahead with the second
calling of the roll. This time it stood 50 to 12 in favour of the
boy.

A motion to adjourn immediately followed--no one wanted to do
anything more that afternoon. They all wanted to say things to the
Senator from Johnson; but his face had grown cold, and as they were
usually afraid of him, anyhow, they kept away. All but Senator
Dorman--it meant too much with him. "Do you mind my telling you," he
said, tensely, "that it was as fine a thing as I have ever known a
man to do?"

The Senator from Johnson moved impatiently. "You think it 'fine,'"
he asked, almost resentfully, "to be a coward?"

"Coward?" cried the other man. "Well, that's scarcely the word. It
was--heroic!"

"Oh no," said Senator Harrison, and he spoke wearily, "it was a
clear case of cowardice. You see," he laughed, "I was afraid it
might haunt me when I am seventy."

Senator Dorman started eagerly to speak, but the other man stopped
him and passed on. He was seeing it as his constituency would see
it, and it humiliated him. They would say he had not the courage of
his convictions, that he was afraid of the unpopularity, that his
judgment had fallen victim to the eloquence of the Senator from
Maxwell.

But when he left the building and came out into the softness of the
April afternoon it began to seem different. After all, it was not he
alone who leaned to the softer side. There were the trees--they were
permitted another chance to bud; there were the birds--they were
allowed another chance to sing; there was the earth--to it was given
another chance to yield. There stole over him a tranquil sense of
unison with Life.




III

FOR LOVE OF THE HILLS


"Sure you're done with it?"

"Oh, yes," replied the girl, the suggestion of a smile on her face,
and in her voice the suggestion of a tear. "Yes; I was just going."

But she did not go. She turned instead to the end of the alcove and
sat down before a table placed by the window. Leaning her elbows
upon it she looked about her through a blur of tears.

Seen through her own eyes of longing, it seemed that almost all of
the people whom she could see standing before the files of the daily
papers were homesick. The reading-room had been a strange study to
her during those weeks spent in fruitless search for the work she
wanted to do, and it had likewise proved a strange comfort. When
tired and disconsolate and utterly sick at heart there was always
one thing she could do--she could go down to the library and look at
the paper from home. It was not that she wanted the actual news of
Denver. She did not care in any vital way what the city officials
were doing, what buildings were going up, or who was leaving town.
She was only indifferently interested in the fires and the murders.
She wanted the comforting companionship of that paper from home.

It seemed there were many to whom the papers offered that same
sympathy, companionship, whatever it might be. More than anything
else it perhaps gave to them--the searchers, drifters--a sense of
anchorage. She would not soon forget the day she herself had stumbled
in there and found the home paper. Chicago had given her nothing but
rebuffs that day, and in desperation, just because she must go
somewhere, and did not want to go back to her boarding-place, she had
hunted out the city library. It was when walking listlessly about in
the big reading-room it had occurred to her that perhaps she could
find the paper from home; and after that when things were their worst,
when her throat grew tight and her eyes dim, she could always comfort
herself by saying: "After a while I'll run down and look at the paper."

But to-night it had failed her. It was not the paper from home
to-night; it was just a newspaper. It did not inspire the belief
that things would be better to-morrow, that it must all come right
soon. It left her as she had come---heavy with the consciousness
that in her purse was eleven dollars, and that that was every cent
she had in the whole world.

It was hard to hold back the tears as she dwelt upon the fact that
it was very little she had asked of Chicago. She had asked only a
chance to do the work for which she was trained, in order that she
might go to the art classes at night. She had read in the papers of
that mighty young city of the Middle West--the heart of the
continent--of its brawn and its brain and its grit. She had supposed
that Chicago, of all places, would appreciate what she wanted to do.
The day she drew her hard-earned one hundred dollars from the bank
in Denver--how the sun had shone that day in Denver, how clear the
sky had been, and how bracing the air!--she had quite taken it for
granted that her future was assured. And now, after tasting for
three weeks the cruelty of indifference, she looked back to those
visions with a hard little smile.

She rose to go, and in so doing her eyes fell upon the queer little
woman to whom she had yielded her place before the Denver paper.
Submerged as she had been in her own desolation she had given no
heed to the small figure which came slipping along beside her beyond
the bare thought that she was queer-looking. But as her eyes rested
upon her now there was something about the woman which held her.

She was a strange little figure. An old-fashioned shawl was pinned
tightly about her shoulders, and she was wearing a queer, rusty
little bonnet. Her hair was rolled up in a small knot at the back of
her head. She did not look as though she belonged in Chicago. And
then, as the girl stood there looking at her, she saw the thin
shoulders quiver, and after a minute the head that was wearing the
rusty bonnet went down into the folds of the Denver paper.

The girl's own eyes filled, and she turned to go. It seemed she
could scarcely bear her own unhappiness that day, without coming
close to the heartache of another. But when she reached the end of
the alcove she glanced back, and the sight of that shabby, bent
figure, all alone before the Denver paper, was not to be withstood.

"I am from Colorado, too," she said softly, laying a hand upon the
bent shoulders.

The woman looked up at that and took the girl's hand in both of her
thin, trembling ones. It was a wan and a troubled face she lifted,
and there was something about the eyes which would not seem to have
been left there by tears alone.

"And do you have a pining for the mountains?" she whispered, with a
timid eagerness. "Do you have a feeling that you want to see the sun
go down behind them tonight and that you want to see the darkness
come stealing up to the tops?"

The girl half turned away, but she pressed the woman's hand tightly
in hers. "I know what you mean," she murmured.

"I wanted to see it so bad," continued the woman, tremulously, "that
something just drove me here to this paper. I knowed it was here
because my nephew's wife brought me here one day and we come across
it. We took this paper at home for more 'an twenty years. That's why
I come. 'Twas the closest I could get."

"I know what you mean," said the girl again, unsteadily.

"And it's the closest I will ever get!" sobbed the woman.

"Oh, don't say that," protested the girl, brushing away her own
tears, and trying to smile; "you'll go back home some day."

The woman shook her head. "And if I should," she said, "even if I
should, 'twill be too late."

"But it couldn't be too late," insisted the girl. "The mountains,
you know, will be there forever."

"The mountains will be there forever," repeated the woman, musingly;
"yes, but not for me to see." There was a pause. "You see,"--she
said it quietly--"I'm going blind."

The girl took a quick step backward, then stretched out two
impulsive hands. "Oh, no, no you're not! Why--the doctors, you know,
they do everything now."

The woman shook her head. "That's what I thought when I come here.
That's why I come. But I saw the biggest doctor of them all
today--they all say he's the best there is--and he said right out
'twas no use to do anything. He said 'twas--hopeless."

Her voice broke on that word. "You see," she hurried on, "I wouldn't
care so much, seems like I wouldn't care 't all, if I could get
there first! If I could see the sun go down behind them just one
night! If I could see the black shadows come slippin' over 'em just
once! And then, if just one morning--just once!--I could get up and
see the sunlight come a streamin'--oh, you know how it looks! You
know what 'tis I want to see!"

"Yes; but why can't you? Why not? You won't go--your eyesight will
last until you get back home, won't it?"

"But I can't go back home; not now."

"Why not?" demanded the girl. "Why can't you go home?"

"Why, there ain't no money, my dear," she explained, patiently.
"It's a long way off--Colorado is, and there ain't no money. Now,
George--George is my brother-in-law--he got me the money to come;
but you see it took it all to come here, and to pay them doctors
with. And George--he ain't rich, and it pinched him hard for me to
come--he says I'll have to wait until he gets money laid up again,
and--well he can't tell just when 't will be. He'll send it soon as
he gets it," she hastened to add.

"But what are you going to do in the meantime? It would cost less to
get you home than to keep you here."

"No, I stay with my nephew here. He's willin' I should stay with him
till I get my money to go home."

"Yes, but this nephew, can't he get you the money? Doesn't he know,"
she insisted, heatedly, "what it means to you?"

"He's got five children, and not much laid up. And then, he never
seen the mountains. He doesn't know what I mean when I try to tell
him about gettin' there in time. Why, he says there's many a one
living back in the mountains would like to be livin' here. He don't
understand--my nephew don't," she added, apologetically.

"Well, _someone_ ought to understand!" broke from the girl. "I
understand! But--" she did her best to make it a laugh--"eleven
dollars is every cent I've got in the world!"

"Don't!" implored the woman, as the girl gave up trying to control
the tears. "Now, don't you be botherin'. I didn't mean to make you
feel so bad. My nephew says I ain't reasonable, and maybe I ain't."

The girl raised her head. "But you _are_ reasonable. I tell
you, you _are_ reasonable!"

"I must be going back," said the woman, uncertainly. "I'm just
making you feel bad, and it won't do no good. And then they may be
stirred up about me. Emma--Emma's my nephew's wife--left me at the
doctor's office 'cause she had some trading to do, and she was to
come back there for me. And then, as I was sittin' there, the pinin'
came over me so strong it seemed I just must get up and start!
And"---she smiled wanly---"this was far as I got."

"Come over and sit down by this table," said the girl, impulsively,
"and tell me a little about your home back in the mountains.
Wouldn't you like to?"

The woman nodded gratefully. "Seems most like getting back to them
to find someone that knows about them," she said, after they had
drawn their chairs up to the table and were sitting there side by
side.

The girl put her rounded hand over on the thin, withered one. "Tell
me about it," she said again.

"Maybe it wouldn't be much interesting to you, my dear. It's just a
common life--mine is. You see, William and I--William was my
husband--we went to Georgetown before it really was any town at all.
Years and years before the railroad went through, we was there. Was
you ever there?" she asked wistfully.

"Oh, very often," replied the girl. "I love every inch of that
country!"

A tear stole down the woman's face. "It's most like being home to
find someone that knows about it," she whispered.

"Yes, William and I went there when 'twas all new country," she went
on, after a pause. "We worked hard, and we laid up a little money.
Then, three years ago, William took sick. He was sick for a year,
and we had to live up most of what we'd saved. That's why I ain't
got none now. It ain't that William didn't provide."

The girl nodded.

"We seen some hard days. But we was always harmonious--William and I
was. And William had a great fondness for the mountains. The night
before he died he made them take him over by the window and he
looked out and watched the darkness come stealin' over the
daylight--you know how it does in them mountains. 'Mother,' he said
to me--his voice was that low I could no more 'an hear what he
said--'I'll never see another sun go down, but I'm thankful I seen
this one.'"

She was crying outright now, and the girl did not try to stop her.

"And that's the reason I love the mountains," she whispered at last.
"It ain't just that they're grand and wonderful to look at. It ain't
just the things them tourists sees to talk about. But the mountains
has always been like a comfortin' friend to me. John and Sarah is
buried there--John and Sarah is my two children that died of fever.
And then William is there--like I just told you. And the mountains
was a comfort to me in all those times of trouble. They're like an
old friend. Seems like they're the best friend I've got on earth."

"I know what you mean," said the girl, brokenly. "I know all about
it."

"And you don't think I'm just notional," she asked wistfully, "in
pinin' to get back while--whilst I can look at them?"

The girl held the old hand tightly in hers with a clasp more
responsive than words.

"It ain't but I'd know they was there. I could feel they was there
all right, but"--her voice sank with the horror of it--"I'm 'fraid
I might forget just how they look!"

"Oh, but you won't," the girl assured her. "You'll remember just how
they look."

"I'm scared of it. I'm scared there might be something I'd forget.
And so I just torment myself thinkin'--'Now do I remember this? Can
I see just how that looks?' That's the way I got to thinkin' up in
the doctor's office, when he told me there was nothing to do, and I
was so worked up it seemed I must get up and start!"

"You must try not to worry about it," murmured the girl. "You'll
remember."

"Well, maybe so. Maybe I will. But that's why I want just one more
look. If I could look once more I'd remember it forever. You see I'd
look to remember it, and I would. And do you know--seems like I
wouldn't mind going blind so much then? When I'd sit facin' them I'd
just say to myself: 'Now I know just how they look. I'm seeing them
just as if I had my eyes!' The doctor says my sight'll just kind of
slip away, and when I look my last look, when it gets dimmer and
dimmer to me, I want the last thing I see to be them mountains where
William and me worked and was so happy! Seems like I can't bear it
to have my sight slip away here in Chicago, where there's nothing I
want to look at! And then to have a little left--to have just a
little left!--and to know I could see if I was there to look--and to
know that when I get there 'twill be--Oh, I'll be rebellious-like
here--and I'd be contented there! I don't want to be complainin'--I
don't want to!--but when I've only got a little left I want it--oh,
I want it for them things I want to see!"

"You will see them," insisted the girl passionately. "I'm not going
to believe the world can be so hideous as that!"

"Well, maybe so," said the woman, rising. "But I don't know where
'twill come from," she added doubtfully.

She took her back to the doctor's office and left her in the care of
the stolid Emma. "Seems most like I'd been back home," she said in
parting; and the girl promised to come and see her and talk with her
about the mountains. The woman thought that talking about them would
help her to remember just how they looked.

And then the girl returned to the library. She did not know why she
did so. In truth she scarcely knew she was going there until she
found herself sitting before that same secluded table at which she
and the woman had sat a little while before. For a long time she sat
there with her head in her hands, tears falling upon a pad of yellow
paper on the table before her.

Finally she dried her eyes, opened her purse, and counted her money.
It seemed that out of her great desire, out of her great new need,
there must be more than she had thought. But there was not, and she
folded her hands upon the two five-dollar bills and the one silver
dollar and looked hopelessly about the big room.

She had forgotten her own disappointments, her own loneliness. She
was oblivious to everything in the world now save what seemed the
absolute necessity of getting the woman back to the mountains while
she had eyes to see them.

But what could she do? Again she counted the money. She could make
herself, some way or other, get along without one of the five-dollar
bills, but five dollars would not take one very close to the
mountains. It was at that moment that she saw a man standing before
the Denver paper, and noticed that another man was waiting to take
his place. The one who was reading had a dinner pail in his hand.
The clothes of the other told that he, too, was of the world's
workers. It was clear to the girl that the man at the file was
reading the paper from home; and the man who was ready to take his
place looked as if waiting for something less impersonal than the
news of the day.

The idea came upon her with such suddenness, so full born, that it
made her gasp. They--the people who came to read the Denver paper,
the people who loved the mountains and were far from them, the
people who were themselves homesick and full of longing--were the
people to understand.

It took her but a minute to act. She put the silver dollar and one
five-dollar bill back in her purse. She clutched the other bill in
her left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed
the petition: "To all who know and love the mountains," and she told
the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and
the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. "And
so I found her here by the Denver paper," she said, after she had
stated the tragic facts, "because it was the closest she could come
to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going
blind. It is breaking because she may never again look with seeing
eyes upon those great hills which rise up about her home. We must do
it for her simply because we would wish that, under like
circumstances, someone would do it for us. She belongs to us because
we understand.

"If you can only give fifty cents, please do not hold it back
because it seems but little. Fifty cents will take her twenty miles
nearer home--twenty miles closer to the things upon which she longs
that her last seeing glance may fall."

After she had written it she rose, and, the five-dollar bill in one
hand, the sheets of yellow paper in the other, walked down the long
room to the desk at which one of the librarians sat. The girl's
cheeks were very red, her eyes shining as she poured out the story.
They mingled their tears, for the girl at the desk was herself young
and far from home, and then they walked back to the Denver paper and
pinned the sheets of yellow paper just above the file. At the bottom
of the petition the librarian wrote: "Leave your money at the desk
in this room. It will be properly attended to." The girl from
Colorado then turned over her five-dollar bill and passed out into
the gathering night.

Her heart was brimming with joy. "I can get a cheaper boarding
place," she told herself, as she joined the home-going crowds, "and
until something else turns up I'll just look around and see if I
can't get a place in a store."

       *       *       *       *       *

One by one they had gathered around while the woman was telling the
story. "And so, if you don't mind," she said, in conclusion, "I'd
like to have you put in a little piece that I got to Denver safe,
so's they can see it. They was all so worked up about when I'd get
here. Would that cost much?" she asked timidly.

"Not a cent," said the city editor, his voice gruff with the attempt
to keep it steady.

"You might say, if it wouldn't take too much room, that I was much
pleased with the prospect of getting home before sundown to-night."

"You needn't worry but what we'll say it all," he assured her.
"We'll say a great deal more than you have any idea of."

"I'm very thankful to you," she said, as she rose to go.

They sat there for a moment in silence. "When one considers,"
someone began, "that they were people who were pushed too close even
to subscribe to a daily paper--"

"When one considers," said the city editor, "that the girl who
started it had just eleven dollars to her name--" And then he, too,
stopped abruptly and there was another long moment of silence.

After that he looked around at the reporters. "Well, it's too bad
you can't all have it, when it's so big a chance, but I guess it
falls logically to Raymond. And in writing it, just remember,
Raymond, that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or
about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written
about the things which draw human beings closer together. And the
chance to write them doesn't come every day, or every year, or every
lifetime. And I'll tell you, boys, all of you, when it seems
sometimes that the milk of human kindness has all turned sour, just
think back to the little story you heard this afternoon."

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly the sun slipped down behind the mountains; slowly the long
purple shadows deepened to black; and with the coming of the night
there settled over the everlasting hills, and over the soul of one
who had returned to them, that satisfying calm that men call peace.




IV

FRECKLES M'GRATH


Many visitors to the State-house made the mistake of looking upon
the Governor as the most important personage in the building. They
would walk up and down the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of some
of the leading officials, when all the while Freckles McGrath, the
real character of the Capitol, and by all odds the most illustrious
person in it, was at once accessible and affable.

Freckles McGrath was the elevator boy. In the official register his
name had gone down as William, but that was a mere concession to the
constituents to whom the official register was sent out. In the
newspapers--and he appeared with frequency in the newspapers--he was
always "Freckles," and every one from the Governor down gave him
that title, the appropriateness of which was stamped a hundred fold
upon his shrewd, jolly Irish face.

Like every one else on the State pay-roll, Freckles was keyed high
during this first week of the new session. It was a reform
Legislature, and so imbued was it with the idea of reforming that
there was grave danger of its forcing reformation upon everything in
sight. It happened that the Governor was of the same faction of the
party as that dominant in the Legislature; reform breathed through
every nook and crevice of the great building.

But high above all else in importance towered the Kelley Bill. From
the very opening of the session there was scarcely a day when some
of Freckles' passengers did not in hushed whispers mention the
Kelley Bill. From what he could pick up about the building, and what
he read in the newspapers, Freckles put together a few ideas as to
what the Kelley Bill really was. It was a great reform measure, and
it was going to show the railroads that they did not own the State.
The railroads were going to have to pay more taxes, and they were
making an awful fuss about it; but if the Kelley Bill could be put
through it would be a great victory for reform, and would make the
Governor "solid" in the State.

Freckles McGrath was strong for reform. That was partly because the
snatches of speeches he heard in the Legislature were more thrilling
when for reform than when against it; it was partly because he
adored the Governor, and in no small part because he despised Mr.
Ludlow.

Mr. Ludlow was a lobbyist. Some of the members of the Legislature
were Mr. Ludlow's property--or at least so Freckles inferred from
conversation overheard at his post. There had been a great deal of
talk that session about Mr. Ludlow's methods.

Freckles himself was no snob. Although he had heard Mr. Ludlow
called disgraceful, and although he firmly believed he was
disgraceful, he did not consider that any reason for not speaking to
him. And so when Mr. Ludlow got in all alone one morning, and the
occasion seemed to demand recognition of some sort, Freckles had
chirped: "Good-morning!"

But the man, possibly deep in something else, simply knit together
his brows and gave no sign of having heard. After that, Henry
Ludlow, lobbyist, and Freckles McGrath, elevator boy, were enemies.

A little before noon, one day near the end of the session, a member
of the Senate and a member of the House rode down together in the
elevator.

"There's no use waiting any longer," the Senator was saying as they
got in. "We're as strong now as we're going to be. It's a matter of
Stacy's vote, and that's a matter of who sees him last."

Freckles widened out his ears and gauged the elevator for very slow
running. Stacy had been written up in the papers as a wabbler on the
Kelley Bill.

"He's all right now," pursued the Senator, "but there's every chance
that Ludlow will see him before he casts his vote this afternoon,
and then--oh, I don't know!" and with a weary little flourish of his
hands the Senator stepped off.

Freckles McGrath sat wrapped in deep thought. The Kelley Bill was
coming up in the Senate that afternoon. If Senator Stacy voted for
it, it would pass. If he voted against it, it would fail. He would
vote for it if he didn't see Mr. Ludlow; he wouldn't vote for it if
he did. That was the situation, and the Governor's whole future,
Freckles felt, was at stake.

The bell rang sharply, and he was vaguely conscious then that it had
been ringing before. In the next half-hour he was very busy taking
down the members of the Legislature. Strangely enough, Senator Stacy
and the Governor went down the same trip, and Freckles beamed with
approbation when, he saw them walk out of the building together.

Stacy was one of the first of the senators to return. Freckles sized
him up keenly as he stepped into the elevator, and decided that he
was still firm. But there was a look about Senator Stacy's mouth
which suggested that there was no use in being too sure of him.
Freckles considered the advisability of bursting forth and telling
him how much better it would be to stick with the reform fellows;
but just as the boy got his courage screwed up to speaking point,
Senator Stacy got off.

About ten minutes later Freckles had the elevator on the ground
floor, and was sitting there reading a paper, when he heard a step
that made him prick up his ears. The next minute Mr. Ludlow turned
the corner. He was immaculately dressed, as usual, and his iron-grey
moustache seemed to stand out just a little more pompously than
ever. There was a sneering look in his eyes as he stepped into the
car. It seemed to be saying: "They thought they could beat me, did
they? Oh, they're easy, they are!"

Freckles McGrath slammed the door of the cage and started the car
up. He did not know what he was going to do, but he had an idea that
he did not want any other passenger. When half way between the
basement and the first floor, he stopped the elevator. He must have
time to think. If he took that man up to the Senate Chamber, he
would simply strike the death-blow to reform! And so he knelt and
pretended to be fixing something, and he thought fast and hard.

"Something broke?" asked an anxious voice.

Freckles looked around into Mr. Ludlow's face, and he saw that the
eminent lobbyist was nervous.

"Yes," he said calmly. "It's acting queer. Something's all out of
whack."

"Well, drop it to the basement and let me out," said Mr. Ludlow
sharply.

"Can't drop it," responded Freckles. "She's stuck."

Mr. Ludlow came and looked things over, but his knowledge did not
extend to the mechanism of elevators.

"Better call someone to come and take us out," he said nervously.

Freckles straightened himself up. A glitter had come into his small
grey eyes, and red spots were burning in his freckled cheeks.

"I think she'll run now," he said.

And she did run. Never in all its history had that State-house
elevator run as it ran then. It rushed past the first and second
floors like a thing let loose, with an utter abandonment that caused
the blood to forsake the eminent lobbyist's face.

"Stop it, boy!" he cried in alarm.

"Can't!" responded Freckles, his voice thick with terror. "Running
away!" he gasped.

"Will it--fall?" whispered the lobbyist.

"I--I think so!" blubbered Freckles.

The central portion of the State-house was very high. Above that
part of the building which was in use there was a long stretch
leading to the tower. The shaft had been built clear up, though
practically unused. Past floors used for store-rooms, past floors
used for nothing at all, they went--the man's face white, the boy
wailing out incoherent supplications. And then, within ten feet of
the top of the shaft, and within a foot of the top floor of the
building, the elevator came to a rickety stop. It wabbled back and
forth; it did strange and terrible things.

"She's falling!" panted Freckles. "Climb!"

And Henry Ludlow climbed. He got the door open, and he clambered up.
No sooner had the man's feet touched the solid floor than Freckles
reached up and slammed the door of the cage. Why he did that he was
not sure at the time. Later he felt that something had warned him
not to give his prisoner's voice a full sweep down the shaft.

Henry Ludlow was far from dull. As he saw the quick but even descent
of the car, he knew that he had been tricked. He would have been
more than human had there not burst from him furious and threatening
words. But what was the use? The car was going down--down--down, and
there he was, perhaps hundreds of feet above any one else in the
building--alone, tricked, beaten!

Of course he tried the door at the head of the winding stairway,
knowing full well that it would be locked. They always kept it
locked; he had heard one of the janitors asking for the keys to take
a party up just a few days before. Perhaps he could get out on top
of the building and make signals of distress. But the door leading
outside was locked also. There he was--helpless. And below--well,
below they were passing the Kelley Bill!

He rattled the grating of the elevator shaft. He made strange, loud
noises, knowing all the while he could not make himself heard. And
then at last, alone in the State-house attic, Henry Ludlow, eminent
lobbyist, sat down on a box and nursed his fury.

Below, Freckles McGrath, the youngest champion of reform in the
building, was putting on a bold front. He laughed and he talked and
he whistled. He took people up and down with as much nonchalance as
if he did not know that up at the top of that shaft angry eyes were
straining themselves for a glimpse of the car, and terrible curses
were descending, literally, upon his stubby red head.

It was a great afternoon at the State-house. Every one thronged to
the doors of the Senate Chamber, where they were putting through the
Kelley Bill. The speeches made in behalf of the measure were brief.
The great thing now was not to make speeches; it was to reach "S" on
roll-call before a man with iron-grey hair and an iron-grey
moustache could come in and say something to the fair-haired member
with the weak mouth who sat near the rear of the chamber.

Freckles was called away just as it went to a vote. When he came
back Senator Kelley was standing out in the corridor, and a great
crowd of men were standing around slapping him on the back. The
Governor himself was standing on the steps of the Senate Chamber;
his eyes were bright, and he was smiling.

Freckles turned his car back to the basement. He wanted to be all
alone for a minute, to dwell in solitude upon the fact that it was
he, Freckles McGrath, who had won this great victory for reform. It
was he, Freckles McGrath, who had assured the Governor's future.
Why, perhaps he had that afternoon made for himself a name which
would be handed down in the histories!

Freckles was a kind little boy, and he knew that an elegant
gentleman could not find the attic any too pleasant a place in which
to spend the afternoon, go he decided to go up and get Mr. Ludlow.
It took courage; but he had won his victory and this was no time for
faltering.

There was something gruesome about the long ascent. He thought of
stories he had read of lonely turrets in which men were beheaded,
and otherwise made away with. It seemed he would never come to the
top, and when at last he did it was to find two of the most
awful-looking eyes he had ever seen--eyes that looked as though
furies were going to escape from them--peering down upon him.

The sight of that car, moving smoothly and securely up to the top,
and the sight of that audacious little boy with the freckled face
and the bat-like eyes, that little boy who had played his game so
well, who had wrought such havoc, was too much for Henry Ludlow's
self-control. Words such as he had never used before, such as he
would not have supposed himself capable of using, burst from him.
But Freckles stood calmly gazing up at the infuriated lobbyist, and
just as Mr. Ludlow was saying, "I'll beat your head open, you little
brat!" he calmly reversed the handle and sent the car skimming
smoothly to realms below. He was followed by an angry yell, and then
by a loud request to return, but he heeded them not, and for some
time longer the car made its usual rounds between the basement and
the legislative chambers.

In just an hour Freckles tried it again. He sent the car to within
three feet of the attic floor, and then peered through the grating,
his face tied in a knot of interrogation. The eminent lobbyist stood
there gulping down wrath and pride, knowing well enough what was
expected of him.

"Oh--all right," he muttered at last, and with that much of an
understanding Freckles sent the car up, opened the door, and Henry
Ludlow stepped in.

No word was spoken between them until the light from the floor upon
which the Senate Chamber was situated came in view. Then Freckles
turned with a polite inquiry as to where the gentleman wished to get
off.

"You may take me down to the office of the Governor," said Mr.
Ludlow stonily, meaningly.

"Sure," said Freckles cheerfully. "Guess you'll find the Governor in
his office now. He's been in the Senate most of the afternoon,
watching 'em pass that Kelley Bill."

Mr. Ludlow's lips drew in tightly. He squared his shoulders, and his
silence was tremendous.

In just fifteen minutes Freckles was sent for from the executive
office.

"I demand his discharge!" Mr. Ludlow was saying as the elevator boy
entered.

"It happens you're not running this building," the Governor returned
with a good deal of acidity. "Though of course," he added with
dignity, "the matter will be carefully investigated."

The Governor was one great chuckle inside, and his heart was full of
admiration and gratitude; but would Freckles be equal to bluffing it
through? Would the boy have the finesse, the nice subtlety, the real
master hand, the situation demanded? If not, then--imp of salvation
though he was--in the interest of reform, Freckles would have to go.

It was a very innocent looking boy who stood before him and looked
inquiringly into his face.

"William," began the Governor--Freckles was pained at first, and
then remembered that officially he was William--"this gentleman has
made a very serious charge against you."

Freckles looked at Mr. Ludlow in a hurt way, and waited for the
Governor to proceed.

"He says," went on the chief executive, "that you deliberately took
him to the top of the building and wilfully left him there a
prisoner all afternoon. Did you do that?"

"Oh, sir," burst forth Freckles, "I did the very best I could to
save his life! I was willing to sacrifice mine for him. I--"

"You little liar!" broke in Ludlow.

The Governor held up his hand. "You had your chance. Let him have
his."

"You see, Governor," began Freckles, as if anxious to set right
a great wrong which had been done him, "the car is acting bad.
The engineer said only this morning it needed a going over. When
it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be
discharged for losing control of it, but not"--Freckles sniffled
pathetically---"but not for anything like what he says I done. Why
Governor," he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, "I ain't
got nothing against him! What'd I take him to the attic for?"

"Of course not for money," sneered Mr. Ludlow.

The Governor turned on him sharply. "When you can bring any proof of
that, I'll be ready to hear it. Until you can, you'd better leave it
out of the question."

"Strange it should have happened this very afternoon," put in the
eminent lobbyist.

The Governor looked at him with open countenance. "You were
especially interested in something this afternoon? I thought you
told me you had no vital interest here this session."

There was nothing to be said. Mr. Ludlow said nothing.

"Now, William," pursued the Governor, fearful in his heart that this
would be Freckles' undoing, "why did you close the door of the shaft
before you started down?"

"Well, you see, sir," began Freckles, still tremulously, "I'm so
used to closin' doors. Closin' doors has become a kind of second
nature with me. I've been told about it so many times. And up there,
though I thought I was losin' my life, still I didn't neglect my
duty."

The Governor put his hand to his mouth and coughed.

"And why," he went on, more secure now, for a boy who could get out
of that could get out of anything, "why was it you didn't make some
immediate effort to get Mr. Ludlow down? Why didn't you notify
someone, or do something about it?"

"Why, I supposed, of course, he walked down by the stairs," cried
Freckles. "I never dreamed he'd want to trust the elevator after the
way she had acted."

"The door was locked," snarled the eminent lobbyist.

"Well, now, you see, I didn't know that," explained Freckles
expansively. "Late in the afternoon I took a run up just to test the
car--and there you were! I never was so surprised in my life. I
supposed, of course, sir, that you'd spent the afternoon in the
Senate, along with everybody else."

Once more the Governor put his hand to his mouth.

"Your case will come before the executive council at its next
meeting, William. And if anything like this should happen again, you
will be discharged on the spot." Freckles bowed. "You may go now."

When he was almost at the door the Governor called to him.

"Don't you think, William," he said--the Governor felt that he and
Freckles could afford to be generous--"that you should apologise to
the gentleman for the really grave inconvenience to which you have
been the means of subjecting him?"

Freckles' little grey eyes grew steely. He looked at Henry Ludlow,
and there was an ominous silence. Then light broke over his face.
"On behalf of the elevator," he said, "I apologise."

And a third time the Governor's hand was raised to his mouth.

The next week Freckles was wearing a signet ring; long and audibly
had he sighed for a ring of such kind and proportions. He was at
some pains in explaining to everyone to whom he showed it that it
had been sent him by "a friend up home."




V

FROM A TO Z


Thus had another ideal tumbled to the rubbish heap! She seemed to be
breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among its
longer dead fellows. Certainly she was breathing the dust from
somewhere.

During her senior year at the university, when people would ask:
"And what are you going to do when you leave school, Miss Willard?"
she would respond with anything that came to hand, secretly hugging
to her mind that idea of getting a position in a publishing house. Her
conception of her publishing house was finished about the same time
as her class-day gown. She was to have a roll-top desk--probably of
mahogany--and a big chair which whirled round like that in the office
of the under-graduate dean. She was to have a little office all by
herself, opening on a bigger office--the little one marked "Private."
There were to be beautiful rugs--the general effect not unlike the
library at the University Club--books and pictures and cultivated
gentlemen who spoke often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance.
She was a little uncertain as to her duties, but had a general idea
about getting down between nine and ten, reading the morning paper,
cutting the latest magazine, and then "writing something."

Commencement was now four months past, and one of her professors had
indeed secured for her a position in a Chicago "publishing house."
This was her first morning and she was standing at the window
looking down into Dearborn Street while the man who was to have her
in charge was fixing a place for her to sit.

That the publishing house should be on Dearborn Street had been her
first blow, for she had long located her publishing house on that
beautiful stretch of Michigan Avenue which overlooked the lake. But
the real insult was that this publishing house, instead of having a
building, or at least a floor, all to itself, simply had a place
penned off in a bleak, dirty building such as one who had done work
in sociological research instinctively associated with a box
factory. And the thing which fairly trailed her visions in the dust
was that the partition penning them off did not extend to the
ceiling, and the adjoining room being occupied by a patent medicine
company, she was face to face with glaring endorsements of Dr.
Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. Taken all in all there
seemed little chance for Greek tragedies or the Renaissance.

The man who was "running things"--she buried her phraseology with
her dreams--wore a skull cap, and his moustache dragged down below
his chin. Just at present he was engaged in noisily pulling a most
unliterary pine table from a dark corner to a place near the window.
That accomplished, an ostentatious hunt ensued, resulting in the
triumphant flourish of a feather duster. Several knocks at the
table, and the dust of many months--perhaps likewise of many
dreams--ascended to a resting place on the endorsement of Dr.
Bunting's Kidney and Bladder Cure. He next produced a short,
straight-backed chair which she recognised as brother to the one
which used to stand behind their kitchen stove. He gave it a shake,
thus delicately indicating that she was receiving special favours in
this matter of an able-bodied chair, and then announced with brisk
satisfaction: "So! Now we are ready to begin." She murmured a "Thank
you," seated herself and her buried hopes in this chair which did
not whirl round, and leaned her arms upon a table which did not even
dream in mahogany.

In the _other_ publishing house, one pushed buttons and
uniformed menials appeared--noiselessly, quickly and deferentially.
At this moment a boy with sandy hair brushed straight back in a
manner either statesmanlike or clownlike--things were too involved
to know which--shuffled in with an armful of yellow paper which he
flopped down on the pine table. After a minute he returned with a
warbled "Take Me Back to New York Town" and a paste-pot. And upon
his third appearance he was practising gymnastics with a huge pair
of shears, which he finally presented, grinningly.

There was a long pause, broken only by the sonorous voice of Dr.
Bunting upbraiding someone for not having billed out that stuff to
Apple Grove, and then the sandy-haired boy appeared bearing a large
dictionary, followed by the man in the skull cap behind a dictionary
of equal unwieldiness. These were set down on either side of the
yellow paper, and he who was filling the position of cultivated
gentleman pulled up a chair, briskly.

"Has Professor Lee explained to you the nature of our work?" he
wanted to know.

"No," she replied, half grimly, a little humourously, and not far
from tearfully, "he didn't--explain."

"Then it is my pleasure to inform you," he began, blinking at her
importantly, "that we are engaged here in the making of a
dictionary."

"A _dic--?_" but she swallowed the gasp in the laugh coming up
to meet it, and of their union was born a saving cough.

"Quite an overpowering thought, is it not?" he agreed pleasantly.
"Now you see you have before you the two dictionaries you will use
most, and over in that case you will find other references. The main
thing"--his voice sank to an impressive whisper--"is _not_ to
infringe the copyright. The publisher was in yesterday and made a
little talk to the force, and he said that any one who handed in a
piece of copy infringing the copyright simply employed that means of
writing his own resignation. Neat way of putting it, was it not?"

"Yes, _wasn't_ it--neat?" she agreed, wildly.

She was conscious of a man's having stepped in behind her and taken
a seat at the table next hers. She heard him opening his dictionaries
and getting out his paper. Then the man in the skull cap had risen
and was saying genially: "Well, here is a piece of old Webster, your
first 'take'--no copyright on this, you see, but you must modernise
and expand. Don't miss any of the good words in either of these
dictionaries. Here you have dictionaries, copy-paper, paste, and
Professor Lee assures me you have brains--all the necessary
ingredients for successful lexicography. We are to have some rules
printed to-morrow, and in the meantime I trust I've made myself clear.
The main thing"--he bent down and spoke it solemnly--"is _not_ to
infringe the copyright." With a cheerful nod he was gone, and she heard
him saying to the man at the next table: "Mr. Clifford, I shall have
to ask you to be more careful about getting in promptly at eight."

She removed the cover from her paste-pot and dabbled a little on a
piece of paper. Then she tried the unwieldy shears on another piece
of paper. She then opened one of her dictionaries and read
studiously for fifteen minutes. That accomplished, she opened the
other dictionary and pursued it for twelve minutes. Then she took
the column of "old Webster," which had been handed her pasted on a
piece of yellow paper, and set about attempting to commit it to
memory. She looked up to be met with the statement that Mrs. Marjory
Van Luce De Vane, after spending years under the so-called best
surgeons of the country, had been cured in six weeks by Dr.
Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. She pushed the
dictionaries petulantly from her, and leaning her very red cheek
upon her hand, her hazel eyes blurred with tears of perplexity and
resentment, her mouth drawn in pathetic little lines of uncertainty,
looked over at the sprawling warehouse on the opposite side of
Dearborn Street. She was just considering the direct manner of
writing one's resignation--not knowing how to infringe the
copyright--when a voice said: "I beg pardon, but I wonder if I can
help you any?"

She had never heard a voice like that before. Or, _had_ she
heard it?--and where? She looked at him, a long, startled gaze.
Something made her think of the voice the prince used to have in
long-ago dreams. She looked into a face that was dark and thin
and--different. Two very dark eyes were looking at her kindly, and a
mouth which was a baffling combination of things to be loved and
things to be deplored was twitching a little, as though it would
like to join the eyes in a smile, if it dared.

Because he saw both how funny and how hard it was, she liked him. It
would have been quite different had he seen either one without the
other.

"You can tell me how _not_ to infringe the copyright," she
laughed. "I'm not sure that I know what a copyright is."

He laughed--a laugh which belonged with his voice. "Mr. Littletree
isn't as lucid as he thinks he is. I've been here a week or so, and
picked up a few things you might like to know."

He pulled his chair closer to her table then and gave her a lesson in
the making of copy. Edna Willard was never one-half so attractive as
when absorbed in a thing which someone was showing her how to do. Her
hazel eyes would widen and glisten with the joy of comprehending; her
cheeks would flush a deeper pink with the coming of new light, her
mouth would part in a child-like way it had forgotten to outgrow,
her head would nod gleefully in token that she understood, and she
had a way of pulling at her wavy hair and making it more wavy than
it had been before. The man at the next table was a long time in
explaining the making of a dictionary. He spoke in low tones, often
looking at the figure of the man in the skull cap, who was sitting
with his back to them, looking over copy. Once she cried, excitedly:
"Oh--I _see_!" and he warned, "S--h!" explaining, "Let him think
you got it all from him. It will give you a better stand-in." She
nodded, appreciatively, and felt very well acquainted with this kind
man whose voice made her think of something--called to something--she
did not just know what.

After that she became so absorbed in lexicography that when the men
began putting away their things it was hard to realise that the
morning had gone. It was a new and difficult game, the evasion of
the copyright furnishing the stimulus of a hazard.

The man at the next table had been watching her with an amused
admiration. Her child-like absorption, the way every emotion from
perplexity to satisfaction expressed itself in the poise of her head
and the pucker of her face, took him back over years emotionally
barren to the time when he too had those easily stirred enthusiasms
of youth. For the man at the next table was far from young now. His
mouth had never quite parted with boyishness, but there was more
white than black in his hair, and the lines about his mouth told
that time, as well as forces more aging than time, had laid heavy
hand upon him. But when he looked at the girl and told her with a
smile that it was time to stop work, it was a smile and a voice to
defy the most tell-tale face in all the world.

During her luncheon, as she watched the strange people coming and
going, she did much wondering. She wondered why it was that so many
of the men at the dictionary place were very old men; she wondered
if it would be a good dictionary--one that would be used in the
schools; she wondered if Dr. Bunting had made a great deal of money,
and most of all she wondered about the man at the next table whose
voice was like--like a dream which she did not know that she had
dreamed.

When she had returned to the straggling old building, had stumbled
down the narrow, dark hall and opened the door of the big bleak
room, she saw that the man at the next table was the only one who
had returned from luncheon. Something in his profile made her stand
there very still. He had not heard her come in, and he was looking
straight ahead, eyes half closed, mouth set--no unsurrendered
boyishness there now. Wholly unconsciously she took an impulsive
step forward. But she stopped, for she saw, and felt without really
understanding, that it was not just the moment's pain, but the
revealed pain of years. Just then he began to cough, and it seemed
the cough, too, was more than of the moment. And then he turned and
saw her, and smiled, and the smile changed all.

As the afternoon wore on the man stopped working and turning a
little in his chair sat there covertly watching the girl. She was
just typically girl. It was written that she had spent her days in
the happy ways of healthful girlhood. He supposed that a great many
young fellows had fallen in love with her--nice, clean young
fellows, the kind she would naturally meet. And then his eyes closed
for a minute and he put up his hand and brushed back his hair; there
was weariness, weariness weary of itself, in the gesture. He looked
about the room and scanned the faces of the men, most of them older
than he, many of them men whose histories were well known to him.
They were the usual hangers on about newspaper offices; men who, for
one reason or other--age, dissipation, antiquated methods--had been
pitched over, men for whom such work as this came as a godsend. They
were the men of yesterday--men whom the world had rushed past. She
was the only one there, this girl who would probably sit here beside
him for many months, with whom the future had anything to do.
Youth!--Goodness!--Joy!--Hope!--strange things to bring to a place
like this. And as if their alienism disturbed him, he moved
restlessly, almost resentfully, bit his lips nervously, moistened
them, and began putting away his things.

As the girl was starting home along Dearborn Street a few minutes
later, she chanced to look in a window. She saw that it was a
saloon, but before she could turn away she saw a man with a white
face--white with the peculiar whiteness of a dark face, standing
before the bar drinking from a small glass. She stood still,
arrested by a look such as she had never seen before: a panting
human soul sobbingly fluttering down into something from which it
had spent all its force in trying to rise. When she recalled herself
and passed on, a mist which she could neither account for nor banish
was dimming the clear hazel of her eyes.

The next day was a hard one at the dictionary place. She told
herself it was because the novelty of it was wearing away, because
her fingers ached, because it tired her back to sit in that horrid
chair. She did not admit of any connection between her flagging
interest and the fact that the place at the next table was vacant.

The following day he was still absent. She assumed that it was
nervousness occasioned by her queer surroundings made her look
around whenever she heard a step behind her. Where was he? Where had
that look carried him? If he were in trouble, was there no one to
help him?

The third day she did an unpremeditated thing. The man in the skull
cap had been showing her something about the copy. As he was
leaving, she asked: "Is the man who sits at the next table coming
back?"

"Oh yes," he replied grimly, "he'll be back."

"Because," she went on, "if he wasn't, I thought I would take his
shears. These hurt my fingers."

He made the exchange for her--and after that things went better.

He did return late the next morning. After he had taken his place he
looked over at her and smiled. He looked sick and shaken--as if
something that knew no mercy had taken hold of him and wrung body
and soul.

"You have been ill?" she asked, with timid solicitude.

"Oh no," he replied, rather shortly.

He was quiet all that day, but the next day they talked about the
work, laughed together over funny definitions they found. She felt
that he could tell many interesting things about himself, if he
cared to.

As the days went on he did tell some of those things--out of the way
places where he had worked, queer people whom he had known. It
seemed that words came to him as gifts, came freely, happily,
pleased, perhaps, to be borne by so sympathetic a voice. And there
was another thing about him. He seemed always to know just what she
was trying to say; he never missed the unexpressed. That made it
easy to say things to him; there seemed a certain at-homeness
between his thought and hers. She accounted for her interest in him
by telling herself she had never known any one like that before. Now
Harold, the boy whom she knew best out at the university, why one
had to _say_ things to Harold to make him understand! And
Harold never left one wondering--wondering what he had meant by that
smile, what he had been going to say when he started to say
something and stopped, wondering what it was about his face that one
could not understand. Harold never could claim as his the hour after
he had left her, and was one ever close to anyone with whom one did
not spend some of the hours of absence? She began to see that hours
spent together when apart were the most intimate hours of all.

And as Harold did not make one wonder, so he did not make one worry.
Never in all her life had there been a lump in her throat when she
thought of Harold. There was often a lump in her throat when the man
at the next table was coughing.

One day, she had been there about two months, she said something to
him about it. It was hard; it seemed forcing one's way into a room
that had never been opened to one--there were several doors he kept
closed.

"Mr. Clifford," she turned to him impetuously as they were putting
away their things that night, "will you mind if I say something to
you?"

He was covering his paste-pot. He looked up at her strangely. The
closed door seemed to open a little way. "I can't conceive of
'minding' anything you might say to me, Miss Noah,"--he had called
her Miss Noah ever since she, by mistake, had one day called him Mr.
Webster.

"You see," she hurried on, very timid, now that the door had opened
a little, "you have been so good to me. Because you have been so
good to me it seems that I have some right to--to--"

His head was resting upon his hand, and he leaned a little closer as
though listening for something he wanted to hear.

"I had a cousin who had a cough like yours,"--brave now that she
could not go back--"and he went down to New Mexico and stayed for a
year, and when he came back--when he came back he was as well as any
of us. It seems so foolish not to"--her voice broke, now that it had
so valiantly carried it--"not to--"

He looked at her, and that was all. But she was never wholly the
same again after that look. It enveloped her being in a something
which left her richer--different. It was a look to light the dark
place between two human souls. It seemed for the moment that words
would follow it, but as if feeling their helplessness--perhaps
needlessness--they sank back unuttered, and at the last he got up,
abruptly, and walked away.

One night, while waiting for the elevator, she heard two of the men
talking about him. When she went out on the street it was with head
high, cheeks hot. For nothing is so hard to hear as that which one
has half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying
to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so
bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right
to resent.

That night she lay in her bed with wide open eyes, going over and
over the things they had said. "_Cure?_"--one of them had
scoffed, after telling how brilliant he had been before he "went to
pieces"--"why all the cures on earth couldn't help him! He can go
just so far, and then he can no more stop himself--oh, about as much
as an ant could stop a prairie fire!"

She finally turned over on her pillow and sobbed; and she wondered
why--wondered, yet knew.

But it resulted in the flowering of her tenderness for him. Interest
mounted to defiance. It ended in blind, passionate desire to "make
it up" to him. And again he was so different from Harold; Harold did
not impress himself upon one by upsetting all one's preconceived
ideas.

She felt now that she understood better--understood the closed
doors. He was--she could think of no better word than sensitive.

And that is why, several mornings later, she very courageously--for
it did take courage--threw this little note over on his desk--they
had formed a habit of writing notes to each other, sometimes about
the words, sometimes about other things.

"IN-VI-TA-TION, _n._ That which Miss Noah extends to Mr.
Webster for Friday evening, December second, at the house where she
lives--hasn't she already told him where that is? It is the wish of
Miss Noah to present Mr. Webster to various other Miss Noahs, all of
whom are desirous of making his acquaintance."

She was absurdly nervous at luncheon that day, and kept telling
herself with severity not to act like a high-school girl. He was
late in returning that noon, and though there seemed a new something
in his voice when he asked if he hadn't better sharpen her pencils,
he said nothing about her new definition of invitation. It was
almost five o'clock when he threw this over on her desk:

"AP-PRE-CI-A-TION, _n._ That sentiment inspired in Mr. Webster
by the kind invitation of Miss Noah for Friday evening.

"RE-GRET, _n._ That which Mr. Webster experiences because, for
reasons into which he cannot go in detail, it is impossible for him
to accept Miss Noah's invitation.

"RE-SENT-MENT, _n._ That which is inspired in Mr. Webster by
the insinuation that there are other Miss Noahs in the world."

Then below he had written: "Three hours later. Miss Noah, the world
is queer. Some day you may find out--though I hope you never
will--that it is frequently the things we most want to do that we
must leave undone. Miss Noah, won't you go on bringing me as much of
yourself as you can to Dearborn Street, and try not to think much
about my not being able to know the Miss Noah of Hyde Park? And
little Miss Noah--I thank you. There aren't words enough in this old
book of ours to tell you how much--or why."

That night he hurried away with never a joke about how many words
she had written that day. She did not look up as he stood there
putting on his coat.

It was spring now, and the dictionary staff had begun on W.

They had written of Joy, of Hope and Life and Love, and many other
things. Life seemed pressing just behind some of those definitions,
pressing the harder, perhaps, because it could not break through the
surface.

For it did not break through; it flooded just beneath.

How did she know that he cared for her? She could not possibly have
told. Perhaps the nearest to actual proof she could bring was that
he always saw that her overshoes were put in a warm place. And when
one came down to facts, the putting of a girl's rubbers near the
radiator did not necessarily mean love.

Perhaps then it was because there was no proof of it that she was
most sure. For some of the most sure things in the world are things
which cannot be proved.

It was only that they worked together and were friends; that they
laughed together over funny definitions they found, that he was kind
to her, and that they seemed remarkably close together.

That is as far as facts can take it.

And just there--it begins.

For the force which rushes beneath the facts of life, caring nothing
for conditions, not asking what one desires or what one thinks best,
caring as little about a past as about a future--save its own
future--the force which can laugh at man's institutions and batter
over in one sweep what he likes to call his wisdom, was sweeping
them on. And because it could get no other recognition it forced its
way into the moments when he asked her for an eraser, when she
wanted to know how to spell a word. He could not so much as ask her
if she needed more copy-paper without seeming to be lavishing upon
her all the love of all the ages.

And so the winter had worn on, and there was really nothing whatever
to tell about it.

She was quiet this morning, and kept her head bent low over her
work. For she had estimated the number of pages there were between W
and Z. Soon they would be at Z;--and then? Then? Shyly she turned
and looked at him; he too was bent over his work. When she came in
she had said something about its being spring, and that there must
be wild flowers in the woods. Since then he had not looked up.

Suddenly it came to her--tenderly, hotly, fearfully yet bravely,
that it was she who must meet Z. She looked at him again, covertly.
And she felt that she understood. It was the lines in his face made
it clearest. Years, and things blacker, less easily surmounted than
years--oh yes, that too she faced fearlessly--were piled in between.
She knew now that it was she--not he--who could push them aside.

It was all very unmaidenly, of course; but maidenly is a word love
and life and desire may crowd from the page.

Perhaps she would not have thrown it after all--the little note she
had written--had it not been that when she went over for more
copy-paper she stood for a minute looking out the window. Even on
Dearborn Street the seductiveness of spring was in the air. Spring,
and all that spring meant, filled her.

Because, way beyond the voice of Dr. Bunting she heard the songs of
far-away birds, and because beneath the rumble of a printing press
she could get the babble of a brook, because Z was near and life was
strong, the woman vanquished the girl, and she threw this over to
his desk:

"CHAFING-DISH, n. That out of which Miss Noah asks Mr. Webster to
eat his Sunday night lunch tomorrow. All the other Miss Noahs are
going to be away, and if Mr. Webster does not come, Miss Noah will
be all alone. Miss Noah does not like to be lonely."

She ate no lunch that day; she only drank a cup of coffee and walked
around.

He did not come back that afternoon. It passed from one to two, from
two to three, and then very slowly from three to four, and still he
had not come.

He too was walking about. He had walked down to the lake and was
standing there looking out across it.

Why not?--he was saying to himself--fiercely, doggedly. Over and
over again--Well, _why_ not?

A hundred nights, alone in his room, he had gone over it. Had not
life used him hard enough to give him a little now?--longing had
pleaded. And now there was a new voice--more prevailing voice--the
voice of her happiness. His face softened to an almost maternal
tenderness as he listened to that voice.

Too worn to fight any longer, he gave himself up to it, and sat
there dreaming. They were dreams of joy rushing in after lonely
years, dreams of stepping into the sunlight after long days in fog
and cold, dreams of a woman before a fireplace--her arms about him,
her cheer and her tenderness, her comradeship and her passion--all
his to take! Ah, dreams which even thoughts must not touch--so
wonderful and sacred they were.

A long time he sat there, dreaming dreams and seeing visions. The
force that rules the race was telling him that the one crime was the
denial of happiness--his happiness, her happiness; and when at last
his fight seemed but a puerile fight against forces worlds mightier
than he, he rose, and as one who sees a great light, started back
toward Dearborn Street.

On the way he began to cough. The coughing was violent, and he
stepped into a doorway to gain breath. And after he had gone in
there he realised that it was the building of Chicago's greatest
newspaper.

He had been city editor of that paper once. Facts, the things he
knew about himself, talked to him then. There was no answer.

It left him weak and dizzy and crazy for a drink. He walked on
slowly, unsteadily, his white face set. For he had vowed that if it
took the last nerve in his body there should be no more of that
until after they had finished with Z. He knew himself too well to
vow more. He was not even sure of that.

He did not turn in where he wanted to go, but resistance took the
last bit of force that was in him. He was trembling like a sick man
when he stepped into the elevator.

She was just leaving. She was in the little cloak room putting on
her things. She was all alone in there.

He stepped in. He pushed the door shut, and stood there leaning
against it, looking at her, saying nothing.

"Oh--you are ill?" she gasped, and laid a frightened hand upon him.

The touch crazed him. All resistance gone, he swept her into his
arms; he held her fiercely, and between sobs kissed her again and
again. He could not let her go. He frightened her. He hurt her. And
he did not care--he did not know.

Then he held her off and looked at her. And as he looked into her
eyes, passion melted to tenderness. It was she now--not he;
love--not hunger. Holding her face in his two hands, looking at her
as if getting something to take away, his white lips murmured words
too inarticulate for her to hear. And then again he put his arms
around her--all differently. Reverently, sobbingly, he kissed her
hair. And then he was gone.

He did not come out that Sunday afternoon, but Harold dropped in
instead, and talked of some athletic affairs over at the university.
She wondered why she did not go crazy in listening to him, and yet
she could answer intelligently. It was queer--what one _could_
do.

They had come at last to Z. There would be no more work upon the
dictionary after that day. And it was raining--raining as in Chicago
alone it knows how to rain.

They wrote no notes to each other now. It had been different since
that day. They made small effort to cover their raw souls with the
mantle of commonplace words.

Both of them had tried to stay away that last day. But both were in
their usual places.

The day wore on eventlessly. Those men with whom she had worked, the
men of yesterday, who had been kind to her, came up at various times
for little farewell chats. The man in the skull cap told her that
she had done excellent work. She was surprised at the ease with
which she could make decent reply, thinking again that it was
queer--what one could do.

He was moving. She saw him lay some sheets of yellow paper on the
desk in front. He had finished with his "take." There would not be
another to give him. He would go now.

He came back to his desk. She could hear him putting away his
things. And then for a long time there was no sound. She knew that
he was just sitting there in his chair.

Then she heard him get up. She heard him push his chair up to the
table, and then for a minute he stood there. She wanted to turn
toward him; she wanted to say something--do something. But she had
no power.

She saw him lay an envelope upon her desk. She heard him walking
away. She knew, numbly, that his footsteps were not steady. She knew
that he had stopped; she was sure that he was looking back. But
still she had no power.

And then she heard him go.

Even then she went on with her work; she finished her "take" and
laid down her pencil. It was finished now--and he had gone.
Finished?--_Gone?_ She was tearing open the envelope of the
letter.

This was what she read:

"Little dictionary sprite, sunshine vender, and girl to be loved, if
I were a free man I would say to you--Come, little one, and let us
learn of love. Let us learn of it, not as one learns from
dictionaries, but let us learn from the morning glow and the evening
shades. But Miss Noah, maker of dictionaries and creeper into
hearts, the bound must not call to the free. They might fittingly
have used my name as one of the synonyms under that word Failure,
but I trust not under Coward.

"And now, you funny little Miss Noah from the University of Chicago,
don't I know that your heart is blazing forth the assurance that you
don't _care_ for any of those things--the world, people, common
sense--that you want just love? They made a grand failure of you out
at your university; they taught you philosophy and they taught you
Greek, and they've left you just as much the woman as women were
five thousand years ago. Oh, I know all about you--you little girl
whose hair tried so hard to be red. Your soul touched mine as we sat
there writing words--words--words, the very words in which men try
to tell things, and can't--and I know all about what you would do.
But you shall not do it. Dear little copy maker, would a man
standing out on the end of a slippery plank have any right to cry to
someone on the shore--'Come out here on this plank with me?' If he
loved the someone on the shore, would he not say instead--'Don't get
on this plank?' Me get off the plank--come with you to the
shore--you are saying? But you see, dear, you only know slippery
planks as viewed from the shore--God grant you may never know them
any other way!

"It was you, was it not, who wrote our definition of happiness? Yes,
I remember the day you did it. You were so interested; your cheeks
grew so very red, and you pulled and pulled at your wavy hair. You
said it was such an important definition. And so it is, Miss Noah,
quite the most important of all. And on the page of life, Miss Noah,
may happiness be written large and unblurred for you. It is because
I cannot help you write it that I turn away. I want at least to
leave the page unspoiled.

"I carry a picture of you. I shall carry it always. You are sitting
before a fireplace, and I think of that fireplace as symbolising the
warmth and care and tenderness and the safety that will surround
you. And sometimes as you sit there let a thought of me come for
just a minute, Miss Noah--not long enough nor deep enough to bring
you any pain. But only think--I brought him happiness after he
believed all happiness had gone. He was so grateful for that light
which came after he thought the darkness had settled down. It will
light his way to the end.

"We've come to Z, and it's good-bye. There is one thing I can give
you without hurting you,--the hope, the prayer, that life may be
very, very good to you."

The sheets of paper fell from her hands. She sat staring out
into Dearborn Street. She began to see. After all, he had not
understood her. Perhaps men never understood women; certainly
he had not understood her. What he did not know was that she
was willing to _pay_ for her happiness--_pay_--pay any price
that might be exacted. And anyway--she had no choice. Strange that
he could not see that! Strange that he could not see the irony and
cruelty of bidding her good-bye and then telling her to be happy!

It simplified itself to such an extent that she _grew_ very
calm. It would be easy to find him, easy to make him see--for it was
so very simple--and then....

She turned in her copy. She said good-bye quietly, naturally, rode
down in the lumbering old elevator and started out into the now
drenching rain toward the elevated trains which would take her to
the West Side; it was so fortunate that she had heard him telling
one day where he lived.

When she reached the station she saw that more people were coming
down the stairs than were going up. They were saying things about
the trains, but she did not heed them. But at the top of the stairs
a man in uniform said: "Blockade, Miss. You'll have to take the
surface cars."

She was sorry, for it would delay her, and there was not a minute to
lose. She was dismayed, upon reaching the surface cars, to find she
could not get near them; the rain, the blockade on the "L" had
caused a great crowd to congregate there. She waited a long time,
getting more and more wet, but it was impossible to get near the
cars. She thought of a cab, but could see none, they too having all
been pressed into service.

She determined, desperately, to start and walk. Soon she would
surely get either a cab or a car. And so she started, staunchly,
though she was wet through now, and trembling with cold and
nervousness.

As she hurried through the driving rain she faced things fearlessly.
Oh yes, she understood--everything. But if he were not well--should
he not have her with him? If he had that thing to fight, did he not
need her help? What did men think women were like? Did he think she
was one to sit down and reason out what would be advantageous?
Better a little while with him on a slippery plank than forever safe
and desolate upon the shore!

She never questioned her going; were not life and love too great to
be lost through that which could be so easily put right?

The buildings were reeling, the streets moving up and down--that
awful rain, she thought, was making her dizzy. Labouriously she
walked on--more slowly, less steadily, a pain in her side, that
awful reeling in her head.

Carriages returning to the city were passing her, but she had not
strength to call to them, and it seemed if she walked to the curbing
she would fall. She was not thinking so clearly now. The thing which
took all of her force was the lifting of her feet and the putting
them down in the right place. Her throat seemed to be closing
up--and her side--and her head....

Someone had her by the arm. Then someone was speaking her name;
speaking it in surprise--consternation--alarm.

It was Harold.

It was all vague then. She knew that she was in a carriage, and that
Harold was talking to her kindly. "You're taking me there?" she
murmured.

"Yes--yes, Edna, everything's all right," he replied soothingly.

"Everything's all right," she repeated, in a whisper, and leaned her
head back against the cushions.

They stopped after a while, and Harold was standing at the open door
of the cab with something steaming hot which he told her to drink.
"You need it," he said decisively, and thinking it would help her to
tell it, she drank it down.

The world was a little more defined after that, and she saw things
which puzzled her. "Why, it looks like the city," she whispered, her
throat too sore now to speak aloud.

"Why sure," he replied banteringly; "don't you know we have to go
through the city to get out to the South Side?"

"Oh, but you see," she cried, holding her throat, "but you see, it's
the _other_ way!"

"Not to-night," he insisted; "the place for you to-night is home.
I'm taking you where you belong."

She reached over wildly, trying to open the door, but he held her
back; she began to cry, and he talked to her, gently but unbendingly.
"But you don't _understand!_" she whispered, passionately. "I've
_got_ to go!"

"Not to-night," he said again, and something in the way he said it
made her finally huddle back in the corner of the carriage.

Block after block, mile after mile, they rode on in silence. She
felt overpowered. And with submission she knew that it was Z. For
the whole city was piled in between. Great buildings were in
between, and thousands of men running to and fro on the streets;
man, and all man had builded up, were in between. And then
Harold--Harold who had always seemed to count for so little, had
come and taken her away.

Dully, wretchedly--knowing that her heart would ache far worse
to-morrow than it did to-night--she wondered about things. Did
things like rain and street-cars and wet feet and a sore throat
determine life? Was it that way with other people, too? Did other
people have barriers--whole cities full of them--piled in between?
And then did the Harolds come and take them where they said they
belonged? Were there not _some_ people strong enough to go
where they wanted to go?




VI

THE MAN OF FLESH AND BLOOD


The elements without were not in harmony with the spirit which it
was desired should be engendered within. By music, by gay
decorations, by speeches from prominent men, the board in charge of
the boys' reformatory was striving to throw about this dedication of
the new building an atmosphere of cheerfulness and good-will--an
atmosphere vibrant with the kindness and generosity which emanated
from the State, and the thankfulness and loyalty which it was felt
should emanate from the boys.

Outside the world was sobbing. Some young trees which had been
planted along the driveway of the reformatory grounds, and which
were expected to grow up in the way they should go, were rocking
back and forth in passionate insurrection. Fallen leaves were being
spit viciously through the air. It was a sullen-looking landscape
which Philip Grayson, he who was to be the last speaker of the
afternoon, saw stretching itself down the hill, across the little
valley, and up another little hill of that rolling prairie state. In
his ears was the death wail of the summer. It seemed the spirit of
out-of-doors was sending itself up in mournful, hopeless cries.

The speaker who had been delivering himself of pedantic
encouragement about the open arms with which the world stood ready
to receive the most degraded one, would that degraded one but come
to the world in proper spirit, sat down amid perfunctory applause
led by the officers and attendants of the institution, and the boys
rose to sing. The brightening of their faces told that their work as
performers was more to their liking than their position as auditors.
They threw back their heads and waited with well-disciplined
eagerness for the signal to begin. Then, with the strength and
native music there are in some three hundred boys' throats, there
rolled out the words of the song of the State.

There were lips which opened only because they must, but as a whole
they sang with the same heartiness, the same joy in singing, that he
had heard a crowd of public-school boys put into the song only the
week before. When the last word had died away it seemed to Philip
Grayson that the sigh of the world without was giving voice to the
sigh of the world within as the well-behaved crowd of boys sat down
to resume their duties as auditors.

And then one of the most important of the professors from the State
University was telling them about the kindness of the State: the
State had provided for them this beautiful home; it gave them
comfortable clothing and nutritious food; it furnished that fine
gymnasium in which to train their bodies, books and teachers to
train their minds; it provided those fitted to train their souls, to
work against the unfortunate tendencies--the professor stumbled a
little there--which had led to their coming. The State gave
liberally, gladly, and in return it asked but one thing: that they
come out into the world and make useful, upright citizens, citizens
of which any State might be proud. Was that asking too much? the
professor from the State University was saying.

The sobbing of the world without was growing more intense. Many
pairs of eyes from among the auditors were straying out to where the
summer lay dying. Did they know--those boys whom the State classed
as unfortunates--that out of this death there would come again life?
Or did they see but the darkness--the decay--of to-day?

The professor from the State University was putting the case very
fairly. There were no flaws--seemingly--to be picked in his logic.
The State had been kind; the boys were obligated to good
citizenship. But the coldness!--comfortlessness!--of it all. The
open arms of the world!--how mocking in its abstractness. What did
it mean? Did it mean that they--the men who uttered the phrase so
easily--would be willing to give these boys aid, friendship when
they came out into the world? What would they say, those boys whose
ears were filled with high-sounding, non-committal phrases, if some
man were to stand before them and say, "And so, fellows, when you
get away from this place, and are ready to get your start in the
world, just come around to my office and I'll help you get a job?"
At thought of it there came from Philip Grayson a queer, partly
audible laugh, which caused those nearest him to look his way in
surprise.

But he was all unconscious of their looks of inquiry, absorbed in the
thoughts that crowded upon him. How far away the world--his kind of
people--must seem to these boys of the State Reform School. The
speeches they had heard, the training that had been given them,
had taught them--unconsciously perhaps, but surely--to divide the
world into two great classes: the lucky and the unlucky, those who
made speeches and those who must listen, the so-called good and the
so-called bad; perhaps--he smiled a little at his own cynicism--those
who were caught and those who were not.

There came to him these words of a poet of whom he used to be fond:

    In men whom men pronounce as ill,
    I find so much of goodness still;
    In men whom men pronounce divine,
      I find so much of sin and blot;
    I hesitate to draw the line
      Between the two, when God has not.

When God has not! He turned and looked out at the sullen sky,
returning--as most men do at times--to that conception of his
childhood that somewhere beyond the clouds was God. God! Did God
care for the boys of the State Reformatory? Was that poet of the
western mountains right when he said that God was not a drawer of
lines, but a seer of the good that was in the so-called bad, and of
the bad in the so-called good, and a lover of them both?

If that was God, it was not the God the boys of the reformatory had
been taught to know. They had been told that God would forgive the
wicked, but it had been made clear to them--if not in words, in
implications--that it was they who were the wicked. And the
so-called godly men, men of such exemplary character as had been
chosen to address them that afternoon, had so much of the spirit of
God that they, too, were willing to forgive, be tolerant, and--he
looked out at the bending trees with a smile--disburse generalities
about the open arms of the world.

What would they think--those three hundred speech-tired boys--if
some man who had been held before them as exemplary were to rise and
lay bare his own life--its weaknesses, its faults, perhaps its
crimes--and tell them there was weakness and there was strength in
every human being, and that the world-old struggle of life was to
overcome one's weakness with one's strength.

The idea took strange hold on him. It seemed the method of the
world--at any rate it had been the method of that afternoon--for the
men who stood before their fellows with clean hands to plant
themselves on the far side of a chasm of conventions, or narrow
self-esteem, or easily won virtue, and cry to those beings who
struggled on the other side of that chasm--to those human beings
whose souls had never gone to school: "Look at us! Our hands are
clean, our hearts are pure. See how beautiful it is to be good! Come
ye, poor sinners, and be good also." And the poor sinners, the
untaught, birthmarked human souls, would look over at the
self-acclaimed goodness they could see far across the chasm, and
even though attracted to it (which, he grimly reflected, would not
seem likely) the thing that was left with them was a sense of the
width of the chasm.

He had a sense of needless waste, of unnecessary blight. He looked
down at those three hundred faces and it was as if looking at human
waste; and it was human stupidity, human complacency and cowardice
kept those human beings human drift.

With what a smug self-satisfaction--under the mask of
benevolence--the speakers of that afternoon had flaunted their
virtue--their position! How condescendingly they had spoken of the
home which we, the good, prepare for you, the bad, and what
namby-pambyness there was, after all, in that sentiment which all of
them had voiced--and now you must pay us back by being good!

Oh for a man of flesh and blood to stand up and tell how he himself
had failed and suffered! For a man who could bridge that chasm with
strong, broad, human understanding and human sympathies--a man who
would stand among them pulse-beat to pulse-beat and cry out, "I
know! I understand! I fought it and I'll help you fight it too!"

The sound of his own name broke the spell that was upon him. He
looked to the centre of the stage and saw that the professor from
the State University had seated himself and that the superintendent
of the institution was occupying the place of the speaker. And the
superintendent was saying:

"We may esteem ourselves especially fortunate in having him with us
this afternoon. He is one of the great men of the State, one of the
men who by high living, by integrity and industry, has raised
himself to a position of great honour among his fellow men. A great
party--may I say the greatest of all parties?--has shown its
unbounded confidence in him by giving him the nomination for the
governorship of the State. No man in the State is held in higher
esteem to-day than he. And so it is with special pleasure that I
introduce to you that man of the future--Philip Grayson."

The superintendent sat down then, and he himself--Philip Grayson--was
standing in the place where the other speakers had stood. It was with
a rush which almost swept away his outward show of calm that it came
to him that he--candidate for the governorship--was well fitted to be
that man of flesh and blood for whom he had sighed. That he himself
was within grasp of an opportunity to get beneath the jackets and into
the very hearts and souls of those boys, and make them feel that a
man of sins and virtues, of weaknesses and strength, a man who had
had much to conquer, and for whom the fight would never be finally
won, was standing before them stripped of his coat of conventions
and platitudes, and in nakedness of soul and sincerity of heart was
talking to them as a man who understood.

Almost with the inception of the idea was born the consciousness of
what it might cost. And as in answer to the silent, blunt question,
Is it worth it? there looked up at him three hundred pairs of
eyes--eyes behind which there was good as well as bad, eyes which
had burned with the fatal rush of passion, and had burned, too, with
the hot tears of remorse--eyes which had opened on a hostile world.

And then the eyes of Philip Grayson could not see the eyes which
were before him, and he put up his hand to break the mist--little
caring what the men upon the platform would think of him, little
thinking what effect the words which were crowding into his heart
would have upon his candidacy. But one thing was vital to him now:
to bring upon that ugly chasm the levelling forces of a common
humanity, and to make those boys who were of his clay feel that a
being who had fallen and risen again, a fellow being for whom life
would always mean a falling and a rising again, was standing before
them, and--not as the embodiment of a distant goodness, not as a
pattern, but as one among them, verily as man to man--was telling
them a few things which his own life had taught him were true.

It was his very consecration which made it hard to begin. He was
fearful of estranging them in the beginning, of putting between them
and him that very thing he was determined there should not be.

"I have a strange feeling," he said, with a winning little smile,
"that if I were to open my heart to-day, just open it clear up the
way I'd like to if I could, that you boys would look into it, and
then jump back in a scared kind of way and cry, 'Why--that's me!'
You would be a little surprised--wouldn't you?--if you could look
back and see the kind of boy I was, and find I was much the kind of
boy you are?

"Do you know what I think? I think hypocrisy is the worst thing in
the world. I think it's worse than stealing, or lying, or any of the
other bad things you can name. And do you know where I think lots of
the hypocrisy comes from? I think it comes from the so-called
self-made men--from the real good men, the men who say 'I haven't
got one bad thing charged up to my account.'

"Now the men out campaigning for me call me a self-made man. Your
superintendent just now spoke of my integrity, of the confidence
reposed in me, and all that. But do you know what is the honest
truth? If I am any kind of a man worth mentioning, if I am deserving
of any honour, any confidence, it is not because I was born with my
heart filled with good and beautiful things, for I was not. It is
because I was born with much in my heart that we call the bad, and
because, after that bad had grown stronger and stronger through the
years it was unchecked, and after it had brought me the great shock,
the great sorrow of my life, I began then, when older than you boys
are now, to see a little of that great truth which you can put
briefly in these words: 'There is good and there is bad in every
human heart, and it is the struggle of life to conquer the bad with
the good.' What I am trying to say is, that if I am worthy any one's
confidence to-day, it is because, having seen that truth, I have
been able, through never ceasing trying, through slow conquering, to
crowd out some of the bad and make room for a little of the good.

"You see," he went on, three hundred pairs of eyes hard upon him
now, "some of us are born to a harder struggle than others. There
are people who would object to my saying that to you, even if I
believed it. They would say you would make the fact of being born
with much against which to struggle an excuse for being bad. But
look here a minute; if you were born with a body not as strong as
other boys' bodies, if you couldn't run as far, or jump as high, you
wouldn't be eternally saying, 'I can't be expected to do much; I
wasn't born right.' Not a bit of it! You'd make it your business to
get as strong as you could, and you wouldn't make any parade of the
fact that you weren't as strong as you should be. We don't like
people who whine, whether it's about weak bodies or weak souls.

"I've been sitting here this afternoon wondering what to say to you
boys. I had intended telling some funny stories about things which
happened to me when I was a boy. But for some reason a serious mood
has come over me, and I don't feel just like those stories now. I
haven't been thinking of the funny side of life in the last
half-hour. I've been thinking of how much suffering I've endured
since the days when I, too, was a boy."

He paused then; and when he went on his voice tested to the utmost
the silence of the room: "There is lots of sorrow in this old world.
Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but as I see it to-day human beings
are making a much harder thing of their existence than there is any
need of. There are millions and millions of them, and year after
year, generation after generation, they fight over the same old
battles, live through the same old sorrows. Doesn't it seem all
wrong that after the battle has been fought a million times it can't
be made a little easier for those who still have it before them?

"If a farmer had gone over a bad road, and the next day saw another
farmer about to start over the same road, wouldn't he send him back?
Doesn't it seem too bad that in things which concern one's whole
life people can't be as decent as they are about things which
involve only an inconvenience? Doesn't it seem that when we human
beings have so much in common we might stand together a little
better? I'll tell you what's the matter. Most of the people of this
world are coated round and round with self-esteem, and they're
afraid to admit any understanding of the things which aren't good.
Suppose the farmer had thought it a disgrace to admit he had been
over that road, and so had said: 'From what I have read in books,
and from what I have learned in a general way, I fancy that road
isn't good.' Would the other farmer have gone back? I rather think
he would have said he'd take his chances. But you see the farmer
said he _knew_; and how did he know? Why, because he'd been
over the road himself."

As he paused again, looking at them, he saw it all with a clarifying
simplicity. He himself knew life for a fine and beautiful thing. He
had won for himself some of the satisfactions of understanding,
certain rare delights of the open spirit. He wanted to free the
spirits of these boys to whom he talked; wanted to show them that
spirits could free themselves, indicate to them that self-control
and self-development carried one to pleasures which sordid
self-indulgences had no power to bestow. It was a question of
getting the most from life. It was a matter of happiness.

It was thus he began, slowly, the telling of his life's story:

"I was born with strange, wild passions in my heart. I don't know
where they came from; I only know they were there. I resented
authority. If someone who had a right to dictate to me said,
'Philip, do this,' then Philip would immediately begin to think how
much he would rather do the other thing. And," he smiled a little,
and some of the boys smiled with him in anticipation, "it was the
other thing which Philip usually did.

"I didn't go to a reform school, for the very good reason that there
wasn't any in the State where I lived." Some of he boys smiled
again, and he could hear the nervous coughing of one of the party
managers sitting close to him. "I was what you would call a very bad
boy. I didn't mind any one. I was defiant--insolent. I did bad
things just because I knew they were bad, and--and I took a great
deal of satisfaction out of it."

The sighing of the world without was the only sound which vibrated
through the room. "I say," he went on, "that I got a form of
satisfaction from it. I did not say I got happiness; there is a vast
difference between a kind of momentary satisfaction and that
thing--that most precious of all things--which we call happiness.
Indeed, I was very far from happy. I had hours when I was so morose
and miserable that I hated the whole world. And do you know what I
thought? I thought there was no one in all the world who had the
same kind of things surging up in his heart that I did. I thought
there was no one else with whom it was as easy to be bad, or as hard
to be good. I thought that no one understood. I thought that I was
all alone.

"Did you ever feel like that? Did you ever feel that no one else
knew anything about such feelings as you had? Did you ever feel that
here was you, and there was the rest of the world, and that the rest
of the world didn't know anything about you, and was just generally
down on you? Now that's the very thing I want to talk away from you
to-day. You're not the only one. We're all made of the same kind of
stuff, and there's none of us made of stuff that's flawless. We all
have a fight; some an easy one, and some a big one, and if you have
formed the idea that there is a kind of dividing-line in the world,
and that on the one side is the good, and on the other side the bad,
why, all I can say is that you have a wrong notion of things.

"Well, I grew up to be a man, and because I hadn't fought against
any of the stormy things in my heart they kept growing stronger and
stronger. I did lots of wild, ugly things, things of which I am
bitterly ashamed. I went to another place, and I fell in with the
kind of fellows you can imagine I felt at home with. I had been told
when I was a boy that it was wrong to drink and gamble. I think that
was the chief reason I took to drink and gambling."

There was another cough, more pronounced this time, from the party
manager, and the superintendent was twisting uneasily in his seat.
It was the strangest speech that had ever been delivered at the
boys' reformatory. The boys were leaning forward--self-forgetful,
intent. "One night I was playing cards with a crowd of my friends,
and one of the men, the best friend I had, said something that made
me mad. There was a revolver right there which one of the men had
been showing us. Some kind of a demon got hold of me, and without so
much as a thought I picked up that revolver and fired at my friend."

The party manager gave way to an exclamation of horror, and the
superintendent half rose from his seat. But before any one could say
a word Philip Grayson continued, looking at the half-frightened
faces before him: "I suppose you wonder why I am not in the
penitentiary. I had been drinking, and I missed my aim; and I was
with friends, and it was hushed up."

He rested his hand upon the table, and looked out at the sullen
landscape. His voice was not steady as he went on: "It's not an easy
thing to talk about, boys. I never talked about it to any one before
in all my life. I'm not telling it now just to entertain you or to
create a sensation. I'm telling it," his voice grew tense in its
earnestness, "because I believe that this world could be made a
better and a sweeter place if those who have lived and suffered
would not be afraid to reach out their hands and cry: 'I know that
road--it's bad! I steered off to a better place, and I'll help you
steer off, too.'"

There was not one of the three hundred pairs of eyes but was riveted
upon the speaker's colourless face. The masks of sullenness and
defiance had fallen from them. They were listening now--not because
they must, but because into their hungry and thirsty souls was being
poured the very sustenance for which--unknowingly--they had yearned.

"We sometimes hear people say," resumed the candidate for Governor,
"that they have lived through hell. If by that they mean they've
lived through the deepest torments the human heart can know, then I
can say that I, too, have lived through hell. What I suffered after
I went home that night no one in this world will ever know. Words
couldn't tell it; it's not the kind of thing words can come anywhere
near. My whole life spread itself out before me; it was not a
pleasant thing to look at. But at last, boys, out of the depths of
my darkness, I began to get a little light. I began to get some
understanding of the battle which it falls to the lot of some of us
human beings to wage. There was good in me, you see, or I wouldn't
have cared like that, and it came to me then, all alone that
terrible night, that it is the good which lies buried away somewhere
in our hearts must fight out the bad. And so--all alone, boys--I
began the battle of trying to get command of my own life. And do you
know--this is the truth--it was with the beginning of that battle I
got my first taste of happiness. There is no finer feeling in this
world than the sense of coming into mastery of one's self. It is
like opening a door that has shut you in. Oh, you don't do it all in
a minute. This is no miracle I'm talking about. It's a fight. But
it's a fight that can be won. It's a fight that's gloriously worth
the winning. I'm not saying to you, 'Be good and you'll succeed.'
Maybe you won't succeed. Life as we've arranged it for ourselves
makes success a pretty tough proposition. But that doesn't alter the
fact that it pays to be a decent sort. You and I know about how much
happiness there is in the other kind of thing. And there is
happiness in feeling you're doing what you can to develop what's in
you. Success or failure, it brings a sense of having done your
part,--that bully sense of having put up the best fight you could."

He leaned upon the table then, as though very weary. "I don't know,
I am sure, what the people of my State will think of all this.
Perhaps they won't want a man for their Governor who once tried to
kill another man. But," he looked around at them with that smile of
his which got straight to men's hearts, "there's only one of me, and
there are three hundred of you, and how do I know but that in
telling you of that stretch of bad road ahead I've made a dozen
Governors this very afternoon!"

He looked from row to row of them, trying to think of some last word
which would leave them with a sense of his sincerity. What he did
say was: "And so, boys, when you get away from here, and go out into
the world to get your start, if you find the arms of that world
aren't quite as wide open as you were told they would be, if there
seems no place where you can get a hold, and you are saying to
yourself, 'It's no use--I'll not try,' before you give up just
remember there was one man who said he knew all about it, and give
that one man a chance to show he meant what he said. So look me up,
if luck goes all against you, and maybe I can give you a little
lift." He took a backward step, as though to resume his seat, and
then he said, with a dry little smile which took any suggestion of
heroics from what had gone before, "If I'm not at the State-house,
you'll find my name in the directory of the city where your
programme tells you I live."

He sat down, and for a moment there was silence. Then, full-souled,
heart-given, came the applause. It was not led by the attendants
this time; it was the attendants who rose at last to stop it. And
when the clapping of the hands had ceased, many of those hands were
raised to eyes which had long been dry.

The exercises were drawn to a speedy close, and he found the party
manager standing by his side. "It was very grand," he sneered, "very
high-sounding and heroic, but I suppose you know," jerking his hand
angrily toward a table where a reporter for the leading paper of the
opposition was writing, "that you've given them the winning card."

As he replied, in far-off tone, "I hope so," the candidate for
Governor was looking, not at the reporter who was sending out a new
cry for the opposition, but into those faces aglow with the light of
new understanding and new-born hopes. He stood there watching them
filing out into the corridor, craning their necks to throw him a
last look, and as he turned then and looked from the window it was
to see that the storm had sobbed itself away, and that along the
driveway of the reformatory grounds the young trees--unbroken and
unhurt--were rearing their heads in the way they should go.




VII

HOW THE PRINCE SAW AMERICA


They began work at seven-thirty, and at ten minutes past eight every
hammer stopped. In the Senate Chamber and in the House, on the
stairways and in the corridors, in every office from the Governor's
to the custodian's they laid down their implements and rose to their
feet. A long whistle had sounded through the building. There was
magic in its note.

"What's the matter with you fellows?" asked the attorney-general,
swinging around in his chair.

"Strike," declared one of the men, with becoming brevity.

"Strike of what?"

"Carpet-Tackers' Union Number One," replied the man, kindly
gathering up a few tacks.

"Never heard of it."

"Organised last night," said the carpet-tacker, putting on his coat.

"Well I'll--" he paused expressively, then inquired: "What's your
game?"

"Well, you see, boss, this executive council that runs the
State-house has refused our demands."

"What are your demands?"

"Double pay."

"Double pay! Now how do you figure it out that you ought to have
double pay?"

"Rush work. You see we were under oath, or pretty near that, to get
every carpet in the State-house down by four o'clock this afternoon.
Now you know yourself that rush work is hard on the nerves. Did you
ever get rush work done at a laundry and not pay more for it? We was
anxious as anybody to get the Capitol in shape for the big show this
afternoon. But there's reason in all things."

"Yes," agreed his auditor, "there is."

The man looked at him a little doubtfully. "Our president--we
elected Johnny McGuire president last night--went to the Governor
this morning with our demands."

The Governor's fellow official smiled--he knew the Governor pretty
well. "And he turned you down?"

The striker nodded. "But there's an election next fall; maybe the
turning down will be turned around."

"Maybe so--you never can tell. I don't know just what power
Carpet-Tackers' Union Number One will wield, but the Governor's
pretty solid, you know, with Labour as a whole."

That was true, and went home. The striker rubbed his foot
uncertainly across the floor, and took courage from its splinters.
"Well, there's one thing sure. When Prince Ludwig and his train-load
of big guns show up at four o'clock this afternoon they'll find bare
floors, and pretty bum bare floors, on deck at this place."

The attorney-general rubbed his own foot across the splintered,
miserable boards. "They are pretty bum," he reflected. "I wonder,"
he added, as the man was half-way out of the door, "what Prince
Ludwig will think of the American working-man when he arrives this
afternoon?"

"Just about as much," retorted the not-to-be-downed carpet-tacker,
"as he does about American generosity. And he may think a few
things," he added weightily, "about American independence."

"Oh, he's sure to do that," agreed the attorney-general.

He joined the crowd in the corridor. They were swarming out from all
the offices, all talking of the one thing. "It was a straight case
of hold-up," declared the Governor's secretary. "They supposed they
had us on the hip. They were getting extra money as it was, but you
see they just figured it out we'd pay anything rather than have
these wretched floors for the reception this afternoon. They thought
the Governor would argue the question, and then give in, or, at any
rate, compromise. They never intended for one minute that the Prince
should find bare floors here. And I rather think," he concluded,
"that they feel a little done up about it themselves."

"What's the situation?" asked a stranger within the gates.

"It's like this," a newspaper reporter told him; "about a month ago
there was a fire here and the walls and carpets were pretty well
knocked out with smoke and water. The carpets were mean old things
anyway, so they voted new ones. And I want to tell you"--he swelled
with pride--"that the new ones are beauties. The place'll look great
when we get 'em down. Well, you know Prince Ludwig and his crowd
cross the State on their way to the coast, and of course they were
invited to stop. Last week Billy Patton--he's running the whole
show--declined the invitation on account of lack of time, and then
yesterday comes a telegram saying the Prince himself insisted on
stopping. You know he's keen about Indian dope--and we've got Indian
traditions to burn. So Mr. Bill Patton had to make over his schedule
to please the Prince, and of course we were all pretty tickled about
it, for more reasons than one. The telegram didn't come until five
o'clock yesterday afternoon, but you know what a hummer the Governor
is when he gets a start. He made up his mind this building should be
put in shape within twenty-four hours. They engaged a whole lot of
fellows to work on the carpets to-day. Then what did they do but get
together last night--well, you know the rest. Pretty bum-looking old
shack just now, isn't it?" and the reporter looked around ruefully.

It was approaching the hour for the legislature to convene, and the
members who were beginning to saunter in swelled the crowd--and the
indignation--in the rotunda.

The Governor, meanwhile, had been trying to get other men, but
Carpet-Tackers' Union Number One had looked well to that. The
biggest furniture dealer in the city was afraid of the plumbers.
"Pipes burst last night," he said, "and they may not do a thing for
us if we get mixed up in this. Sorry--but I can't let my customers
get pneumonia."

Another furniture man was afraid of the teamsters. For one reason or
another no one was disposed to respond to the Macedonian cry, and
when the Governor at last gave it up and walked out into the rotunda
he was about as disturbed as he permitted himself to get. "It's the
idea of lying down," he said. "I'd do anything--anything!--if I
could only think what to do."

A popular young member of the House overheard the remark. "By
George, Governor," he burst forth, after a minute's deep
study--"say--by Jove, I say, let's do it ourselves!"

They all laughed, but the Governor's laugh stopped suddenly, and he
looked hard at the young man.

"Why not?" the young legislator went on. "It's a big job, but there
are a lot of us. We've all put down carpets at home; what are we
afraid to tackle it here for?"

Again the others laughed, but the Governor did not. "Say, Weston,"
he said, "I'd give a lot--I tell you I'd give a lot--if we just
could!"

"Leave it to me!"--and he was lost in the crowd.

The Governor's eyes followed him. He had always liked Harry Weston.
He was the very sort to inspire people to do things. The Governor
smiled knowingly as he noted the men Weston was approaching, and his
different manner with the various ones. And then he had mounted a
few steps of the stairway, and was standing there facing the crowd.

"Now look here," he began, after silence had been obtained, "this
isn't a very formal meeting, but it's a mighty important one. It's a
clear case of Carpet-Tackers' Union against the State. What I want
to know is--Is the State going to lie down?"

There were loud cries of "No!"--"Well, I should say not!"

"Well, then, see here. The Governor's tried for other men and can't
get them. Now the next thing I want to know is--What's the matter
with us?"

They didn't get it for a minute, and then everybody laughed.

"It's no joke! You've all put down carpets at home; what's the use
of pretending you don't know how to do it? Oh yes--I know, bigger
building, and all that, but there are more of us, and the principle
of carpet-tacking is the same, big building or little one. Now my
scheme is this--Every fellow his own carpet-tacker! The Governor's
office puts down the Governor's carpet; the Secretary's office puts
down the Secretary's carpet; the Senate puts down the Senate
carpet--and we'll look after our little patch in the House!"

"But you've got more fellows than anybody else," cried a member of
the Senate.

"Right you are, and we'll have an over-flow meeting in the corridors
and stairways. The House, as usual, stands ready to do her
part,"--that brought a laugh for the Senators, and from them.

"Now get it out of your heads this is a joke. The carpets are here;
the building is full of able-bodied men; the Prince is coming at
four--by his own request, and the proposition is just this: Are we
going to receive him in a barn or in a palace? Let's hear what
Senator Arnold thinks about it."

That was a good way of getting away from the idea of its being a
joke. Senator Arnold was past seventy. Slowly he extended his right
arm and tested his muscle. "Not very much," he said, "but enough to
drive a tack or two." That brought applause and they drew closer
together, and the atmosphere warmed perceptibly. "I've fought for
the State in more ways than one,"--Senator Arnold was a
distinguished veteran of the Civil War--"and if I can serve her now
by tacking down carpets, then it's tacking down carpets I'm ready to
go at. Just count on me for what little I'm worth."

Someone started the cry for the Governor. "Prince Ludwig is being
entertained all over the country in the most lavish manner," he
began, with his characteristic directness in stating a situation.
"By his own request he is to visit our Capitol this afternoon. I
must say that I, for one, want to be in shape for him. I don't like
to tell him that we had a labour complication and couldn't get the
carpets down. Speaking for myself, it is a great pleasure to inform
you that the carpet in the Governor's office will be in proper shape
by four o'clock this afternoon."

That settled it. Finally Harry Weston made himself heard
sufficiently to suggest that when the House and Senate met at nine
o'clock motions to adjourn be entertained. "And as to the rest of
you fellows," he cried, "I don't see what's to hinder your getting
busy right now!"

There were Republicans and there were Democrats; there were friends
and there were enemies; there were good, bad and--no, there were no
indifferent. An unprecedented harmony of thought, a millennium-like
unity of action was born out of that sturdy cry--Every man his own
carpet-tacker! The Secretary of State always claimed that he drove
the first tack, but during the remainder of his life the
Superintendent of Public Instruction also contended hotly for that
honour. The rivalry as to who would do the best job, and get it done
most quickly, became intense. Early in the day Harry Weston made the
rounds of the building and announced a fine of one-hundred dollars
for every wrinkle. There were pounded fingers and there were broken
backs, but slowly, steadily and good-naturedly the State-house
carpet was going down. It was a good deal bigger job than they had
anticipated, but that only added zest to the undertaking. The news
of how the State officials were employing themselves had spread
throughout the city, and guards were stationed at every door to keep
out people whose presence would work more harm than good. All
assistance from women was courteously refused. "This is solemn
business," said the Governor, in response to a telephone from some
of the fair sex, "and the introduction of the feminine element might
throw about it a social atmosphere which would result in loss of
time. And then some of the boys might feel called upon to put on
their collars and coats."

Stretch--stretch--stretch, and tack--tack--tack, all morning long it
went on, for the State-house was large--oh, very large. There should
have been a Boswell there to get the good things, for the novelty of
the situation inspired wit even in minds where wit had never glowed
before. Choice bits which at other times would fairly have gone on
official record were now passed almost unnoticed, so great was the
surfeit. Instead of men going out to lunch, lunch came in to them.
Bridget Haggerty, who by reason of her long connection with the
boarding-house across the street was a sort of unofficial official
of the State, came over and made the coffee and sandwiches, all the
while calling down blessings on the head of every mother's son of
them, and announcing in loud, firm tones that while all five of her
boys belonged to the union she'd be after tellin' them what she
thought of this day's work!

It was a United States Senator who did the awful trick, and, to be
fair, the Senator did not think of it as an awful trick at all. He
came over there in the middle of the morning to see the Governor,
and in a few hurried words--it was no day for conversation--was told
what was going on. It was while standing out in the corridor
watching the perspiring dignitaries that the idea of his duty came
to him, and one reason he was sure he was right was the way in which
it came to him in the light of a duty. Here was America in undress
uniform! Here was--not a thing arranged for show, but absolutely the
thing itself! Prince Ludwig had come with a sincere desire to see
America. Every one knew that he was not seeing it at all. He would
go back with memories of bands and flags and people all dressed up
standing before him making polite speeches. But would he carry back
one small whiff of the spirit of the country? Again Senator Bruner
looked about him. The Speaker of the House was just beginning laying
the stair carpet; a judge of the Supreme Court was contending hotly
for a better hammer. "It's an insult to expect any decent man to
drive tacks with a hammer like this," he was saying. Here were
men--real, live men, men with individuality, spirit. When the Prince
had come so far, wasn't it too bad that he should not see anything
but uniforms and cut glass and dress suits and other externals and
non-essentials? Senator Bruner was a kind man; he was a good fellow;
he was hospitable--patriotic. He decided now in favour of the
Prince.

He had to hurry about it, for it was almost twelve then. One of the
vice-presidents of the road lived there, and he was taken into
confidence, and proved an able and eager ally. They located the
special train bearing the Prince and ordered it stopped at the next
station. The stop was made that Senator Patton might receive a long
telegram from Senator Bruner. "I figure it like this," the Senator
told the vice-president. "They get to Boden at a quarter of one and
were going to stop there an hour. Then they were going to stop a
little while at Creyville. I've told Patton the situation, and that
if he wants to do the right thing by the prince he'll cut out those
stops and rush right through here. That will bring him in--well,
they could make it at a quarter of two. I've told him I'd square it
with Boden and Creyville. Oh, he'll do it all right."

And even as he said so came the reply from Patton: "Too good to
miss. Will rush through. Arrive before two. Have carriage at Water
Street."

"That's great!" cried the Senator. "Trust Billy Patton for falling
in with a good thing. And he's right about missing the station
crowd. Patton can always go you one better," he admitted,
grinningly.

They had luncheon together, and they were a good deal more like
sophomores in college than like a United States Senator and a big
railroad man. "You don't think there's any danger of their getting
through too soon?" McVeigh kept asking, anxiously.

"Not a bit," the Senator assured him. "They can't possibly make it
before three. We'll come in just in time for the final skirmish.
It's going to be a jolly rush at the last."

They laid their plans with skill worthy of their training. The State
library building was across from the Capitol, and they were
connected by tunnel. "I never saw before," said the Senator, "what
that tunnel was for, but I see now what a great thing it is. We'll
get him in at the west door of the library--we can drive right up to
it, you know, and then we walk him through the tunnel. That's a
stone floor"--the Senator was chuckling with every sentence--"so I
guess they won't be carpeting it. There's a little stairway running
up from the tunnel---and say, we must telephone over and arrange
about those keys. There'll be a good deal of climbing, but the
Prince is a good fellow, and won't mind. It wouldn't be safe to try
the elevator, for Harry Weston would be in it taking somebody a
bundle of tacks. The third floor is nothing but store rooms; we'll
not be disturbed up there, and we can look right down the rotunda
and see the whole show. Of course we'll be discovered in time; some
one is sure to look up and see us, but we'll fix it so they won't
see us before we've had our fun, and it strikes me, McVeigh, that
for two old fellows like you and me we've put the thing through in
pretty neat shape."

It was a very small and unpretentious party which stepped from the
special at Water Street a little before two. The Prince was wearing
a long coat and an automobile cap and did not suggest anything at
all formidable or unusual. "You've saved the country," Senator
Patton whispered in an aside. "He was getting bored. Never saw a
fellow jolly up so in my life. Guess he was just spoiling for some
fun. Said it would be really worth while to see somebody who wasn't
looking for him."

Senator Bruner beamed. "That's just the point. He's caught my idea
exactly."

It went without a hitch. "I feel," said the Prince, as they were
hurrying him through the tunnel, "that I am a little boy who has run
away from school. Only I have a terrible fear that at any minute
some band may begin to play, and somebody may think of making a
speech."

They gave this son of a royal house a seat on a dry-goods box, so
placed that he could command a good view, and yet be fairly secure.
The final skirmish was on in earnest. Two State Senators--coatless,
tieless, collarless, their faces dirty, their hair rumpled, were
finishing the stair carpet. The chairman of the appropriations
committee in the House was doing the stretching in a still
uncarpeted bit of the corridor, and a member who had recently
denounced the appropriations committee as a disgrace to the State
was presiding at the hammer. They were doing most exquisitely
harmonious team work. A railroad and anti-railroad member who fought
every time they came within speaking distance of one another were
now in an earnest and very chummy conference relative to a large
wrinkle which had just been discovered on the first landing. Many
men were standing around holding their backs, and many others were
deeply absorbed in nursing their fingers. The doors of the offices
were all open, and there was a general hauling in of furniture and
hanging of pictures. Clumsy but well-meaning fingers were doing
their best with "finishing touches." The Prince grew so excited
about it all that they had to keep urging him not to take too many
chances of being seen.

"And I'll tell you," Senator Bruner was saying, "it isn't only
because I knew it would be funny that I wanted you to see it;
but--well, you see America isn't the real America when she has on
her best clothes and is trying to show off. You haven't seen anybody
who hasn't prepared for your coming, and that means you haven't seen
them as they are at all. Now here we are. This is us! You see that
fellow hanging a picture down there? He's president of the First
National Bank. Came over a little while ago, got next to the
situation, and stayed to help. And--say, this is good! Notice that
red-headed fellow just getting up from his knees? Well, he's
president of the teamsters' union--figured so big in a strike here
last year. I call that pretty rich! He's the fellow they are all so
afraid of, but I guess he liked the idea of the boys doing it
themselves, and just sneaked in and helped.--There's the Governor.
He's a fine fellow. He wouldn't be held up by anybody--not even to
get ready for a Prince, but he's worked like a Trojan all day to
make things come his way. Yes sir--this is the sure-enough thing.
Here you have the boys off dress parade. Not that we run away from
our dignity every day, but--see what I mean?"

"I see," replied the Prince, and he looked as though he really did.

"You know--say, dodge there! Move back! No--too late. The Governor's
caught us. Look at him!"

The Governor's eyes had turned upward, and he had seen. He put his
hands on his back--he couldn't look up without doing that--and gave
a long, steady stare. First, Senator Bruner waved; then Senator
Patton waved; then Mr. McVeigh waved; and then the Prince waved.
Other people were beginning to look up. "They're all on," laughed
Patton, "let's go down."

At first they were disposed to think it pretty shabby treatment. "We
worked all day to get in shape," grumbled Harry Weston, "and then
you go ring the curtain up on us before it's time for our show to
begin."

But the Prince made them feel right about it. He had such a good
time that they were forced to concede the move had been a success.
And he said to the Governor as he was leaving: "I see that the only
way to see America is to see it when America is not seeing you."




VIII

THE LAST SIXTY MINUTES


"Nine--ten--" The old clock paused as if in dramatic appreciation of
the situation, and then slowly, weightily, it gave the final stroke,
"Eleven!"

The Governor swung his chair half-way round and looked the timepiece
full in the face. Already the seconds had begun ticking off the last
hour of his official life. On the stroke of twelve another man would
be Governor of the State. He sat there watching the movement of the
minute hand.

The sound of voices, some jovial, some argumentative, was borne to
him through the open transom. People were beginning to gather in the
corridors, and he could hear the usual disputes about tickets of
admission to the inaugural.

His secretary came in just then with some letters. "Could you see
Whitefield now?" he asked. "He's waiting out here for you."

The old man looked up wearily. "Oh, put him off, Charlie. Tell him
you can talk to him about whatever it is he wants to know."

The secretary had his hand on the knob, when the Governor added,
"And, Charlie, keep everybody out, if you can. I'm--I've got a few
private matters to go over."

The younger man nodded and opened the door. He half closed it behind
him, and then turned to say, "Except Francis. You'll want to see him
if he comes in, won't you?"

He frowned and moved impatiently as he answered, curtly: "Oh, yes."

Francis! Of course it never occurred to any of them that he could
close the door on Francis. He drummed nervously on his desk, then
suddenly reached down and, opening one of the drawers, tossed back a
few things and drew out a newspaper. He unfolded this and spread it
out on the desk. Running across the page was the big black line,
"Real Governors of Some Western States," and just below, the first
of the series, and played up as the most glaring example of nominal
and real in governorship, was a sketch of Harvey Francis.

He sat there looking at it, knowing full well that it would not
contribute to his peace of mind. It did not make for placidity of
spirit to be told at the end of things that he had, as a matter of
fact, never been anybody at all. And the bitterest part of it was
that, looking back on it now, getting it from the viewpoint of one
stepping from it, he could see just how true was the statement:
"Harvey Francis has been the real Governor of the State; John
Morrison his mouthpiece and figurehead."

He walked to the window and looked out over the January landscape.
It may have been the snowy hills, as well as the thoughts weighing
him down, that carried him back across the years to one snowy
afternoon when he stood up in a little red schoolhouse and delivered
an oration on "The Responsibilities of Statesmanship." He smiled as
the title came back to him, and yet--what had become of the spirit
of that seventeen-year-old boy? He had meant it all then; he could
remember the thrill with which he stood there that afternoon long
before and poured out his sentiments regarding the sacredness of
public trusts. What was it had kept him, when his chance came, from
working out in his life the things he had so fervently poured into
his schoolboy oration?

Someone was tapping at the door. It was an easy, confident tap, and
there was a good deal of reflex action in the Governor's "Come in."

"Indulging in a little meditation?"

The Governor frowned at the way Francis said it, and the latter went
on, easily: "Just came from a row with Dorman. Everybody is holding
him up for tickets, and he--poor young fool--looks as though he
wanted to jump in the river. Takes things tremendously to
heart--Dorman does."

He lighted a cigar, smiling quietly over that youthful quality of
Dorman's. "Well," he went on, leaning back in his chair and looking
about the room, "I thought I'd look in on you for a minute. You see
I'll not have the _entree_ to the Governor's office by afternoon."
He laughed, the easy, good-humoured laugh of one too sophisticated
to spend emotion uselessly.

It was he who fell into meditation then, and the Governor sat
looking at him; a paragraph from the newspaper came back to him:
"Harvey Francis is the most dangerous type of boss politician. His
is not the crude and vulgar method that asks a man what his vote is
worth. He deals gently and tenderly with consciences. He knows how
to get a man without fatally injuring that man's self-respect."

The Governor's own experience bore out the summary. When elected to
office as State Senator he had cherished old-fashioned ideas of
serving his constituents and doing his duty. But the very first week
Francis had asked one of those little favours of him, and, wishing
to show his appreciation of support given him in his election, he
had granted it. Then various courtesies were shown him; he was let
in on a "deal," and almost before he realised it, it seemed
definitely understood that he was a "Francis man."

Francis roused himself and murmured: "Fools!--amateurs."

"Leyman?" ventured the Governor.

"Leyman and all of his crowd!"

"And yet," the Governor could not resist, "in another hour this same
fool will be Governor of the State. The fool seems to have won."

Francis rose, impatiently. "For the moment. It won't be lasting. In
any profession, fools and amateurs may win single victories. They
can't keep it up. They don't know _how_. Oh, no," he insisted,
cheerfully, "Leyman will never be re-elected. Fact is, I'm counting
on this contract business we've saved up for him getting in good
work." He was moving toward the door. "Well," he concluded, with a
curious little laugh, "see you upstairs."

The Governor looked at the clock. It pointed now to twenty-five
minutes past eleven. The last hour was going fast. In a very short
time he must join the party in the anteroom of the House. But
weariness had come over him. He leaned back in his chair and closed
his eyes.

He was close upon seventy, and to-day looked even older than his
years. It was not a vicious face, but it was not a strong one.
People who wanted to say nice things of the Governor called him
pleasant or genial or kindly. Even the men in the appointive offices
did not venture to say he had much force.

He felt it to-day as he never had before. He had left no mark; he
had done nothing, stood for nothing. Never once had his personality
made itself felt. He had signed the documents; Harvey Francis had
always "suggested"--the term was that man's own--the course to be
pursued. And the "suggestions" had ever dictated the policy that
would throw the most of influence or money to that splendidly
organised machine that Francis controlled.

With an effort he shook himself free from his cheerless retrospect.
There was a thing or two he wanted to get from his desk, and his
time was growing very short. He found what he wanted, and then, just
as he was about to close the drawer, his eye fell on a large yellow
envelope.

He closed the drawer; but only to reopen it, take out the envelope
and remove the documents it contained; and then one by one he spread
them out before him on the desk.

He sat there looking down at them, wondering whether a man had ever
stepped into office with as many pitfalls laid for him. During the
last month they had been busy about the old State-house setting
traps for the new Governor. The "machine" was especially jubilant
over those contracts the Governor now had spread out before him. The
convict labour question was being fought out in the State just
then--organised labour demanding its repeal; country taxpayers
insisting that it be maintained. Under the system the penitentiary
had become self-supporting. In November the contracts had come up
for renewal; but on the request of Harvey Francis the matter had
been put off from time to time, and still remained open. Just the
week before, Francis had put it to the Governor something like this:

"Don't sign those contracts. We can give some reason for holding
them off, and save them up for Leyman. Then we can see that the
question is agitated, and whatever he does about it is going to
prove a bad thing for him. If he doesn't sign, he's in bad with the
country fellows, the men who elected him. Don't you see? At the end
of his administration the penitentiary, under you self-sustaining,
will have cost them a pretty penny. We've got him right square!"

The clock was close to twenty minutes of twelve, and he concluded
that he would go out and join some of his friends he could hear in
the other room. It would never do for him to go upstairs with a
long, serious face. He had had his day, and now Leyman was to have
his, and if the new Governor did better than the old one, then so
much the better for the State. As for the contracts, Leyman surely
must understand that there was a good deal of rough sailing on
political waters.

But it was not easy to leave the room. Walking to the window he
again stood there looking out across the snow, and once more he went
back now at the end of things to that day in the little red
schoolhouse which stood out as the beginning.

He was called back from that dreaming by the sight of three men
coming up the hill. He smiled faintly in anticipation of the things
Francis and the rest of them would say about the new Governor's
arriving on foot. Leyman had requested that the inaugural parade be
done away with--but one would suppose he would at least dignify the
occasion by arriving in a carriage. Francis would see that the
opposing papers handled it as a grand-stand play to the country
constituents.

And then, forgetful of Francis, and of the approaching ceremony, the
old man stood there by the window watching the young man who was
coming up to take his place. How firmly the new Governor walked!
With what confidence he looked ahead at the State-house. The
Governor--not considering the inconsistency therein--felt a thrill
of real pride in thought of the State's possessing a man like that.

Standing though he did for the things pitted against him, down in
his heart John Morrison had all along cherished a strong admiration
for that young man who, as District Attorney of the State's
metropolis, had aroused the whole country by his fearlessness and
unquestionable sincerity. Many a day he had sat in that same office
reading what the young District Attorney was doing in the city close
by--the fight he was making almost single-handed against corruption,
how he was striking in the high places fast and hard as in the low,
the opposition, threats, and time after time there had been that
same secret thrill at thought of there being a man like that. And
when the people of the State, convinced that here was one man who
would serve _them_, began urging the District Attorney for
chief executive, Governor Morrison, linked with the opposing forces,
doing all he could to bring about Leyman's defeat, never lost that
secret feeling for the young man, who, unbacked by any organisation,
struck blow after blow at the machine that had so long dominated the
State, winning in the end that almost incomprehensible victory.

The new Governor had passed from sight, and a moment later his voice
came to the ear of the lonely man in the executive office. Some
friends had stopped him just outside the Governor's door with a
laughing "Here's hoping you'll do as much for us in the new office
as you did in the old," and the new Governor replied, buoyantly:
"Oh, but I'm going to do a great deal more!"

The man within the office smiled a little wistfully and with a sigh
sat down before his desk. The clock now pointed to thirteen minutes
of twelve; they would be asking for him upstairs. There were some
scraps of paper on his desk and he threw them into the waste-basket,
murmuring: "I can at least give him a clean desk."

He pushed his chair back sharply. A clean desk! The phrase opened to
deeper meanings.... Why not clean it up in earnest? Why not give him
a square deal--a real chance? Why not _sign the contracts_?

Again he looked at the clock--not yet ten minutes of twelve. For ten
minutes more he was Governor of the State! Ten minutes of real
governorship! Might it not make up a little, both to his own soul
and to the world, for the years he had weakly served as another
man's puppet? The consciousness that he could do it, that it was not
within the power of any man to stop him, was intoxicating. Why not
break the chains now at the last, and just before the end taste the
joy of freedom?

He took up his pen and reached for the inkwell. With trembling,
excited fingers he unfolded the contracts. He dipped his pen into
the ink; he even brought it down on the paper; and then the tension
broke. He sank back in his chair, a frightened, broken old man.

"Oh, no," he whispered; "no, not now. It's--" his head went lower
and lower until at last it rested on the desk--"too late."

When he raised his head and grew more steady, it was only to see the
soundness of his conclusion. He had not the right now in the final
hour to buy for himself a little of glory. It would only be a form
of self-indulgence. They would call it, and perhaps rightly, hush
money to his conscience. They would say he went back on them only
when he was through with them. Oh, no, there would be no more
strength in it than in the average deathbed repentance. He would
at least step out with consistency.

He folded the contracts and put them back into the envelope. The
minute hand now pointed to seven minutes to twelve. Some one was
tapping at the door, and the secretary appeared to say they were
waiting for him upstairs. He replied that he would be there in a
minute, hoping that his voice did not sound as strange to the other
man as it had to himself.

Slowly he walked to the door leading into the corridor. This, then,
was indeed the end; this the final stepping down from office! After
years of what they called public service, he was leaving it all now
with a sense of defeat and humiliation. A lump was in the old man's
throat; his eyes were blurred. "But you, Frank Leyman," he whispered
passionately, turning as if for comfort to the other man, "it will
be different with you! They'll not get you--not you!"

It lifted him then as a great wave--this passionate exultation that
here was one man whom corruption could not claim as her own. Here
was one human soul not to be had for a price! There flitted before
him again a picture of that seventeen-year-old boy in the little red
schoolhouse, and close upon it came the picture of this other young
man against whom all powers of corruption had been turned in vain.
With the one it had been the emotional luxury of a sentiment, a
thing from life's actualities apart; with the other it was a force
that dominated all things else, a force over which circumstances and
design could not prevail. "I know all about it," he was saying. "I
know about it all! I know how easy it is to fall! I know how fine it
is to stand!"

His sense of disappointment in his own empty, besmirched career was
almost submerged then as he projected himself on into the career of
this other man who within the hour would come there in his stead.
How glorious was his opportunity, how limitless his possibilities,
and how great to his own soul the satisfaction the years would bring
of having done his best!

It had all changed now. That passionate longing to vindicate
himself, add one thing honourable and fine to his own record, had
altogether left him, and with the new mood came new insight and what
had been an impulse centred to a purpose.

It pointed to three minutes to twelve as he walked over to his desk,
unfolded the contracts, and one by one affixed his signature. In a
dim way he was conscious of how the interpretation of his first
motive would be put upon it, how they would call him traitor and
coward; but that mattered little. The very fact that the man for
whom he was doing it would never see it as it was brought him no
pang. And when he had carefully blotted the papers, affixed the seal
and put them away, there was in his heart the clean, sweet joy of a
child because he had been able to do this for a man in whom he
believed.

The band was playing the opening strains as he closed the door
behind him and started upstairs.




IX

"OUT THERE"


The old man held the picture up before him and surveyed it with
admiring but disapproving eye. "No one that comes along this way'll
have the price for it," he grumbled. "It'll just set here 'till
doomsday."

It did seem that the picture failed to fit in with the rest of the
shop. A persuasive young fellow who claimed he was closing out his
stock let the old man have it for what he called a song. It was only
a little out-of-the-way store which subsisted chiefly on the framing
of pictures. The old man looked around at his views of the city, his
pictures of cats and dogs and gorgeous young women, his flaming bits
of landscape. "Don't belong in here," he fumed, "any more 'an I
belong in Congress."

And yet the old man was secretly proud of his acquisition. He seemed
all at once to be lifted from his realm of petty tradesman to that
of patron of art. There was a hidden dignity in his scowling as he
shuffled about pondering the least ridiculous place for the picture.

It is not fair to the picture to try repainting it in words, for
words reduce it to a lithograph. It was a bit of a pine forest,
through which there exuberantly rushed an unspoiled little mountain
stream. Chromos and works of art may deal with kindred subjects.
There is just that one difference of dealing with them differently.
"It ain't what you _see_, so much as what you can guess is
there," was the thought it brought to the old man who was dusting
it. "Now this frame ain't three feet long, but it wouldn't surprise
me a bit if that timber kept right on for a hundred miles. I kind of
suspect it's on a mountain--looks cool enough in there to be on a
mountain. Wish I was there. Bet they never see no such days as we do
in Chicago. Looks as though a man might call his soul his own--out
there."

He began removing some views of Lincoln Park and some corpulent
Cupids in order to make room in the window for the new picture. When
he went outside to look at it he shook his head severely and
hastened in to take away some ardent young men and women, some fruit
and flowers and fish which he had left thinking they might "set it
off." It was evident that the new picture did not need to be "set
off." "And anyway," he told himself, in vindication of entrusting
all his goods to one bottom, "I might as well take them out, for the
new one makes them look so kind of sick that no one would have them,
anyhow." Then he went back to mounting views with the serenity of
one who stands for the finer things.

His clamorous little clock pointed to a quarter of six when he
finally came back to the front of the store. It was time to begin
closing up for the night, but for the minute he stood there watching
the crowd of workers coming from the business district not far away
over to the boarding-house region, a little to the west. He watched
them as they came by in twos and threes and fours: noisy people and
worn-out people, people hilarious and people sullen, the gaiety and
the weariness, the acceptance and the rebellion of humanity--he saw
it pass. "As if any of _them_ could buy it," he pronounced
severely, adding, contemptuously, "or wanted to."

The girl was coming along by herself. He watched her as she crossed
to his side of the street, thinking it was too bad for a poor girl
to be as tired as that. She was dressed like many of the rest of
them, and yet she looked different--like the picture and the chromo.
She turned an indifferent glance toward the window, and then
suddenly she stood there very still, and everything about her seemed
to change. "For all the world," he told himself afterward, "as if
she'd found a long-lost friend, and was 'fraid to speak for fear it
was too good to be true."

She did seem afraid to speak--afraid to believe. For a minute she
stood there right in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the
picture. And when she came toward the window it was less as if
coming than as if drawn. What she really seemed to want to do was to
edge away; yet she came closer, as close as she could, her eyes
never leaving the picture, and then fear, or awe, or whatever it was
made her look so queer gave way to wonder--that wondering which is
ready to open the door to delight. She looked up and down the street
as one rubbing one's eyes to make sure of a thing, and then it all
gave way to a joy which lighted her pale little face like--"Well,
like nothing I ever saw before," was all the old man could say of
it. "Why, she'd never know if the whole fire department was to run
right up here on the sidewalk," he gloated. Just then she drew
herself up for a long breath. "See?" he chuckled, delightedly. "She
knows it has a smell!" She looked toward the door, but shook her
head. "Knows she can't pay the price," he interpreted her. Then, she
stepped back and looked at the number above the door. "Coming
again," he made of that; "ain't going to run no chances of losing
the place." And then for a long time she stood there before the
picture, so deeply and so strangely quiet that he could not
translate her. "I can't just get the run of it," was his bewildered
conclusion. "I don't see why it should make anybody act like that."
And yet he must have understood more than he knew, for suddenly he
was seeing her through a blur of tears.

As he began shutting up for the night he was so excited about the
way she looked when she finally turned away that it never occurred
to him to be depressed about her inability to pay the price.

He kept thinking of her, wondering about her, during the next day.
At a little before six he took up his station near the front window.
Once more the current of workers flowed by. "I'm an old fool," he
told himself, irritated at the wait; "as if it makes any difference
whether she comes or not--when she can't buy it, anyhow. She's just
as big a fool as I am--liking it when she can't have it, only I'm
the biggest fool of all--caring whether she likes it or not." But
just then the girl passed quickly by a crowd of girls who were ahead
of her and came hurrying across the street. She was walking fast,
and looked excited and anxious. "Afraid it might be gone," he
said--adding, grimly: "Needn't worry much about that."

She came up to the picture as some people would enter a church. And
yet the joy which flooded her face is not well known to churches.
"I'll tell you what it's like"--the old man's thoughts stumbling
right into the heart of it--"it's like someone that's been wandering
round in a desert country all of a sudden coming on a spring. She's
_thirsty_--she's drinking it in--she can't get enough of it.
It's--it's the water of life to her!" And then, ashamed of saying a
thing that sounded as if it were out of a poem, he shook his
shoulders roughly as if to shake off a piece of sentiment unbecoming
his age and sex.

He went to the door and watched her as she passed away. "I'll bet
she'd never tip the scale to one hundred pounds," he decided. "Looks
like a good wind could blow her away." She stooped a little and just
as she passed from sight he saw that she was coughing.

Then the old man made what he prided himself was a great deduction.
"She's been there, and she wants to go back. This kind of takes her
back for a minute, and when she gets the breath of it she ain't so
homesick."

All through those July days he watched each night for the
frail-looking little girl who liked the picture of the pines. She
would always come hurrying across the street in the same eager way,
an eagerness close to the feverish. But the tenseness would always
relax as she saw the picture. "She never looks quite so wilted down
when she goes away as she does when she comes," the old man saw.
"Upon my soul, I believe she really _goes_ there. It's--oh,
Lord"--irritated at getting beyond his depth--"_I_ don't know!"

He never called it anything now but "Her Picture." One day at just
ten minutes of six he took it out of the window. "Seems kind of
mean," he admitted, "but I just want to find out how much she does
think of it."

And when he found out he told himself that of all the mean men God
had ever let live, he was the meanest. The girl came along in the
usual hurried, anxious fashion. And when she saw the empty window he
thought for a minute she was going to sink right down there on the
sidewalk. Everything about her seemed to give way--as if something
from which she had been drawing had been taken from her. The
luminousness gone from her face, there were cruel revelations.
"Blast my _soul!_" the old man muttered angrily, not far from
tearfully. She looked up and down the noisy, dirty, parched street,
then back to the empty window. For a minute she just stood
there--that was the worst minute of all. And then--accepting--she
turned and walked slowly away, walked as the too-weary and the
too-often disappointed walk.

It was with not wholly steady hand that the old man hastened to
replace the picture, all the while telling himself what he thought
of himself: more low-down than the cat who plays with the mouse,
meaner than the man who'd take the bone from the dog, less to be
loved than the man who would kick over the child's play-house, only
to be compared with the brute who would snatch the cup of water from
the dying--such were the verdicts he pronounced. He thought perhaps
she would come back, and stayed there until almost seven, waiting
for her, though pretending it was necessary that he take down and
then put up again the front curtains. All the next day he was
restless and irritable. As if to make up to the girl for the
contemptible trick he had played he spent a whole hour that
afternoon arranging a tapestry background for the picture. "She'll
think," he told himself, "that this was why it was out, and won't be
worried about its being gone again. This will just be a little sign
to her that it's here to stay."

He began his watch that night at half-past five. After fifteen
minutes the thought came to him that she might be so disheartened
she would go home by another street. He became so gloomily certain
she would do this that he was jubilant when he finally saw her
coming along on the other side--coming purposelessly, shorn of that
eagerness which had always been able, for the moment, to vanquish
the tiredness. But when she came to the place where she always
crossed the street she only stood there an instant and then, a
little more slowly, a little more droopingly, walked on. She had
given up! She was not coming over!

But she did come. After she had gone a few steps she hesitated again
and this time started across the street. "That's right," approved
the old man, "never give up the ship!"

She passed the store as if she were not going to look in; she seemed
trying not to look, but her head turned--and she saw the picture.
First her body seemed to stiffen, and then something--he couldn't
make out whether or not it was a sob--shook her, and as she came
toward the picture on her white, tired face were the tears.

"Don't you worry," he murmured affectionately to her retreating
form, "it won't never be gone again."

The very next week he was put to the test. The kind of lady who did
not often pass along that street entered the shop and asked to see
the picture in the window. He looked at her suspiciously. Then he
frowned at her, as he stood there, fumbling. _Her_ picture!
What would she think? What would she do? Then a crafty smile stole
over his face and he walked to the window and got the picture. "The
price of this picture, madame," he said, haughtily, "is forty
dollars,"--adding to himself, "That'll fix her."

But the lady made no comment, and stood there holding the picture up
before her. "I will take it," she said, quietly.

He stared at her stupidly. Forty dollars! Then it must be that the
picture was better than the young man had known. "Will you wrap it,
please?" she asked. "I will take it with me."

He turned to the back of the store. Forty dollars!--he kept
repeating it in dazed fashion. And they had raised the rent on him,
and the papers said coal would be high that winter--those facts
seemed to have something to do with forty dollars. _Forty
dollars!_--it was hammering at him, overwhelmed him, too big a
sum to contend with. With long, grim stroke he tore off the wrapping
paper; stoically he began folding it. But something was the matter.
The paper would not go on right. Three times he took it off, and
each time he could not help looking down at the picture of the
pines. And each time the forest seemed to open a little farther;
each time it seemed bigger--bigger even than forty dollars; it
seemed as if it _knew things_--things more important than even
coal and rent. And then the strangest thing of all happened: the
forest faded away into its own shadowy distances, and in its place
was a noisy, crowded, sun-baked street, and across the street was
eagerly hurrying an anxious little girl, a frail little wisp of a
girl who probably should not be crossing hot, noisy streets at
all--then a light in tired eyes, a smile upon a worn face, relief as
from a cooling breeze--and _anyway_, suddenly furious at the
lady, furious at himself--"he'd be gol-_darned_ if it wasn't
_her_ picture!"

He walked firmly back to the front of the store.

"I forgot at first," he said, brusquely, "that this picture belongs
to someone else."

The lady looked at him in astonishment. "I do not understand," she
said.

"There's nothing to understand," he fairly shouted, "except that it
belongs to someone else!"

She turned away, but came back to him. "I will give you fifty
dollars for it," she said, in her quiet way.

"Madame," he thundered at her, "you can stand there and offer me
five hundred dollars, and I'm here to tell you that this picture is
not for sale. Do you _hear_?"

"I certainly do," replied the lady, and walked from the store.

He was a long time in cooling off. "I tell you," he stormed to a
very blue Lake Michigan he was putting into a frame, "it's
hers--it's _hern_--and anybody that comes along here with any
nonsense is just going to hear from _me_!"

In the days which followed he often thought to go out and speak to
her, but perhaps the old man had a restraining sense of values. He
planned some day to go out and tell her the picture was hers, but
that seemed a silly thing to tell her, for surely she knew it
anyway. He worried a good deal about her cough, which seemed to be
getting worse, and he had it all figured out that when cold weather
came he would have her come in where it was warm, and take her look
in there. He felt that he knew all about her, and though he did not
know her name, though he had never heard her speak one word, in some
ways he felt closer to her than to any one else in the world.

Yet if the old man had known just how it was with the girl it is
altogether unlikely that he would have understood. It would have
mystified and disappointed him had he known that she had never seen
a pine forest or a mountain in her life. Indeed there was a great
deal about the little girl which the old man, together with almost
all the rest of the world, would not have understood.

Not that the surface facts about her were either incomprehensible or
interesting. The tale of her existence would sound much like that of
a hundred other girls in the same city. Inquiry about her would have
developed the facts that she did typewriting for a land company,
that she did not seem to have any people, and lived at a big
boarding-house. At the boarding-house they would have told you that
she was a nice little thing, quiet as a mouse, and that it was too
bad she had to work, for she seemed more than half sick. There the
story would have rested, and the real things about her would not
have been touched.

She worked for the Chicago branch of a big Northwestern land
company. They dealt in the lands of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and
Washington. The things she sat at her typewriter and wrote were of
the wonders of that great country: the great timber lands, the
valleys and hills, towering mountain peaks and rushing rivers. She
typewrote "literature" telling how there was a chance for every man
out there, how the big, exhaustless land was eager to yield of its
store to all who would come and seek. Day after day she wrote those
things telling how the sick were made well and the poor were made
rich, how it was a land of indescribable wonders which the feeble
pen could not hope to portray.

And the girl with whom almost everything in life had gone wrong came
to think of Out There as the place where everything was right. It
was the far country where there was no weariness nor loneliness, the
land where one did not grow tired, where one never woke up in the
morning too tired to get up, where no one went to bed at night too
tired to go to sleep. The street-cars did not ring their gongs so
loud Out There, the newsboys had pleasant voices, and there were no
elevated trains. It was a pure, high land which knew no smoke nor
dirt, a land where great silences drew one to the heart of peace,
where the people in the next room did not come in and bang things
around late at night. Out There was a wide land where buildings were
far apart and streets were not crowded. Even the horses did not grow
tired Out There. Oh, it was a land where dreams came true--a
beautiful land where no one ate prunes, where the gravy was never
greasy and the potatoes never burned. It was a land of flowers and
birds and lovely people--a land of wealth and health and many
smiles.

Her imagination made use of it all. She knew how men were reclaiming
the desert of Idaho, of the tremendous undeveloped wealth of what
had been an almost undiscovered State. She thrilled to the poetry of
irrigation. Often when hot and tired and dusty her fancy would follow
the little mountain stream from its birth way up in the clouds, her
imagination rushing with it through sweetening forest and tumbling
with it down cooling rocks until finally strong, bold, wise men guided
it to the desert which had yearned for it through all the years, and
the grateful desert smiled rich smiles of grain and flowers. She could
make it more like a story than any story in any book. And she could
always breathe better in thinking of the pine forests of Oregon. There
was something liberating--expanding--in just the thought of them. She
dreamed cooling dreams about them, dreams of their reaching farther
than one's fancy could reach, big widening dreams of their standing
there serene in the consciousness of their own immensity. They stood
to her for a beautiful idea: the idea of space, of room--room for
everybody, and then much more room! Even one's understanding grew
big as one turned to them.

And she loved to listen for the Pacific Ocean, coming from
incomprehensible distances and unknowable countries, now rushing
with passion to the wild coast of Oregon, again stealing into the
Washington harbours. She loved to address the letters to Portland,
Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma--all those pulsing, vivid cities of a
country of big chances and big beauty. She loved to picture Seattle,
a city builded upon many hills--how wonderful that a city should be
builded upon hills!--in Chicago there was nothing that could
possibly be thought of as a hill. And she loved to shut her eyes and
let the great mountain peak grow in the distance, as one could see
it from Portland--how noble a thing to see a mountain peak from a
city! Sometimes she trembled before that consciousness of a
mountain. Often when so tired she scarcely knew what she was doing
she found she was saying her prayers to a mountain. Indeed, Out
There seemed the place to send one's prayers--for was it not a place
where prayers were answered?

During that summer when the West was overrun with tourists who
grumbled about everything from the crowded trains to the way in
which sea-foods were served, this little girl sat in one of the hot
office buildings of Chicago and across the stretch of miles drew to
herself the spirit of that country of coming days. Thousands rode in
Pullman cars along the banks of the Columbia--saw, and felt not; she
sat before her typewriter in a close, noisy room and heard the
cooling rush of waters and got the freeing message of the pines. In
some rare moments when she rose from the things about her to the
things of which she dreamed she possessed the whole great land, and
as the sultry days sapped of her meagre strength, and the bending
over the typewriter cramped an already too cramped chest she clung
with a more and more passionate tenacity to the bigness and the
beauty and rightness of things Out There. And it was so kind to
her--that land of deep breaths and restoring breezes. It never shut
her out. It always kept itself bigger and more wonderful than one
could ever hope to fancy it.

And the night she found the picture she knew that it was all really
so. That was why it was so momentous a night. The picture was a
dream visualised--a dreamer vindicated. They had pictures in the
office, of course--some pictures trying to tell of that very kind of
a place. But those were just pictures; this _proved_ it, told
what it meant. It told that she had been right, and there was joy in
knowing that she had known. She clung to the picture as one would to
that which proves as real all one has long held dear, loved it as
the dreamer loves that which secures him in his dreaming.

She came to think of it as her own abiding place. Often when too
tired for long wings of fancy she would just sink down in the deep,
cool shadows of the pines, beside the little river which one knew so
well was the gift of distant snows. It rested her most of all; it
quieted her.

She smiled sometimes to think how no one in the office knew about
it, wondered what they would think if they knew. Often she would
find someone in the office looking at her strangely. She used to
wonder about it a little.

And then one day Mr. Osborne sent for her to come into his office.
He acted so queerly. As she came in and sat down near his desk he
swung his chair around and sat there with his back to her. After
that he got up and walked to the window.

The head stenographer had complained of her cough. She said she did
not think it right either to the girl or to the rest of them for her
to be there. She said she hated to speak of it, but could not stand
it any longer. That had been the week before, and ever since he had
been putting it off. But now he could put it off no longer; the head
stenographer was valuable, and besides he knew that she was right.

And so he told her--this was all he could think of just then--that
they were contemplating some changes in the office, and for a time
would have less desk room. If he sent her machine to her home, would
she be willing to do her work there for a while? Hers was the kind
of work that could be done at home.

She was sorry, for she wondered if she could find a place in her
room for the typewriter, and it did not seem there would be air
enough there to last her all day long. And she had grown fond of the
office, with its "literature" and pictures and maps and the men who
had just come from Out There coming in every once in a while. It was
a bond--a place to touch realities. But of course there was nothing
for her to do but comply, and she made no comment on the
arrangement.

She pushed her chair back and rose to go. "Are you alone in the
world?" he asked abruptly then,

"Yes; I--oh yes."

It was too much for him. "How would you like," he asked recklessly,
"to have me get you transportation out West?"

She sank back in her chair. Every particle of colour had left her
face. Her deep eyes had grown almost wild. "Oh," she gasped--"you
can't mean--you don't think--"

"You wouldn't want to go?"

"I mean"--it was but a whisper--"it would be--too wonderful."

"You would like it then?"

She only nodded; but her lips were parted, her eyes glowing. He
wondered why he had never seen before how different looking
and--yes, beautiful, in a strange kind of way--she was.

"I see you have a cold," he said, "and I think you would get along
better out there. I'll see if I can fix up the transportation, and
get something with our people in one of the towns that would be good
for you."

She leaned back in her chair and sat there smiling at him. Something
in the smile made him say, abruptly: "That's all; you may go now,
and I'll send a boy with your machine."

She walked through the streets as one who had already found another
country. More than one turned to look at her. She reached her room
at last and pulling her one little chair up to the window sat
staring out across the alley at the brick wall across from her. But
she was not seeing a narrow alley and a high brick wall. She was
seeing rushing rivers and mighty forests and towering peaks. She
leaned back in her chair--an indulgence less luxurious than it
sounds, as the chair only reached the middle of her back--and looked
out at the high brick wall and saw a snow-clad range of hills. But
she was tired; this tremendous idea was too much for her; the very
wonder of it was exhausting. She lay down on her bed--radiant, but
languid. Soon she heard a rush of waters. At first it was only
someone filling the bath-tub, but after a while it was the little
stream which flowed through her forest. And then she was not lying
on a lumpy bed; she was sinking down under pine trees--all so sweet
and still and cool. But an awful thing was happening!--the forest
was on fire--it was choking and burning her! She awoke to find smoke
from the building opposite pouring into her room; flies were buzzing
about, and her face and hands were hot.

She did little work in the next few days. It was hard to go on with
the same work when waiting for a thing which was to make over one's
whole life. The stress of dreams changing to hopes caused a great
languor to come over her. And her chair was not right for her
typewriter, and the smoke came in all the time. Strangely enough Out
There seemed farther away. Sometimes she could not go there at all;
she supposed it was because she was really going.

At the close of the week she went to the office with her work. She
was weak with excitement as she stepped into the elevator. Would Mr.
Osborne have the transportation for her? Would he tell her when she
was to go?

But she did not see Mr. Osborne at all. When she asked for him the
clerk just replied carelessly that he was not there. She was going
to ask if he had left any message for her, but the telephone rang
then and the man to whom she was talking turned away. Someone was
sitting at her old desk, and they did not seem to be making the
changes they had contemplated; everyone in the office seemed very
busy and uncaring, and because she knew her chin was trembling she
turned away.

She had a strange feeling as she left the office: as if standing on
ground which quivered, an impulse to reach out her hand and tell
someone that something must be done right away, a dreadful fear that
she was going to cry out that she could not wait much longer.

All at once she found that she was crossing the street, and saw
ahead the little art store with the wonderful picture which proved
it was all really so. In the same old way, her step quickened. It
would show her again that it was all just as she had thought it was,
and if that were true, then it must be true also that Mr. Osborne
was going to get her the transportation. It would prove that
everything was all right.

But a cruel thing happened. It failed her. It was just as
beautiful--but something a long way off, impossible to reach. Try as
she would, she could not get _into_ it, as she used to. It was
only a picture; a beautiful picture of some pine trees. And they
were very far away, and they had nothing at all to do with her.

Through the window, at the back of the store, she saw the old man
standing with his back to her. She thought of going in and asking to
sit down--she wanted to sit down--but perhaps he would say something
cross to her--he was such a queer looking old man--and she knew she
would cry if anything cross was said to her. That he had watched for
her each night, that he had tried and tried to think of a way of
finding her, that he would have been more glad to see her than to
see anyone in the world, would have been kinder to her than anyone
on earth would have been--those were the things she did not know.
And so--more lonely than she had ever been before--she turned away.

On Monday she felt she could wait no longer. It did not seem that it
would be _safe_. She got ready to go to see Mr. Osborne, but
the getting ready tired her so that she sat a long time resting,
looking out at the high brick wall beyond which there was nothing at
all. She was counting the blocks, thinking of how many times she
would have to cross the street. But just then it occurred to her
that she could telephone.

When she came back upstairs she crept up on the bed and lay there
very still. The boy had said that Mr. Osborne was away and would be
gone two weeks. No one in the office had heard him say anything
about her transportation.

All through the day she lay there, and what she saw before her was a
narrow alley and a high brick wall. She had lost her mountains and
her forests and her rivers and her lakes. She tried to go out to
them in the same old way--but she could not get beyond the high
brick wall. She was shut in. She tried to draw them to her, but they
could not come across the wall. It shut them out. She tried to pray
to the great mountain which one could see from Portland. But even
prayers could get no farther than the wall.

Late that afternoon, because she was so shut in that she was
choking, because she was consumed with the idea that she must claim
her country now or lose it forever, she got up and started for the
picture. It was a long, long way to go, and dreadful things were in
between--people who would bump against her, hot, uneven streets,
horses that might run over her--but she must make the journey. She
must make it because the things that she lived on were slipping from
her--and she was choking--sinking down--and all alone.

Step by step, never knowing just how her foot was going to make the
next step, sick with the fear that people were going to run into
her--the streets going up and down, the buildings round and round,
she did go; holding to the window casings for the last few
steps--each step a terrible chasm which she was never sure she was
going to be able to cross--she was there at last. And in the window
as she stood there, swayingly, was a dark, blurred thing which might
have been anything at all. She tried to remember why she had come.
What _was_ it--? And then she was sinking down into an abyss.

That the hemorrhage came then, that the old man came out and found
her and tenderly took her in, that he had her taken where she should
have been taken long before, that the doctors said it was too late,
and that soon their verdict was confirmed--those are the facts which
would seem to tell the rest of the story. But deep down beneath
facts rests truth, and the truth is that this is a story with the
happiest kind of a happy ending. What facts would call the breeze
from an electric fan was in truth the gracious breath of the pines.
And when the nurse said "She's going," she was indeed going, but to
a land of great spaces and benign breezes, a land of deep shadows
and rushing waters. For a most wondrous thing had happened. She had
called to the mountain, and the mountain had heard her voice; and
because it was so mighty and so everlasting it drew her to itself,
across high brick walls and past millions of hurrying, noisy
people--oh, a most triumphant flight! And the mountain said--"I give
you this whole great land. It is yours because you have loved it so
well. Hills and valleys and rivers and forests and lakes--it is all
for you." Yes, the nurse was quite right; she was going: going for a
long sweet sleep beneath trees of many shadows, beside clear waters
which had come from distant snows--really going "Out There."




X

THE PREPOSTEROUS MOTIVE


The Governor was sitting alone in his private office with an open
letter in his hand. He was devoutly and gloomily wishing that some
other man was just then in his shoes. The Governor had not devoted a
large portion of his life to nursing a desire of that nature, for he
was a man in whose soul the flame of self-satisfaction glowed
cheeringly; but just now there were reasons, and he deemed them
ample, for deploring that he had been made chief executive of his
native State.

Had he chosen to take you into his confidence--a thing the Governor
would assuredly choose not to do--he would have told you there were
greater things in the world than the governorship of that State. He
might have suggested a seat in the Senate of the United States as
one of those things. It was of the United States Senate his
Excellency was thinking as he sat there alone moodily deploring the
gubernatorial shoes.

The senior Senator was going to die. He differed therein from his
fellows in that he was going to die soon, almost immediately. He had
reached the tottering years even at the time of his reelection, and
it had never been supposed that his life would outstretch his term.
He had been sent back, not for another six years of service, but to
hold out the leader of the Boxers, as they called themselves--the
younger and unorthodox element of the party in the State, an element
growing to dangerous proportions. It was only by returning the aged
Senator, whom they held it would be brutal to turn down after a life
of service to the party, that the "machine" won the memorable fight
of the previous winter.

From the viewpoint of the machine, the Governor was the senior
Senator's logical successor. Had it not been for the heavy inroads
of the Boxers, his Excellency would even then have been sitting in
the Senate Chamber at Washington. It had not been considered safe to
nominate the Governor. Had his supporters conceded that the time was
at hand for a change, there would have been a general clamour for
the leader of the Boxers--Huntington, undeniably the popular man of
the State. And so they concocted a beautiful sentiment about
"rounding out the veteran's career," and letting him "die with his
boots on"; and through the omnipotence of sentiment, they won.

Down in his heart the venerable Senator was not seeking to die with
his boots on. He would have preferred sitting in a large chair
before the fire and reading quietly of what other men were doing in
the Senate of the United States. But they told him he must sacrifice
that wish, for if he retired he would be succeeded by a dangerous
man. And the old man, believing them, had gone dutifully back into
the arena.

Now it seemed that a power outside man's control was declaring
against the well-laid plans of the machine. As the machine saw
things, the time was not ripe for the senior Senator to die. He had
just entered upon his new term, and the Governor himself had but
lately stepped into a second term. They had assumed that the Senator
would live on for at least two years, but now they heard that he was
likely to die almost at once. His Excellency could not very well
name himself for the vacancy, and it seemed dangerous just then to
risk a call of the Assembly. They dared not let the Governor appoint
a weaker man, even if he would consent to do so, for they would need
the best they had to put up against the leader of the Boxers. With
the Governor, they believed they could win, but the question of
appointing him had suddenly become a knotty one.

The Governor himself was bowed with chagrin. He saw now that he had
erred in taking a second term, and he was not the man to enjoy
reviewing his mistakes. As he sat there reading and rereading the
letter which told him that the work of the senior Senator was almost
done, he said to himself that it was easy enough to wrestle with
men, but a harder thing to try one's mettle with fate. He spent a
gloomy and unprofitable day.

Late in the afternoon a telegram reached the executive office.
Styles was coming to town that night, and wanted to see the Governor
at the hotel. Things always cleared when Styles came to town; and
so, though still unable to foresee the outcome, he brightened at
once.

Styles was a railroad man, and rich. People to whom certain things
were a sealed book said that it was nice of Mr. Styles to take an
interest in politics when he had so many other things on his mind,
and that he must be a very public-spirited man. That he took an
interest in politics, no one familiar with the affairs of the State
would deny. The orthodox papers painted him as a public benefactor,
but the Boxers arrayed him with hoofs and horns.

The Governor and Mr. Styles were warm friends. It was said that
their friendship dated from mere boyhood, and that the way the two
men had held together through all the vicissitudes of life was
touching and beautiful--at least, so some people observed. There
were others whose eyebrows went up when the Governor and Mr. Styles
were mentioned in their Damon and Pythias capacity.

That night, in the public benefactor's room at the hotel, the
Governor and his old friend had a long talk. When twelve o'clock
came they were still talking; more than that, the Governor was
excitedly pacing the floor.

"I tell you, Styles," he expostulated, "I don't like it! It doesn't
put me in a good light. It's too apparent, and I'll suffer for it,
sure as fate. Mark my words, we'll all suffer for it!"

Mr. Styles was sitting in an easy attitude before the table. The
public benefactor never paced the floor; it did not seem necessary.
He smoked in silence for a minute; then raised himself a little in
his chair.

"Well, have you anything better to offer?"

"No, I haven't," replied the Governor, tartly; "but it seems to me
you ought to have."

Styles sank back in his chair and for several minutes more devoted
himself to the art of smoking. There were times when this
philanthropic dabbler in politics was irritating.

"I think," he began presently, "that you exaggerate the unpleasant
features of the situation. It will cause talk, of course; but isn't
it worth it? You say it's unheard of; maybe, but so is the
situation, and wasn't there something in the copy-books about
meeting new situations with new methods? If you have anything better
to offer, produce it; if not, we've got to go ahead with this. And
really, I don't see that it's so bad. You have to go South to look
after your cotton plantation; you find now that it's going to take
more time than you feel you should take from the State; you can't
afford to give it up; consequently, you withdraw in favor of the
Lieutenant-Governor. We all protest, but you say Berriman is a good
man, and the State won't suffer, and you simply can't afford to go
on. Well, we can keep the Senator's condition pretty quiet here; and
after all, he's sturdy, and may live on to the close of the year.
After due deliberation Berriman appoints you. A little talk?--Yes.
But it's worth a little talk. It seems to me the thing works out
very smoothly."

When Tom Styles leaned back in his chair and declared a thing worked
out very smoothly, that thing was quite likely to go. In three days
the Governor went South. When he returned, the newspaper men were
startled by the announcement that business considerations which he
could not afford to overlook demanded his withdrawal from office.
Previous to this time the Lieutenant-Governor and Mr. Styles
had met and the result of their meeting was not made a matter
of public record.

As the Governor had anticipated, many things were said. Inquiries
were made into the venerable Senator's condition--which, the
orthodox papers declared, was but another example of the indecency
of the Boxer journals. The Governor went to his cotton plantation.
The Lieutenant-Governor went into office, and was pronounced a
worthy successor to a good executive. The venerable Senator
continued to live. As Mr. Styles had predicted, the gossip soon
quieted into a friendly hope that the Governor would realise large
sums with his cotton.

It was late in the fall when the senior Senator finally succumbed.
The day the papers printed the story of his death, they printed
speculative editorials on his probable successor. When the bereaved
family commented with bitterness on this ill-concealed haste, they
were told that it was politics--enterprise--life.

The old man's remains lay in state in the rotunda of the State
Capitol, and the building was draped in mourning. Many came and
looked upon the quiet face; but far more numerous than those who
gathered at his bier to weep were those who assembled in secluded
corners to speculate on the wearing of his toga. It was
politics--enterprise--life.

Mr. Styles told the Lieutenant-Governor to be deliberate. There was
no need of an immediate appointment, he said. And so for a time
things went on about the State-house much as usual, save that the
absorbing topic was the senatorial situation, and that every one was
watching the new chief executive. The retired Governor now spent
part of his time in the South, and part at home. The cotton
plantation was not demanding all his attention, after all.

It could not be claimed that John Berriman had ever done any great
thing. He was not on record as having ever risen grandly to an
occasion; but there may have been something in the fact that an
occasion admitting of a grand rising had never presented itself.
Before he became Lieutenant-Governor, he had served inoffensively in
the State Senate for two terms. No one had ever worked very hard for
Senator Berriman's vote. He had been put in by the machine, and it
had always been assumed that he was machine property.

Berriman himself had never given the matter of his place in the
human drama much thought. He had an idea that it was proper for him
to vote with his friends, and he always did it. Had he been called a
tool, he would have been much ruffled; he merely trusted to the
infallibility of the party.

The Boxers did not approach him now concerning the appointment of
Huntington. That, of course, was a fixed matter, and they were not
young and foolish enough to attempt to change it.

One day the Governor received a telegram from Styles suggesting that
he "adjust that matter" immediately. He thought of announcing the
appointment that very night, but the newspaper men had all left the
building, and as he had promised that they should know of it as soon
as it was made, he concluded to wait until the next morning.

Governor Berriman had a brother in town that week, attending a
meeting of the State Agricultural Society. Hiram Berriman had a
large farm in the southern part of the State. He knew but little of
political methods, and had primitive ideas about honesty. There had
always been a strong tie between the brothers, despite the fact that
Hiram was fifteen years the Governor's senior. They talked of many
things that night, and the hour was growing late. They were about to
retire when the Governor remarked, a little sleepily:

"Well, to-morrow morning I announce the senatorial appointment."

"You do, eh?" returned the farmer.

"Yes, there's no need of waiting any longer, and it's getting on to
the time the State wants two senators in Washington."

"Well, I suppose, John," Hiram said, turning a serious face to his
brother, "that you've thought the matter all over, and are sure you
are right?"

The Governor threw back his head with a scoffing laugh.

"I guess it didn't require much thought on my part," he answered
carelessly.

"I don't see how you figure that out," contended Hiram warmly.
"You're Governor of the State, and your own boss, ain't you?"

It was the first time in all his life that anyone had squarely
confronted John Berriman with the question whether or not he was his
own boss, and for some reason it went deep into his soul, and
rankled there.

"Now see here, Hiram," he said at length, "there's no use of your
putting on airs and pretending you don't understand this thing. You
know well enough it was all fixed before I went in." The other man
looked at him in bewilderment, and the Governor continued brusquely:
"The party knew the Senator was going to die, and so the Governor
pulled out and I went in just so the thing could be done decently
when the time came."

The old farmer was scratching his head.

"That's it, eh? They got wind the Senator was goin' to die, and so
the Governor told that lie about having to go South just so he could
step into the dead man's shoes, eh?"

"That's the situation--if you want to put it that way."

"And now you're going to appoint the Governor?"

"Of course I am; I couldn't do anything else if I wanted to."

"Why not?"

"Why, look here, Hiram, haven't you any idea of political
obligation? It's expected of me."

"Oh, it is, eh? Did you promise to appoint the Governor?"

"Why, I don't know that I exactly made any promises, but that
doesn't make a particle of difference. The understanding was that
the Governor was to pull out and I was to go in and appoint him.
It's a matter of honour;" and Governor Berriman drew himself up with
pride.

The farmer turned a troubled face to the fire.

"I suppose, then," he said finally, "that you all think the Governor
is the best man we have for the United States Senate. I take it that
in appointing him, John, you feel sure he will guard the interests
of the people before everything else, and that the people--I mean
the working people of this State--will always be safe in his hands;
do you?"

"Oh, Lord, no, Hiram!" exclaimed the Governor irritably. "I don't
think that at all!"

Hiram Berriman's brown face warmed to a dull red.

"You don't?" he cried. "You mean to sit there, John Berriman, and
tell me that you don't think the man you're going to put in the
United States Senate will be an honest man? What do you mean by
saying you're going to put a dishonest man in there to make laws for
the people, to watch over them and protect them? If you don't think
he's a good man, if you don't think he's the best man the State
has"--the old farmer was pounding the table heavily with his huge
fist--"if you don't think that, in God's name, _why do you appoint
him_?"

"I wish I could make you understand, Hiram," said the Governor in an
injured voice, "that it's not for me to say."

"Why ain't it for you to say? Why ain't it, I want to know? Who's
running you, your own conscience or some gang of men that's trying
to steal from the State? Good God, I wish I had never lived to see
the day a brother of mine put a thief in the United States Senate to
bamboozle the honest, hard-working people of this State!"

"Hold on, please--that's a little too strong!" flamed the Governor.

"It ain't too strong. If a Senator ain't an honest man, he's a
thief; and if he ain't lookin' after the welfare of the people, he's
bamboozlin' them, and that's all there is about it. I don't know
much about politics, but I ain't lived my life without learning a
little about right and wrong, and it's a sorry day we've come to,
John Berriman, if right and wrong don't enter into the makin' of a
Senator!"

The Governor could think of no fitting response, so he held his
peace. This seemed to quiet the irate farmer, and he surveyed his
brother intently, and not unkindly.

"You're in a position now, John," he said, and there was a kind of
homely eloquence in his serious voice, "to be a friend to the
people. It ain't many of us ever get the chance of doin' a great
thing. We work along, and we do the best we can with what comes our
way, but most of us don't get the chance to do a thing that's goin'
to help thousands of people, and that the whole country's goin' to
say was a move for the right. You want to think of that, and when
you're thinkin' so much about honour, you don't want to clean forget
about honesty. Don't you stick to any foolish notions about bein'
faithful to the party; it ain't the party that needs helpin'. No
matter how you got where you are, you're Governor of the State right
now, John, and your first duty is to the people of this State, not
to Tom Styles or anybody else. Just you remember that when you're
namin' your Senator in the morning."

It was long before the Governor retired. He sat there by the
fireplace until after the fire had died down, and he was too
absorbed to grow cold. He thought of many things. Like the man who
had preceded him in office, he wished that some one else was just
then encumbered with the gubernatorial shoes.

The next morning there was a heavy feeling in his head which he
thought a walk in the bracing air might dispel, so he started on
foot for the Statehouse. A light snow was on the ground, and there
was something reassuring in the crispness of the morning. It would
make a slave feel like a free man to drink in such air, he was
thinking. Snatches of his brother's outburst of the night before
kept breaking into his consciousness but curiously enough they did
not greatly disturb him. He concluded that it was wonderful what a
walk in the bracing air could do. From the foot of the hill he
looked up at the State-house, for the first time in his experience
seeing and thinking about it--not simply taking it for granted.
There seemed a nobility about it--in the building itself, and back
of that in what it stood for.

As he walked through the corridor to his office he was greeted with
cheerful, respectful salutations. His mood let him give the
greetings a value they did not have and from that rose a sense of
having the trust and goodwill of his fellows.

But upon reaching his desk he found another telegram from Styles. It
was imperatively worded and as he read it the briskness and
satisfaction went from his bearing. He walked to the window and
stood there looking down at the city, and, as it had been in looking
ahead at the State-house, he now looked out over the city really
seeing and understanding it, not merely taking it for granted. He
found himself wondering if many of the people in that city--in that
State--looked to their Governor with the old-fashioned trust his
brother had shown. His eyes dimmed; he was thinking of the
satisfaction it would afford his children, if--long after he had
gone--they could tell how a great chance had once come into their
father's life, and how he had proved himself a man.

"Will you sign these now, Governor?" asked a voice behind him.

It was his secretary, a man who knew the affairs of the State well,
and whom every one seemed to respect.

"Mr. Haines," he said abruptly, "who do you think is the best man we
have for the United States Senate?"

The secretary stepped back, dumfounded; amazed that the question
should be put to him, startled at that strange way of putting it.
Then he told himself he must be discreet. Like many of the people at
the State-house, in his heart Haines was a Boxer.

"Why, I presume," he ventured, "that the Governor is looked upon as
the logical candidate, isn't he?"

"I'm not talking about logical candidates. I want to know who you
think is the man who would most conscientiously and creditably
represent this State in the Senate of the United States."

It was so simply spoken that the secretary found himself answering
it as simply. "If you put it that way, Governor, Mr. Huntington is
the man, of course."

"You think most of the people feel that way?"

"I know they do."

"You believe if it were a matter of popular vote, Huntington would
be the new Senator?"

"There can be no doubt of that, Governor. I think they all have to
admit that. Huntington is the man the people want."

"That's all, Mr. Haines. I merely wondered what you thought about
it."

Soon after that Governor Berriman rang for a messenger boy and sent
a telegram. Then he settled quietly down to routine work. It was
about eleven when one of the newspaper men came in.

"Good-morning, Governor," he said briskly "how's everything to-day?"

"All right, Mr. Markham. I have nothing to tell you to-day, except
that I've made the senatorial appointment."

"Oh," laughed the reporter excitedly, "that's all, is it?"

"Yes," replied the Governor, smiling too; "that's all!"

The reporter looked at the clock. "I'll just catch the noon
edition," he said, "if I telephone right away."

He was moving to the other room when the Governor called to him.

"See here, it seems to me you're a strange newspaper man!"

"How so?"

"Why, I tell you I've made a senatorial appointment--a matter of
some slight importance--and you rush off never asking whom I've
appointed."

The reporter gave a forced laugh. He wished the Governor would not
detain him with a joke now when every second counted.

"That's right," he said, with strained pleasantness. "Well, who's
the man?"

The Governor raised his head. "Huntington," he said quietly, and
resumed his work.

"What?" gasped the reporter. "What?"

Then he stopped in embarrassment, as if ashamed of being so easily
taken in. "Guess you're trying to jolly me a little, aren't you,
Governor?"

"Jolly you, Mr. Markham? I'm not given to 'jollying' newspaper
reporters. Here's a copy of the telegram I sent this morning, if you
are still sceptical. Really, I don't see why you think it so
impossible. Don't you consider Mr. Huntington a fit man for the
place?"

But for the minute the reporter seemed unable to speak. "May I ask,"
he fumbled at last, "why you did it?"

"I had but one motive, Mr. Markham. I thought the matter over and it
seemed to me the people should have the man they wanted. I am with
them in believing Huntington the best man for the place." He said it
simply, and went quietly back to his work.

For many a long day politicians and papers continued the search for
"the motive." Styles and his crowd saw it as a simple matter of
selling out; they knew, of course, that it could be nothing else.
After their first rage had subsided, and they saw there was nothing
they could do, they wondered, sneeringly, why he did not "fix up a
better story." That was a little _too_ simple-minded. Did he
think people were fools? And even the men who profited by the
situation puzzled their brains for weeks trying to understand it.
There was something behind it, of course.




XI

HIS AMERICA


He hated to see the reporter go. With the closing of that door it
seemed certain that there was no putting it off any longer.

But even when the man's footsteps were at last sounding on the
stairway, he still clung to him.

"Father," he asked, fretfully, "why do you always talk to those
fellows?"

Herman Beckman turned in his chair and stared at his son. Then he
laughed. "Now, that's a fine question to come from the honour man of
a law school! I hope, Fritz, that your oration to-night is going to
have a little more sense in it than that."

The calling up of his oration made him reach out another clutching
hand to the vanished reporter. "But it's farcical, father, to be
always interviewed by a paper nobody reads."

"Nobody--_reads_?"

"Why, nobody cares anything about the _Leader_. It's dead."

Herman Beckman looked at his son sharply; something about him seemed
strange. He decided that he was nervous about the commencement
programme. Fritz had the one oration.

The boy had opened the drawer of his study table and was fingering
some papers he had taken out.

"Sure you know it?" the man asked with affectionate parental
anxiety.

"Oh, I know it all right," Fred answered grimly, and again the
father decided that he was nervous about the thing. He wasn't just
like himself.

The man walked to the window and stood looking across at the
university buildings. Colleges had always meant much to Herman
Beckman. The very day Fritz was born he determined that the boy was
to go to college. It was good to witness the fulfilment of his
dreams. He turned his glance to the comfortable room.

"Pretty decent comfortable sort of place, isn't it, father?" Fred
asked, following his father's look and thought from the Morris chair
to the student's lamp, and all those other things which nowadays
seem an inevitable part of the acquirement of learning.

It made his father laugh. "Yes, my boy, I should call it decent--and
comfortable." He grew thoughtful after that.

"Pretty different from the place you had, father?"

"Oh--me? My place to study was any place I could find. Sometimes on
top of a load of hay, lots of times by the light of the logs. I've
studied in some funny places, Fritz."

"Well, you _got_ there, father!" the boy burst out with
feeling. "By Jove, there aren't many of them _know_ the things
you know!"

"I know enough to know what I don't know," said the old man, a
little sadly. "I know enough to know what I missed. I wanted to go
to college. No one will ever know how I wanted to! I began to think
I'd never feel right about it. But I have a notion that when I sit
there to-night listening to you, Fritz, knowing that you're speaking
for two hundred boys, half of whose fathers did go to college, I
think I'm going to feel better about it then."

The boy turned away. Something in the kindly words seemed as the cut
of a whip across his face.

"Well, Fritz," his father continued, getting into his coat, "I'll be
going downtown. Leave you to put on an extra flourish or two." He
laughed in proud parental fashion. "Anyway, I have some things to
see about."

The boy stood up. "Father, I have something to tell you." He said it
shortly and sharply.

The father stood there, puzzled.

"You won't like my oration to-night, father."

And still the man did not speak. The words would not have bothered
him much--it was the boy's manner.

"In fact, father, you're going to be desperately disappointed in
it."

The dull red was creeping into the man's cheeks. He was one to have
little patience with that thing of not doing one's work. "Why am I
going to be disappointed? This is no time to shirk! You should--"

"Oh, you'll not complain of the time and thought I've put on it,"
the boy broke in with a short, hard laugh. "But, you see,
father--you see"--his armour had slipped from him--"it doesn't
express--your views."

"Did I ever say I wanted you to express 'my views'? Did I bring you
up to be a mouthpiece of mine? Haven't I told you to _think_?"
But with a long, sharp glance at his boy anger gave way. "Come,
boy"--going over and patting him on the back--"brace up now. You're
acting like a seven-year-old girl afraid to speak her first piece,"
and his big laugh rang out, eager to reassure.

"You won't see it! You won't believe it! I don't suppose you'll
believe it when you hear it!" He turned away, overwhelmed by a
sudden realisation of just how difficult was the thing that lay
before him.

The man started toward his son, but instead he walked over and sat
down at the opposite side of the table, waiting. He was beginning to
see that there was something in this which he did not understand.

At last the boy turned to him, fighting back some things, taking on
other things. He gazed at the care-worn, rugged face--face of a
worker and a dreamer, reading in those lines the story of that life,
seeing more clearly than he had ever seen before the beauty and
futility of it. Here was the idealist, the man who would give his
whole lifetime to a dream he had dreamed. He loved his father very
tenderly as he looked at him, read him, then.

"Father," he asked quietly, "are you satisfied with your life?"

The man simply stared--waiting, seeking his bearings.

"You came to this country when you were nineteen years old--didn't
you, father?" The man nodded. "And now you're--it's sixty-one, isn't
it?"

Again he nodded.

"You've been in America, then, forty-two years. Father, do you think
as much of it now as you did forty-two years ago?"

"I don't know what you mean," the man said, searching his son's
quiet, passionate face. "I can't make you out, Fritz."

"My favourite story as a kid," the boy went on, "was to hear you
tell of how you felt when your boat came sailing into New York
Harbour, and you saw the first outlines of a country you had dreamed
about all through your boyhood, which you had saved pennies for,
worked nights for, ever since you were old enough to know the
meaning of America. I mean," he corrected, significantly, "the
meaning of what you thought was America.

"It's a bully story, father," he continued, with a smile at once
tender and hard; "the simple German boy, born a dreamer, standing
there looking out at the dim shores of that land he had idealised.
If ever a man came to America bringing it rich gifts, that man was
you!"

"Fritz," his father's voice was rendered harsh by mystification and
foreboding, "tell me what you're talking about. Come to the point.
Clear this up."

"I'm talking about American politics--your party--having ruined your
life! I'm talking about working like a slave all your days and
having nothing but a mortgaged farm at sixty-one! I'm talking about
playing a losing game! I'm saying, _What's the use?_ Father,
I'm telling you that _I'm_ going to join the other party and
make some money!"

The man just sat there, staring.

"Well," the boy took it up defiantly, "why not?"

And then he moved, laid a not quite steady hand out upon the table.
"My boy, you're not well. You've studied too hard. Now brace
yourself up for to-night, and then we'll go down home and fix you
up. What you need, Fritz," he said, trying to laugh, "is the
hayfield."

"You're not _seeing_ it!" The boy pushed back his chair and
began moving about the room. "The only way I can brace myself up for
to-night is to get so mad--father, usually you see things so easily!
Don't you understand? It was my chance, my one moment, my time to
strike. It will be years before I get such a hearing again. You see,
father, the thing will be printed, and the men I want to have hear
it, the men who _own this State_, will be there. One of them is
to preside. And the story of it, the worth of it, to them, is that
I'm your son. You see, after all," he seized at this wildly, "I'm
getting my start on the fact that I'm your son."

"Go on," said the man; the brown of his wind-beaten face had yielded
to a tinge of grey. "Just what is it you are going to say?"

"I call it 'The New America,' a lot of this talk about doing things,
the glory of industrial America, the true Americans the men of
constructive genius, the patriotism of railroad and factory
building, a eulogy of railroad officials and corporation
presidents," he rushed on with a laugh. "Singing the song of
Capital. Father, can't you see _why?_"

The old man had risen. "Tell me this," he said. "None of it matters
much, if you just tell me this: You _believe_ these things?
You've thought it all out for yourself--and you _feel_ that
way? You're honest, aren't you, Fritz?" He put that last in a
whisper.

The boy made no reply; after a minute the man sank back to his
chair. The years seemed coming to him with the minutes.

Fred was leaning against the wall. "Father," he said at last, "I
hope you'll let me be a little roundabout. It's only fair to me to
let me ramble on a little. I've got to put it all right before you
or--or--You know, dad,"--he came back to his place by the table,
"the first thing I remember very clearly is those men, your party
managers, coming down to the farm one time and asking you to run for
Governor. How many times is it you've run for Governor, father?" He
put the question slowly.

"Five," said the man heavily.

"I don't know which time this was; but you didn't want to. You were
sorry when you saw them coming. I heard some of the talk. You talked
about your farm, what you wanted to do that summer, how you couldn't
afford the time or the money. They argued that you owed it to the
party--they always got you there; how no other man could hold down
majorities as you could--a man like you giving the best years of his
life to holding down majorities! They said you were the one man
against whom no personal attack could be made. And when there was so
much to fight, anyway--oh, I know that speech by heart! They've made
great capital of your honesty and your clean life. In fact, they've
held that up as a curtain behind which a great many things could go
on. Oh, _you_ didn't know about them; you were out in front of
the curtain, but I haven't lived in this town without finding out
that they needed your integrity and your clean record pretty bad!

"That was out on the side porch. Mother had brought out some
buttermilk, and they drank it while they talked. You put up a good
fight. Your time was money to you at that time of year; a man
shouldn't neglect his farm--but you never yet could hold out against
that 'needing-you' kind of talk. They knew there was no chance for
your election. You knew it. But it takes a man of just your grit to
put any snap into a hopeless campaign.

"Mother cried when you went to drive them back to town. You see, I
remember all those things. She told about how hard you would work,
and how it would do no good--that the State belonged to the other
party. She talked about the farm, too, and the addition she had
wanted for the house, and how now she wouldn't have it. Mother felt
pretty bad that night. She's gone through a lot of those times."

There was a silence.

"You were away a lot that summer, and all fall. You looked pretty
well used up when you came home, but you said that you had held down
majorities splendidly."

Again there was silence. It was the silences that seemed to be
saying the most.

"You had one term in Congress--that's the only thing you ever had.
Then you did so much that they concentrated in your district and saw
to it that you never got back. Julius Caesar couldn't have been
elected again," he laughed harshly.

"Father," the boy went on, after a pause, "you asked me if I were
honest. There are two kinds of honesty. The primitive kind--like
yours--and then the kind you develop for yourself. Do I believe the
things I'm going to say to-night? No--not now. But I'll believe them
more after I've heard the applause I'm sure to get. I'll believe
them still more after I've had my first case thrown to me by our
railroad friends who own this State. More and more after I've said
them over in campaigning next fall, and pretty soon I'll be so sure
I believe them that I really will believe them--and that," he
concluded, flippantly, "is the new brand of American honesty. Why,
any smart man can persuade himself he's not a hypocrite!"

"My _God!_" it wrenched from the man. "_This?_ If you'd
stolen money--killed a man--but hypocrisy, cant--the very thing I've
fought hardest, hated most! You lived all your life with me to learn
_this?_"

"I lived all my life with you to learn what pays, and what doesn't.
I lived all my life with you to learn from failure the value of
success."

"I never was sure I was a failure until this hour."

"Father! Can't you see--"

"Oh, don't _talk_ to me!" cried the old man, rising, reaching
out his fist as though he would strike him. "Son of mine sitting
there telling me he is fixing up a brand of honesty for himself!"

The boy grew quieter as self-restraint left his father. "I mean
that--just that," he said at last. "Let a man either give or get. If
he gives, let it be to the real thing. There are two Americas. The
America of you dreamers--and then the real America. Yours is an
idea--an idea quite as much as an ideal. I don't think you have the
slightest comprehension of how far apart it is from the real
America. The people who dream of it over in Europe are a great deal
nearer it than you people who work for it here. Father, the spirit
of this country flows in a strong, swift, resistless current. You
never got into it at all. Your kind of idealists influence it about
as much--about as much as red lights burned on the banks of the
great river would influence the current of that river. You're not
_of_ it. You came here, throbbing with the love for America;
and with your ideal America you've fought the real, and you've
worked and you've believed and you've sacrificed. Father, _what's
the use?_ In this State, anyway, it's hopeless. It has been so
through your lifetime; it will be through mine."

The man sat looking at him. He felt that he should say something,
but the words did not come--held back, perhaps, by a sense of their
uselessness. It was not so much what Fred said as it was the look in
his eyes as he said it. There was nothing impetuous or youthful
about that look, nothing to be laughed at or argued away. He had
always felt that Fred had a mind which saw things straight, saw them
in their right relations, and at that moment he had no words to
plead for what Fred called the America of the dreamers.

"I'm of the second generation, dad," the boy went on, at length,
"and the second generation has an ideal of its own, and that ideal
is Success. It took us these forty years to come to understand the
spirit of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an
American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality
into enterprise and opportunity and success--and that's getting
Americanised. Now, father," he sought refuge in the tone of
every-day things, "you'll get used to it--won't you? I don't expect
you to feel very good about it, but you aren't going to be broken up
about it--are you? After all, father," laughing and moving about as
if to break the seriousness of things, "there's nothing criminal
about being one of the other fellows--is there? Just remember that
there _are_ folks who even think it's respectable!" The father
had risen and picked up his hat. "No, Fred," he said, with a sadness
in which there was great dignity, "there is nothing criminal in it
if a man's conviction sends him that way. But to me there is
something--something too sad for words in a man's selling his own
soul."

"Father! How extravagant! _Why_ is it selling one's soul to sit
down and figure out what's the best thing to do?" He hesitated,
hating to add hurt to hurt, not wanting to say that his father's
fight should have been with the revolutionists, that his life was
ineffective because, seeing his dream from within a dream, his
thinking had been muddled. He only said: "As I say, father, it's a
question of giving or getting. I couldn't even give in your way. And
I've seen enough of giving to want a taste of getting. I want to
make things go--and I see my chance. Why father," he laughed, trying
to turn it, "there's nothing so American as wanting to make things
_go_."

He looked at him for a long minute. "My boy," he said, "I fear you
are becoming so American that I am losing you."

"Father," the boy pleaded, affectionately, "now don't--"

The old man held up his hand. "You've tried to make me understand
it," he said, "and succeeded. You can't complain of the way you've
succeeded. I don't know why I don't argue with you--plead; there are
things I could say--should say, perhaps--but something assures me it
would be useless. I feel a good many years older than I did when I
came into this room, but the reason for it is not that you're
joining the other party. You know what I think of the men who
control this State, the men with whom you desire to cast your lot,
but I trust the years I've spent fighting them haven't made a bigot
of me. It's not joining their party--it's _using_ it--makes
this the hardest thing I've been called upon to meet."

"Father, don't look like that! How do you think I am going to get up
and speak tonight with _that_ face before me?"

"You didn't think, did you," the man laughed bitterly, "that I would
inspire you to your effort?"

The boy stood looking at his father, a strange new fire in his eyes.

"Yes," he said, quietly, tenderly, "you will inspire me. When I get
up before those men tonight I'm going to see the picture of that boy
straining for his first glimpse of New York Harbour. I'm going to
think for just a minute of the things that boy brought with
him--things he has never lost. And then I'll see you as you stand
here now---it will be enough. What I need to do is to get mad. If I
falter I'll just think of some of those times when you came home
from your campaigns--how you looked--what you said. It will bring
the inspiration. Father, I figure it out like this. We're going to
get it back. We're going to get what's coming to us. There's another
America than the America of you dreamers. To yours you have given;
from mine I will get. And the irony of it--don't think I don't see
the irony of it--is that I will be called the real American. Do you
know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make the railroads of this
State--oh, it sounds like schoolboy talk, but just give me a little
time--I'm going to make the railroads of this State pay off every
cent of that mortgage on your farm! Father," he finished,
impetuously, in a last appeal, "you're broken up now, disappointed,
but would you honestly want me to travel the road you've traveled?"

"My boy," answered the old man, and the tears came with it, "I
wanted you to travel the road of an honest man."

Herman Beckman did not go to the commencement exercises that night.
There was no train home until morning, so he had the night to spend
in town. He was alone, for his friends assumed that he would be out
at the university. But he preferred being alone.

He sat in his room at the hotel, reading. And he could read. Years
of discipline stood him in good stead now. His life had taught him
to read anywhere, at any time. He had never permitted himself the
luxury of not being "in the mood." It was only the men who had gone
to college who could do that. He _had_ to read. He always
carried some little book with him, for how did a man know that he
might not have to wait an hour for a train somewhere? The man had a
simple-minded veneration for knowledge. He wanted to know about
things. And he had never learned to pretend that he didn't want to
know. He quite lacked the modern art of flippancy. He believed in
great books.

And so on the night that his son was being graduated from college he
sat in his room at the hotel--cheap room in a mediocre hotel; he had
never learned to feel at home in the rich ones--reading Marcus
Aurelius. But his hand as he turned the pages trembled as the hand
of a very old man. At midnight some reporters came in to ask him
what he thought of his son's oration. They wanted a statement from
him.

He told them that he had never believed the sins of a parent should
be visited on a child, and that it was even so with the thought. He
had always contended that a man should do his own thinking. The
contention applied to his son.

"Gamey old brute!" was what one of the reporters said in the
elevator.

He could not read Marcus Aurelius after that. He went to bed, but he
did not sleep. Many things passed before him. His anticipations, his
dreams for Fritz, had brought the warmest pleasure of his stern,
unrelaxing life. There was a great emptiness tonight. What was a man
to turn to, think about, when he seemed stripped, not only of the
future, but of the past? He seemed called upon to readjust the whole
of his life, giving up that which he had held dearest. What was
left? Daylight found him turning it over and over.

In the morning he went home. He got away without seeing any of his
friends.

He did not try to read this morning; somehow it seemed there was no
use in trying to read any more. He watched the country through which
they were passing, thinking of the hundreds of times he had ridden
over it in campaigning. He wondered, vaguely, just how much money he
had spent on railroad fare--he had never accepted mileage. Fred's
"What's the use?" kept ringing in his ears. There was something
about that phrase which made one feel very tired and old. It even
seemed there was no use looking out to see how the crops were
getting on. _What's the use? What's the use?_ Was that a phrase
one learned in college?

There had been two things to tell "mother" that night. The first was
that he had stopped in town and told Claus Hansen he could have that
south hundred and sixty he had been wanting for two years.

It was not easy to tell the woman who had worked shoulder to
shoulder with him for thirty years, the woman who during those years
had risen with him in the early morning and worked with him until
darkness rescued the weary bodies, that in their old age they must
surrender the fruit of their toil. They would have left just what
they had started with. They had just held their own.

Coming down on the train he had made up his mind that if Hansen were
in town he would tell him that he could have the land. He felt so
very tired and old, so bowed down with Fred's "What's the use?" that
he saw that he himself would never get the mortgage paid off. And
Fred had said something about making the railroads pay it. He did
not know just how the boy figured that out--indeed, he was getting a
little dazed about the whole thing--but if Fritz had any idea of
having the railroads pay off the mortgage on _his_ farm--he
couldn't forget how the boy looked when he said it, face white, eyes
burning--he would see to it right now that there was no chance of
that.

He tried not to look at the land as he drove past it on the way
home. He wondered just how much campaign literature it had paid for.
He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing Claus Hansen putting
up his hay over there in that field.

He had felt so badly about telling mother that he told it very
bluntly. And because he felt so sorry for her he said not one kind
word, but just sat quiet, looking the other way.

She was clearing off the table. He heard her scraping out the potato
dish with great care. Then she was coming over to him. She came
awkwardly, hesitatingly--her life had not schooled her in meeting
emotional moments beautifully--but she laid her hand upon him,
patted him on the shoulder as one would a child. "Never mind,
papa--never you mind. It will make it easier for us. There's enough
left--and it will make it easier. We're getting on--we're--" There
she broke off abruptly into a vigorous scolding of the dog, who was
lifting covetous nostrils to a piece of meat.

That was all. And there was no woman in the country had worked
harder. And Martha was ambitious; she liked land, and she did not
like Claus Hansen's wife.

Yes, he had had a good wife.

Then there was that other thing to tell her--about Fritz. That was
harder.

Mother had not gone up to the city to hear Fritz "speak" because her
feet were bothering her, and she could not wear her shoes. He had
had a vague idea of how disappointed she was, though she had said
very little about it. Martha never had been one to say much about
things. When he came back, of course she had wanted to know all
about it, and he had put her off. Now he had to tell her.

It was much harder; and in the telling of it he broke down.

This time she did not come over and pat his shoulder. Perhaps Martha
knew--likely she had never heard the word intuition, but, anyway,
she knew--that it was beyond that.

It seemed difficult for her to comprehend. She was bewildered to
find that Fritz could change parties all in a minute. She seemed to
grasp, first of all, that it was disrespectful to his father. Some
boys at school had been putting notions into his head.

But gradually she began to see it. Fritz wanted to make money. Fritz
wanted to have it easier. And the other people did "have it easier."

It divided her feeling: sorry and indignant for the father, secretly
glad and relieved for the boy. "He will have it easier than we had
it, papa," she said at the last. "But it was not right of Fritz,"
she concluded, vaguely but severely.

As she washed the dishes Martha was thinking that likely Fritz's
wife would have a hired girl.

Then Martha went up to bed. He said that he would come in a few
minutes, but many minutes went by while he sat out on the side porch
trying to think it out.

The moon was shining brightly down on that hundred and sixty which
Claus Hansen was to have. And the moon, too, seemed to be saying:
"What's the use?"

Well, what _was_ the use? Perhaps, after all, the boy was
right. What had it all amounted to? What was there left? What had he
done?

Two Americas, Fred had said, and his but the America of the
dreamers. He had always thought that he was fighting for the real.
And now Fred said that he had never become an American at all.

From the time he was twelve years old he had wanted to be an
American. A queer old man back in the German village--an old man, he
recalled strangely now, who had never been in America--told him
about it. He told how all men were brothers in America, how the poor
and the rich loved each other--indeed, how there were no poor and
rich at all, but the same chance for every man who would work. He
told about the marvellous resources of that distant America--gold in
the earth, which men were free to go and get, hundreds upon hundreds
of miles of untouched forests and great rivers--all for men to use,
great cities no older than the men who were in them, which men at
that present moment were _making_--every man his equal chance.
He told of rich land which a man could have for nothing, which would
be _his_, if he would but go and work upon it. In the heart of
the little German boy there was kindled then a fire which the years
had never put out. His cheeks grew red, his eyes bright and very
deep as he listened to the story. He went home that night and
dreamed of going to America. And through the years of his boyhood,
penny by penny, he saved his money for America. It was his dream. It
was the passion of his life. More plainly than the events of
yesterday, he remembered his first glimpse of those wonderful
shores--the lump in his throat, the passionate excitement, the
uplift. Leaning over the railing of his boat, staring, searching,
penetrating, worshipping, he lifted up his heart and sent out his
pledge of allegiance to the new land. How he would love America,
work for it, be true to it!

He had three dollars and sixty cents in his pocket when he stepped
upon American soil. He wondered if any man had ever felt richer. For
had he not reached the land where there was an equal chance for
every man who would work, where men loved each other as brothers,
and where the earth itself was so rich and so gracious in its
offerings?

The old man crossed one leg over the other--slowly, stiffly. It made
him tired and stiff now just to think of the work he had done
between that day and this.

But there was something which he had always had--that something was
_his_ America. That had never wavered, though he soon learned
that between it and realities were many things which were wrong and
unfortunate. With the whole force and passion of his nature, with
all his single mindedness--would some call it simple mindedness?--he
threw himself into the fight against those things which were
blurring men's vision of his America. No work, no sacrifice was too
great, for America had enemies who called themselves friends, men
who were striking heavy blows at that equal chance for every man.
When he failed, it was because he did not know enough; he must work,
he must study, he must think, in order to make more real to other
men the America which was in his heart. He must fight for it because
it was his.

And now it seemed that the end had come; he was old, he was tired,
he was not sure. Claus Hansen would have his land and his son would
join hands with the things which he had spent his life in fighting.
And far deeper and sadder and more bitter than that, he had not
transmitted the America of his heart even to his own son. He was not
leaving someone to fight for it in his stead, to win where he had
failed. Fred saw in it but a place for gain. "I lived all my life
with you to learn from failure the value of success." That was what
he had given to his boy. Yes, that was what he had bequeathed to
America. Could the failure, the futility of his life be more clearly
revealed?

Twice Martha had called to him, but still he sat, smoking, thinking.
There was much to think about to-night.

Finally, it was not thought, but visions. Too tired for conscious
thinking, he gave himself up to what came--Fred's America, his
America, the America of the dreamers--and the things which stood
between. The America of the future---what would that America be?

At the last, taking form from many things which came and went,
shaping itself slowly, form giving place to new form, he seemed to
see it grow. Out beyond that land Claus Hansen was to have, a long
way off, there rose the vision of the America of the future--an
America of realities, and yet an America of dreams; for the dreamers
had become the realists---or was it that the realists had become
dreamers? In the manifold forms taken on and cast aside destroying
dualism had made way for the strength and the dignity and harmony of
unity. He watched it as breathlessly, as yearningly, as the
nineteen-year-old boy had watched the other America taking shape in
the distance some forty years before. "How did you come?" he
whispered. "What are you?"

And the voice of that real America seemed to answer: "I came because
for a long-enough time there were enough men who held me in their
hearts. I came because there were men who never gave me up. I was
won by men who believed that they had failed."

Again there was a lump in his throat--once more an exultation
flooded all his being. For to the old man--tired, stiff, smitten
though he had been, there came again that same uplift which long
before had come to the boy. Was there not here an answer to "What's
the use?" For he would leave America as he came to it--loving it,
believing in it. What were the work and the failure of a lifetime
when there was something in his heart which was his? Should he say
that he had fought in vain when he had kept it for himself? It was
as real, as wonderful--yes as inevitable, as it had been forty years
before. Realities had taken his land, his career, his hopes for the
boy. But realities had not stripped him of his dream. The futility
of the years could not harm the things which were in his heart. Even
in America he had not lost His America.

"Perhaps it is then that it is like that," he murmured, his vision
carrying him back to the days of his broken English. "Perhaps it is
that every man's America is in the inside of his own heart. Perhaps
it is that it will come when it has grown big--big and very
strong--in the hearts."




XII

THE ANARCHIST: HIS DOG


Stubby had a route, and that was how he happened to get a dog. For the
benefit of those who have never carried papers it should be thrown
in that having a route means getting up just when there is really
some fun in sleeping, lining up at the _Leader_ office--maybe
having a scrap with the fellow who says you took his place in the
line--getting your papers all damp from the press and starting for
the outskirts of the city. Then you double up the paper in the
way that will cause all possible difficulty in undoubling and hurl
it with what force you have against the front door. It is good to
have a route, for you at least earn your salt, so your father can't
say _that_ any more. If he does, you know it isn't so.

When you have a route, you whistle. All the fellows whistle. They
may not feel like it, but it is the custom--as could be sworn to by
many sleepy citizens. And as time goes on you succeed in acquiring
the easy manner of a brigand.

Stubby was little and everything about him seemed sawed off just a
second too soon,--his nose, his fingers, and most of all, his hair.
His head was a faithful replica of a chestnut burr. His hair did not
lie down and take things easy. It stood up--and out!--gentle ladies
couldn't possibly have let their hands sink into it--as we are told
they do--for the hands just wouldn't sink. They'd have to float.

And alas, gentle ladies didn't particularly want their hands to sink
into it. There was not that about Stubby's short person to cause the
hands of gentle ladies to move instinctively to his head. Stubby
bristled. That is, he appeared to bristle. Inwardly, Stubby yearned,
though he would have swung into his very best brigand manner on the
spot were you to suggest so offensive a thing. Just to look at
Stubby you'd never in a thousand years guess what a funny feeling he
had sometimes when he got to the top of the hill where his route
began and could see a long way down the river and the town curled in
on the other side. Sometimes when the morning sun was shining
through a mist--making things awful queer--some of the mist got into
Stubby's squinty little eyes. After the mist behaved that way he
always whistled so rakishly and threw his papers with such
abandonment that people turned over in their beds and muttered
things about having that little heathen of a paper boy shot.

All along the route are dogs. Indeed, routes are distinguished by
their dogs. Mean routes are those that have terraces and mean dogs;
good routes--where the houses are close together and the dogs run
out and wag their tails. Though Stubby's greater difficulty came
through the wagging tails; he carried in a collie neighbourhood, and
all collies seemed consumed with mighty ambitions to have routes. If
you spoke to them--and how could you _help_ speaking to a
collie when he came bounding out to you that way?--you had an awful
time chasing him back, and when he got lost--and it seemed collies
spent most of their time getting lost--the woman would put her head
out next morning and want to know if you had coaxed her dog away.

Some of the fellows had dogs that went with them on their routes.
One day one of them asked Stubby why he didn't have a dog and he
replied in surly fashion that he didn't have one 'cause he didn't
want one. If he wanted one, he guessed he'd have one.

And there was no one within ear-shot old enough or wise enough--or
tender enough?--to know from the meanness of Stubby's tone, and by
his evil scowl, that his heart was just breaking to own a dog.

One day a new dog appeared along the route. He was yellow and looked
like a cheap edition of a bull-dog. He was that kind of dog most
accurately described by saying it is hard to describe him, the kind
you say is just dog--and everybody knows.

He tried to follow Stubby; not in the trusting, bounding manner of
the collies--not happily, but hopingly. Stubby, true to the ethics
of his profession, chased him back where he had come from. That
there might be nothing whatever on his conscience, he even threw a
stone after him. Stubby was an expert in throwing things at dogs. He
could seem to just miss them and yet never hit them.

The next day it happened again; but just as he had a clod poised for
throwing, a window went up and a woman called: "For pity
_sake_, little boy, don't chase him back _here_."

"Why--why, ain't he yours?" called Stubby.

"Mercy, _no_. We can't chase him away."

"Who's is he?" demanded Stubby.

"Why, he's nobody's! He just hangs around. I wish you'd coax him
away."

Well, that was a _new_ one! And then all in a heap it rushed
over Stubby that this dog who was nobody's dog could, if he coaxed
him away--and the woman _wanted_ him coaxed away--be his dog.

And because that idea had such a strange effect on him he sang out,
in off-hand fashion: "Oh, all right, I'll take him away and drown
him for you!

"Oh, little _boy_," called the woman, "why, don't _drown_
him!"

"Oh, all right, I'll shoot him then!" called obliging Stubby,
whistling for the dog--while all morning long the woman grieved over
having sent a helpless little dog away with that perfectly
_brutal_ paper boy!

Stubby's mother was washing. She looked up from her tubs on the back
porch to say, "Wish you'd take that bucket--" then seeing what was
slinking behind her son, straightway assumed the role of destiny
with, "Git out o' here!"

Stubby snapped his fingers behind his back as much as to say, "Wait
a minute."

"A woman gave him to me," he said to his mother.

"_Gave_ him to you?" she scoffed. "I sh' think she would!"

Then something happened that had not happened many times in Stubby's
short lifetime. He acknowledged his feelings.

"I'd like to keep him. I'd like to have a dog."

His mother shook her hands and the flying suds seemed expressing her
scorn. "Huh! _That_ ugly good-for-nothing thing?"

The dog had edged in between Stubby's feet and crouched there. "He
could go with me on my route," said Stubby. "He'd kind of be company
for me."

And when he had said that he knew all at once just how lonesome he
had been sometimes on his route, how he had wanted something to
"kind of be company" for him.

His face twitched as he stooped down to pat the dog. Mrs. Lynch
looked at her son--youngest of her five. Not the hardness of her
heart but the hardness of her life had made her unpractised in
moments of tenderness. Something in the way Stubby was patting the
dog suggested to her that Stubby was a "queer one." He _was_
kind of little to be carrying papers all by himself.

Stubby looked up. "He could eat what's thrown away."

That was an error in diplomacy. The woman's face hardened. "Mighty
little'll be thrown away _this_ winter," she muttered.

But just then Mrs. Johnson appeared on the other side of the fence
and began hanging up her clothes and with that Mrs. Lynch saw her
way to justify herself in indulging her son. Mrs. Johnson and Mrs.
Lynch had "had words." "You just let him stay around, Stubby," she
called, and you would have supposed from her tone it was Stubby who
was on the other side of the fence, "maybe he'll keep the
neighbour's chickens out! Them that ain't got chickens o' their own
don't want to be bothered with the neighbours'!"

That was how it happened that he stayed; and no one but Stubby
knew--and possibly Stubby didn't either--how it happened that he was
named Hero. It would seem that Hero should be a noble St. Bernard,
or a particularly mean-looking bulldog, not a stocky, shapeless,
squint-eyed yellow dog with one ear bitten half off and one leg
built on an entirely different plan from its fellow legs. Possibly
Stubby's own spiritual experiences had suggested to him that you
weren't necessarily the way you looked.

The chickens were pretty well kept out, though no one ever saw Hero
doing any of it. Perhaps Hero had been too long associated with
chasing to desire any part in it--even with roles reversed. If
Stubby could help it, no one really saw Stubby doing the chasing
either; he became skilled in chasing when he did not appear to be
chasing; then he would get Hero to barking and turn to his mother
with, "Guess you don't see so many chickens round nowadays."

The fellows in the line jeered at Hero at first, but they soon tired
of it when Stubby said he didn't want the cur but his mother made
him stay around to keep the chickens out. He was a fine chicken dog,
Stubby grudgingly admitted. He couldn't keep him from following,
said Stubby, so he just let him come. Sometimes when they were
waiting in line Stubby made ferocious threats at Hero. He was going
to break his back and wring his head off and do other heartless
things which for some reason he never started in right then and
there to accomplish.

It was different when they were alone--and they were alone a good
deal. Stubby's route wasn't nearly so long after he had Hero to go
with him. When winter came and five o'clock was dark and cold for
starting out it was pretty good to have Hero trotting at his heels.
And Hero always wanted to go; it was never so rainy nor so cold that
that yellow dog seemed to think he would rather stay home by the
fire. Then Hero was always waiting for him when he came home from
school. Stubby would sing out, "Hello, cur!" and the tone was such
that Hero did not grasp that he was being insulted. Sometimes when
there was nobody about, Stubby picked Hero up in his arms and
squeezed him--Stubby had not had a large experience with squeezing.
At those times Hero would lick Stubby's face and whimper a little
love whimper and such were the workings of Stubby's heart and mind
that that made him of quite as much account as if he really had
chased the chickens. Stubby, who had seen the way dogs can look at
you out of their eyes, was not one to say of a dog, "What good is
he?"

But it seemed there were such people. There were even people who
thought you oughtn't to have a dog to love and to love you if you
weren't one of those rich people who could pay two dollars and a
half a year for the luxury.

Stubby first heard of those people one night in June. The father of
the Lynch family was sitting in the back yard reading the paper when
Hero and Stubby came running in from the alley. It was one of those
moments when Hero, forgetting the bleakness of his youth, abandoned
himself to the joy of living. He was tearing round and round Stubby,
barking, when Stubby's father called out: "Here!--shut up there, you
cur. You better lie low. You're going to be shot the first of
August."

Stubby, and as regards the joy of living Hero had done as much for
Stubby as Stubby for Hero, came to a halt. The fun and frolic just
died right out of him and he stood there staring at his father, who
had turned the page and was settling himself to a new horror. At
last Stubby spoke. "Why's he going to be shot on the first of
August?" he asked in a tight little voice.

His father looked up. "Why's he going to be shot? You got any two
dollars and a half to pay for him?"

He laughed as though that were a joke. Well, it was something of a
joke. Stubby got ten cents a week out of his paper money. The rest
he "turned in."

Then he went back to his paper. There was another long pause before
Stubby asked, in that tight queer little voice: "What'd I have to
pay two dollars and a half for? Nobody owns him."

His parent stirred scornfully. "Suppose you never heard of a dog
tax, did you? S'pose they don't learn you nothing like that at
school?"

Yes, Stubby did know that dogs had to have checks, but he hadn't
thought anything about that in connection with Hero. He ventured
another question. "You have to have 'em for all dogs, even if you
just picked 'em up on the street and took care of 'em when nobody
else would?"

"You bet you do," his parent assured him genially. "You pay your dog
tax or the policeman comes on the first of August and shoots your
dog."

With that he dismissed it for good, burying himself in his paper.
For a minute the boy stood there in silence. Then he walked slowly
round the house and sat down where his father couldn't see him. Hero
followed--it was a way Hero had. The dog sat down beside the boy and
after a couple of minutes the boy's arm stole furtively around him
and they sat there very still for a long time.

As nobody but Hero paid much attention to him, nobody save Hero
noticed how quiet and queer Stubby was for the next three days. Hero
must have noticed it, for he was quiet and queer too. He followed
wherever Stubby would let him, and every time he got a chance he
would nestle up to him and look into his face--that way even cur
dogs have of doing when they fear something is wrong.

At the end of three days Stubby, his little freckled face set and
grim, took his stand in front of his father and came right out with:
"I want to keep one week's paper money to pay Hero's tax."

His father's chair had been tilted back against a tree. Now it came
down with a thud. "Oh, you _do_, do you?"

"I can earn the other fifty cents at little jobs."

"You _can_, can you? Now ain't you smart!"

The tone brought the blood to Stubby's face. "I think I got a right
to," he said, his voice low.

The man's face, which had been taunting, grew ugly. "Look a-here,
young man, none o' your lip!"

The tears rushed to Stubby's eyes but he stumbled on: "I guess
Hero's got a right to some of my paper money when he goes with me
every day on my route."

At that his father stared for a minute and then burst into a loud
laugh. Blinded with tears, the boy turned to the house.

After she had gone to bed that night Stubby's mother heard a sound
from the alcove at the head of the stairs where her youngest child
slept. As the sound kept on she got out of her bed and went to
Stubby's cot.

"Look here," she said, awkwardly but not unkindly, "this won't do.
We're poor folks, Freddie" (it was only once in a while she called
him that), "all we can do to live these times--we can't pay no dog
tax."

As Stubby did not speak she added: "I know you've taken to the dog,
but just the same you ain't to feel hard to your pa. He can't help
it--and neither can I. Things is as they is--and nobody can help
it."

As, despite this bit of philosophy Stubby was still gulping back
sobs, she added what she thought a master stroke in consolation.
"Now you just go right to sleep, and if they come to take this dog
away maybe you can pick up another one in the fall."

The sobs suddenly stopped and Stubby stared at her. And what he said
after a long stare was: "I guess there ain't no use in you and me
talking about it."

"That's right," said she, relieved; "now you go right off to sleep."
And she left him, never dreaming why Stubby had seen there was no
use talking about it.

Nor did he talk about it; but a change came over Stubby's funny
little person in the next few days. The change was particularly
concerned with his jaw, though there was something different, too,
in the light in his eyes as he looked straight ahead, and something
different in his voice when he said: "Come on, Hero."

He got so he could walk into a store and demand, in a hard little
voice: "Want a boy to do anything for you?" and when they said, "Got
more boys than we know what to do with, sonny," Stubby would say,
"All right," and stalk sturdily out again. Sometimes they laughed
and said: "What could _you_ do?" and then Stubby would stalk
out, but possibly a little less sturdily.

Vacation came the next week, and still he had found nothing. His
father, however, had been more successful. He found a place where
they wanted a boy to work in a yard a couple of hours in the
morning. For that Stubby was to get a dollar and a half a week. But
that was to be turned in for his "keep." There were lots of mouths
to feed--as Stubby's mother was always calling to her neighbour
across the alley.

But the yard gave Stubby an idea, and he earned some dimes and one
quarter in the next week. Most folks thought he was too little--one
kind lady told him he ought to be playing, not working--but there
were people who would let him take a big shears and cut grass around
flower beds, and things like that. This he had to do afternoons,
when he was supposed to be off playing, and when he came home his
mother sometimes said some folks had it easy--playing around all
day.

It was now the first week in July and Stubby had a dollar and twenty
cents. It was getting to the point where he would wake in the night
and find himself sitting up in bed, hands clenched. He dreamed
dreams about how folks would let him live if he had ninety-nine
cents but how he only had ninety-seven and a half, so they were
going to shoot him.

Then one day he found Mr. Stuart. He was passing the house after
having asked three people if they wanted a boy, and they didn't, and
seemed so surprised at the idea of their wanting him that Stubby's
throat was all tight, when Mr. Stuart sang out: "Say, boy, want a
little job?"

It seemed at first it must be a joke--or a dream--anybody asking him
if he _wanted_ one, but the man was beckoning to him, so he
pulled himself together and ran up the steps.

"Now here's a little package"--he took something out of the mail
box. "It doesn't belong here. It's to go to three-hundred-two
Pleasant street. You take it for a dime?"

Stubby nodded.

As he was going down the steps the man called: "Say, boy, how'd you
like a steady job?"

For the first minute it seemed pretty mean--making fun of a fellow
that way!

"This will be here every day. Suppose you come each day, about this
time, and take it over there--not mentioning it to anybody."

Stubby felt weak. "Why, all right," he managed to say.

"I'll give you fifty cents a week. That fair?"

"Yes, sir," said Stubby, doing some quick calculation.

"Then here goes for the first week"--and he handed him the other
forty cents.

It was funny how fast the world could change! Stubby wanted to
run--he hadn't been doing much running of late. He wanted to go home
and get Hero to go with him to Pleasant street, but didn't. No,
_sir_, when you had a job you had to 'tend to things!

Well, a person could do things, if he had to, thought Stubby. No use
saying you couldn't, you _could_, if you had to. He was back in
tune with life. He whistled; he turned up his collar in the old
rakish way; he threw a stick at a cat. Back home he jumped over the
fence instead of going in the gate--lately he had actually been
using the gate. And he cried, "Get out of my sight, you cur!" in
tones which, as Hero understood things, meant anything but getting
out of his sight.

He was a little boy again. He slept at night as little boys sleep.
He played with Hero along the route--taught him some new tricks. His
jaw relaxed from its grown-upishness.

It was funny about those Stuarts. Sometimes he saw Mr. Stuart, but
never anybody else; the place seemed shut up. But each day the
little package was there, and every day he took it to Pleasant
street and left it at the door there--that place seemed shut up,
too.

When it was well into the second week Stubby ventured to say
something about the next fifty cents.

The man fumbled in his pockets. Something in his face was familiar
to experienced Stubby. It suggested a having to have two dollars and
a half by August first and only having a dollar and a quarter state
of mind.

"I haven't got the change. Pay you at the end of next week for the
whole business. That all right?"

Stubby considered. "I've got to have it before the first of August,"
he said.

At that the man laughed--funny kind of laugh, it was, and muttered
something. But he told Stubby he would have it before the first.

It bothered Stubby. He wished the man had given it to him
_then_. He would rather get it each week and keep it himself. A
little of the grown-up look stole back.

After that he didn't see Mr. Stuart, and one day, a week or so
later, the package was not in the box and a man who wore the kind of
clothes Stubby's father wore came around the house and asked him
what he was doing.

Stubby was wary. "Oh, I've got a little job I do for Mr. Stuart."

The man laughed. "I had a little job I did for Mr. Stuart, too. You
paid in advance?"

Stubby pricked up his ears.

"'Cause if you ain't, I'd advise you to look out for a little job
some'eres else."

Then it came out. Mr. Stuart was broke; more than that, he was "off
his nut." Lots of people were doing little jobs for him--there was
no sense in any of them, and now he had suddenly been called out of
town!

There was a trembly feeling through Stubby's insides, but outwardly
he was bristling just like his hair bristled as he demanded: "Where
am I to get what's coming to me?"

"'Fraid you won't get it, sonny. We're all in the same boat." He
looked Stubby up and down and then added: "Kind of little for that
boat."

"I _got_ to have it!" cried Stubby. "I tell you, I _got_
to!"

The man shook his head. "_That_ cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny,
but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine
for kids, though," he muttered.

Stubby's face just then was too much for him. He put his hand in his
pocket and drew out a dime, saying: "There now. You run along and
get you a soda and forget your troubles. It ain't always like this.
You'll have better luck next time."

But Stubby did not get the soda. He put the dime in his pocket and
turned toward home. Something was the matter with his legs--they
acted funny about carrying him. He tried to whistle, but something
was the matter with his lips, too.

Counting this dime, he now had a dollar and eighty cents, and it was
the twenty-eighth day of July. "Thirty days has September--April,
June and November--" he was saying to himself. Then July was one of
the long ones. Well, _that_ was a good thing! Been a great deal
worse if July was a short one. Again he tried to whistle, and that
time did manage to pipe out a few shrill little notes.

When Hero came running up the hill to meet him he slapped him on the
back and cried, "Hello, Hero!" in tones fairly swaggering with
bravado.

That night he engaged his father in conversation--the phrase is well
adapted to the way Stubby went about it. "How is it about--'bout
things like taxes"--Stubby crossed his knees and swung one foot to
show his indifference--"if you have _almost_ enough--do they
sometimes let you off?"--the detachment was a shade less perfect on
that last.

His father laughed scoffingly. "Well, I guess _not!_"

"I thought maybe," said Stubby, "if a person had _tried_ awful
hard--and had _most_ enough--"

Something inside him was all shaky, so he didn't go on. His father
said that _trying_ didn't have anything to do with it.

It was hard for Stubby not to sob out that he thought trying
_ought_ to have something to do with it, but he only made a
hissing noise between his teeth that took the place of the whistle
that wouldn't come.

"Kind of seems," he resumed, "if a person would have had enough if
they hadn't been beat out of it, maybe--if he done the best he
could--"

His father snorted derisively and informed him that doing the best
you could made no difference to the government; hard luck stories
didn't go when it came to the laws of the land.

Thereupon Stubby took a little walk out to the alley and spent a
considerable time in contemplation of the neighbour's chicken-yard.
When he came back he walked right up to his father and standing
there, feet planted, shoulders squared, wanted to know, in a
desperate little voice: "If some one else was to give--say a dollar
and eighty cents for Hero, could I take the other seventy out of my
paper money?"

The man turned upon him roughly. "Uh-_huh_! _That's_ it,
is it? _That's_ why you're getting so smart all of a sudden
about government! Look a-here. Just l'me tell you something. You're
lucky if you git enough to _eat_ this winter. Do you know
there's talk of the factory shuttin' down? _Dog_ tax! Why
you're lucky if you git _shoes_."

Stubby had turned away and was standing with his back to his father,
hands in his pockets.

"And l'me tell you some'en else, young man. If you got any dollar
and eighty cents, you give it to your mother!"

As Stubby was turning the corner of the house he called after him:
"How'd you like to have me get you an automobile?"

He went doggedly from house to house the next afternoon, but nobody
had any jobs. When Hero came running out to him that night he patted
him, but didn't speak.

That evening as they were sitting in the back yard--Stubby and Hero
a little apart from the others--his father was discoursing with his
brother about anarchists. They were getting commoner, his father
thought. There were a good many of them at the shop. They didn't
call themselves that, but that was what they were.

"Well, what is an anarchist, anyhow?" Stubby's mother wanted to
know.

"Why, an anarchist," her lord informed her, "is one that's against
the government. He don't believe in the law and order. The real bad
anarchists shoot them that tries to enforce the laws of the land.
Guess if you'd read the papers these days you'd know."

Stubby's brain had been going round and round and these words caught
in it as it whirled. The government--the laws of the land--why, it
was the government and the laws of the land that were going to shoot
Hero! It was the government--the laws of the land--that didn't care
how hard you had _tried_--didn't care whether you had been
cheated--didn't care how you _felt_--didn't care about anything
except getting the money! His brain got hotter. Well, _he_
didn't believe in the government, either. He was one of those
people--those anarchists--that were against the laws of the land.

He'd done the very best he could and now the government was going
to take Hero away from him just because he couldn't get--_couldn't_
get--that other seventy cents.

Stubby's mother didn't hear her son crying that night. That was
because Stubby was successful in holding the pillow over his head.

The next morning he looked in one of the papers he was carrying to
see what it said about anarchists. Sure enough, some place way off
somewhere, the anarchists had shot somebody that was trying to
enforce the laws of the land. The laws of the land--that didn't
_care_.

That afternoon as Stubby tramped around looking for jobs he saw a
good many boys playing with dogs. None of them seemed to be worrying
about whether their dogs had checks. To Stubby's hot little brain
and sore little heart came the thought that they didn't love their
dogs any more than he loved Hero, either. But the government didn't
care whether he loved Hero or not! Pooh!--what was that to the
government? All it cared about was getting the money. He stood for a
long time watching a boy giving his dog a bath. The dog was trying
to get away and the boy and another boy were having lots of fun
about it. All of a sudden Stubby turned and ran away--ran down an
alley, ran through a number of alleys, just kept on running, blinded
by the tears.

And that night, in the middle of the night, that something in his
head going round and round, getting hotter and hotter, he decided
that the only thing for him to do was to shoot the policeman who
came to take Hero away on the morning of August first--that would be
day after to-morrow.

All night long policemen with revolvers stood around his bed. When
his mother called him at half-past four he was shaking so he could
scarcely get into his clothes.

On his way home from his route Stubby had to pass a police-station.
He went on the other side of the street and stood there looking
across. One of the policemen was playing with a dog!

Suddenly he wanted to rush over and throw himself down at that
policeman's feet--sob out the story--ask him to please,
_please_ wait till he could get that other seventy cents.

But just then the policeman got up and went in the station, and
Stubby was afraid to go in the police-station.

That policeman complicated things for Stubby. Before that it had
been quite simple. The policeman would come to enforce the law of
the land; but he did not believe in the law of the land, so he would
just kill the policeman. But it seemed a policeman wasn't just a
person who enforced the laws of the land. He was also a person who
played with a dog.

After a whole day of walking around thinking about it--his eyes
burning, his heart pounding--he decided that the thing to do was to
warn the policeman by writing a letter. He did not know whether real
anarchists warned them or not, but Stubby couldn't get reconciled to
the idea of killing a person without telling him you were going to
do it. It seemed that even a policeman should be told--especially a
policeman who played with a dog.

The following letter was pencilled by a shaking hand, late that
afternoon. It was written upon a barrel in the Lynch wood-shed, on a
piece of wrapping paper, a bristly little head bending over it:

To the Policeman who comes to take my dog 'cause I ain't got the two
fifty--'cause I tried but could only get one eighty--'cause a man
was off his nut and didn't pay me what I earned--

This is to tell you I am an anarchist and do not believe in the
government or the law and the order and will shoot you when you
come. I wouldn't a been an anarchist if I could a got the money and
I tried to get it but I couldn't get it--not enough. I don't think
the government had ought to take things you like like I like Hero so
I am against the government.

Thought I would tell you first.

Yours truly,

F. LYNCH.

I don't see how I can shoot you 'cause where would I get the
revolver. So I will have to do it with the butcher knife. Folks are
sometimes killed that way 'cause my father read it in the paper.

If you wanted to take the one eighty and leave Hero till I can get
the seventy I will not do anything to you and would be very much
obliged.

1113 Willow street.

The letter was properly addressed and sealed--not for nothing had
Stubby's teacher given those instructions in the art of letter
writing. The stamp he paid for out of the dime the man gave him to
get a soda with--and forget his troubles.

Now Bill O'Brien was on the desk at the police-station and Miss
Murphy of the Herald stood in with Bill. That was how it came about
that the next morning a fat policeman, an eager-looking girl and a
young fellow with a kodak descended into the hollow to 1113 Willow
street.

A little boy peeped around the corner of the house--such a
wild-looking little boy--hair all standing up and eyes glittering. A
yellow dog ran out and barked. The boy darted out and grabbed the
dog in his arms and in that moment the girl called to the man with
the black box: "Right now! Quick! Get him!"

They were getting ready to shoot Hero! That box was the way the
police did it! He must--oh, he _must--must_ ... Boy and dog
sank to the ground--but just the same the boy was shielding the dog!

When Stubby had pulled himself together the policeman was holding
Hero. He said that Hero was certainly a fine dog--he had a dog a
good deal like him at home. And Miss Murphy--she was choking back
sobs herself--knew how he could earn the seventy cents that
afternoon.

In such wise do a good anarchist and a good story go down under the
same blow. Some of those sobs Miss Murphy choked back got into what
she wrote about Stubby and his yellow dog and the next day citizens
with no sense of the dramatic sent money enough to check Hero
through life.

At first Stubby's father said he had a good mind to lick him. But
something in the quality of Miss Murphy's journalism left a hazy
feeling of there being something remarkable about his son. He
confided to his good wife that it wouldn't surprise him much if
Stubby was some day President. Somebody had to be President, said
he, and he had noticed it was generally those who in their youthful
days did things that made lively reading in the newspapers.




XIII

AT TWILIGHT


A breeze from the May world without blew through the class-room, and
as it lifted his papers he had a curious sense of freshness and
mustiness meeting. He looked at the group of students before him,
half smiling at the way the breath of spring was teasing the hair of
the girls sitting by the window. Anna Lawrence was trying to pin
hers back again, but May would have none of such decorum, and only
waited long enough for her to finish her work before joyously
undoing it. She caught the laughing, admiring eyes of a boy sitting
across from her and sought to conceal her pleasure in her
unmanageable wealth of hair by a wry little face, and then the eyes
of both strayed out to the trees that had scented that breeze for
them, looking with frank longing at the campus which stretched
before them in all its May glory that sunny afternoon. He remembered
having met this boy and girl strolling in the twilight the evening
before, and as a buoyant breeze that instant swept his own face he
had a sudden, irrelevant consciousness of being seventy-three years
old.

Other eyes were straying to the trees and birds and lilacs of that
world from which the class-room was for the hour shutting them out.
He was used to it--that straying of young eyes in the spring. For
more than forty years he had sat at that desk and talked to young
men and women about philosophy, and in those forty years there had
always been straying eyes in May. The children of some of those boys
and girls had in time come to him, and now there were other children
who, before many years went by, might be sitting upon those benches,
listening to lectures upon what men had thought about life, while
their eyes strayed out where life called. So it went on--May,
perhaps, the philosopher triumphant.

As, with a considerable effort--for the languor of spring, or some
other languor, was upon him too--he brought himself back to the
papers they had handed in, he found himself thinking of those first
boys and girls, now men and women, and parents of other boys and
girls. He hoped that philosophy had, after all, done something more
than shut them out from May. He had always tried, not so much to
instruct them in what men had thought, as to teach them to think,
and perhaps now, when May had become a time for them to watch the
straying of other eyes, they were the less desolate because of the
habits he had helped them to form. He wanted to think that he had
done something more than hold them prisoners.

There was a sadness to-day in his sympathy. He was tired. It was
hard to go back to what he had been saying about the different
things the world's philosophers had believed about the immortality
of the soul. So, as often when his feeling for his thought dragged,
he turned to Gretta Loring. She seldom failed to bring a revival of
interest--a freshening. She was his favourite student. He did not
believe that in all the years there had been any student who had not
only pleased, but helped him as she did.

He had taught her father and mother. And now there was Gretta,
clear-eyed and steady of gaze, asking more of life than either of
them had asked; asking, not only May, but what May meant. For Gretta
there need be no duality. She was one of those rare ones for whom
the meaning of life opened new springs to the joy of life, for whom
life intensified with the understanding of it. He never said a thing
that gratified him as reaching toward the things not easy to say but
that he would find Gretta's face illumined--and always that eager
little leaning ahead for more.

She had that look of waiting now, but to-day it seemed less an
expectant than a troubled look. She wanted him to go on with what he
had been saying about the immortality of the soul. But it was not so
much a demand upon him--he had come to rely upon those demands, as
it was--he had an odd, altogether absurd sense of its being a fear
for him. She looked uncomfortable, fretted; and suddenly he was
startled to see her searching eyes blurred by something that must be
tears.

She turned away, and for just a minute it seemed to leave him alone
and helpless. He rubbed his forehead with his hand. It felt hot. It
got that way sometimes lately when he was tired. And the close of
that hour often found him tired.

He believed he knew what she wanted. She would have him declare his
own belief. In the youthful flush of her modernism she was impatient
with that fumbling around with what other men had thought. Despising
the muddled thinking of some of her classmates, she would have him
put it right to them with "As for yourself--"

He tried to formulate what he would care to say. But, perhaps just
because he was too tired to say it right, the life the robin in the
nearest tree was that moment celebrating in song seemed more
important than anything he had to say about his own feeling toward
the things men had thought about the human soul.

It was ten minutes before closing time, but suddenly he turned to
his class with: "Go out-of-doors and think about it. This is no day
to sit within and talk of philosophy. What men have thought about
life in the past is less important than what you feel about it
to-day." He paused, then added, he could not have said why, "And
don't let the shadow of either belief or unbelief fall across the
days that are here for you now." Again he stopped, then surprised
himself by ending, "Philosophy should quicken life, not deaden it."

They were not slow in going, their astonishment in his wanting them
to go quickly engulfed in their pleasure in doing so. It was only
Gretta who lingered a moment, seeming too held by his manner in
sending her out into the sunshine to care about going there. He
thought she was going to come to the desk and speak to him. He was
sure she wanted to. But at the last she went hastily, and he
thought, just before she turned her face away, that it was a tear he
saw on her lashes.

Strange! Was she unhappy, she through whom life surged so richly?
And yet was it not true, that where it gave much it exacted much?
Feeling much, and understanding what she felt, and feeling for what
she understood--must she also suffer much? Must one always pay?

He sighed, and began gathering together his papers. Thoughts about
life tired him to-day.

On the steps he paused, unreasonably enough a little saddened as he
watched some of them beginning a tennis game. Certainly they were
losing no time--eager to let go thoughts about life for its
pleasures, very few of them awake to that rich life he had tried to
make them ready for. He drooped still more wearily at the thought
that perhaps the most real gift he had for them was that unexpected
ten minutes.

Remembering a book he must have from the library, he turned back. He
went to the alcove where the works on philosophy were to be found,
and was reaching up for the volume he wanted, when a sentence from a
lowly murmured conversation in the next aisle came to him across the
stack of books.

"That's all very well; we know, of course, that he doesn't believe,
but what will he do when it comes to _himself?_"

It arrested him, coming as it did from one of the girls who had just
left his class-room. He stood there motionless, his hand still
reaching up for the book.

"Do? Why, face it, of course. Face it as squarely as he's faced
every other fact of life."

That was Gretta, and though, mindful of the library mandate for
silence, her tone was low, it was vibrant with a fine scorn.

"Well," said the first speaker, "I guess he'll have to face it
before very long."

That was not answered; there was a movement on the other side of the
barricade of books--it might have been that Gretta had turned away.
His hand dropped down from the high shelf. He was leaning against
the books.

"Haven't you noticed, Gretta, how he's losing his grip?"

At that his head went up sharply; he stood altogether tense as he
waited for Gretta to set the other girl right--Gretta, so
sure-seeing, so much wiser and truer than the rest of them. Gretta
would _laugh!_

But she did not laugh. And what his strained ear caught at last
was--not her scornful denial, but a little gasp of breath suggesting
a sob.

"_Noticed_ it? Why it breaks my heart!"

He stared at the books through which her low, passionate voice had
carried. Then he sank to the chair that fortunately was beside him.
Power for standing had gone from him.

"Father says--father's on the board, you know" (it was the first
girl who spoke)--"that they don't know what to do about it. It's not
justice to the school to let him begin another year. These things
are arranged with less embarrassment in the big schools, where a man
begins emeritus at a certain time. Though of course they'll pension
him--he's done a lot for the school."

He thanked Gretta for her little laugh of disdain. The memory of it
was more comforting--more satisfying--than any attempt to put it
into words could have been.

He heard them move away, their skirts brushing the book-stacks in
passing. A little later he saw them out in the sunshine on the
campus. Gretta joined one of the boys for a game of tennis.
Motionless, he sat looking out at her. She looked so very young as
she played.

For an hour he remained at the table in the alcove where he had
overheard what his students had to say of him. And when the hour had
gone by he took up the pen which was there upon the study table and
wrote his resignation to the secretary of the board of trustees. It
was very brief--simply that he felt the time had come when a younger
man could do more for the school than he, and that he should like
his resignation to take effect at the close of the present school
year. He had an envelope, and sealed and stamped the letter--ready
to drop in the box in front of the building as he left. He had
always served the school as best he could; he lost no time now, once
convinced, in rendering to it the last service he could offer
it--that of making way for the younger man.

Looking things squarely in the face, and it was the habit of a
lifetime to look things squarely in the face, he had not been long
in seeing that they were right. Things tired him now as they had not
once tired him. He had less zest at the beginning of the hour, more
relief at the close of it. He seemed stupid in not having seen it
for himself, but possibly many people were a little stupid in seeing
that their own time was over. Of course he had thought, in a vague
way, that his working time couldn't be much longer, but it seemed
part of the way human beings managed with themselves that things in
even the very near future kept the remoteness of future things.

Now he understood Gretta's troubled look and her tears. He knew how
those fine nerves of hers must have suffered, how her own mind had
wanted to leap to the aid of his, how her own strength must have
tormented her in not being able to reach his flagging powers. It
seemed part of the whole hardness of life that she who would care
the most would be the one to see it most understandingly.

What he was trying to do was to see it all very simply, in
matter-of-fact fashion, that there might be no bitterness and the
least of tragedy. It was nothing unique in human history he was
facing. One did one's work; then, when through, one stopped. He
tried to feel that it was as simple as it sounded, but he wondered
if back of many of those brief letters of resignation that came at
quitting-time there was the hurt, the desolation, that there was no
use denying to himself was back of his.

He hoped that most men had more to turn to. Most men of
seventy-three had grandchildren. That would help, surrounding one
with a feeling of the naturalness of it all. But that school had
been his only child. And he had loved it with the tenderness one
gives a child. That in him which would have gone to the child had
gone to the school.

The woman whom he loved had not loved him; he had never married. His
life had been called lonely; but lonely though it undeniably had
been, the life he won from books and work and thinking had kept the
chill from his heart. He had the gift of drawing life from all
contact with life. Working with youth, he kept that feeling for
youth that does for the life within what sunshine and fresh air do
for the room in which one dwells.

It was now that the loneliness that blights seemed waiting for
him.... Life _used_ one--and that in the ugly, not the noble sense
of being used. Stripped of the fine fancies men wove around it, what
was it beyond just a matter of being sucked dry and then thrown
aside? Why not admit that, and then face it? And the abundance with
which one might have given--the joy in the giving--had no bearing
upon the fact that it came at last to that question of getting one
out of the way. It was no one's unkindness; it was just that life
was like that. Indeed, the bitterness festered around the thought
that it _was_ life itself--the way of life--not the brutality
of any particular people. "They'll pension him--he's done a lot for
the school." Even the grateful memory of Gretta's tremulous,
scoffing little laugh for the way it fell short could not follow to
the deep place that had been hurt.

Getting himself in hand again, and trying to face this as simply and
honestly as he had sought to face the other, he knew that it was
true he had done a great deal for the school. He did not believe it
too much to say he had done more for it than any other man.
Certainly more than any other man he had given it what place it had
with men who thought. He had come to it in his early manhood, and at
a time when the school was in its infancy--just a crude, struggling
little Western college. Gretta Loring's grandfather had been one of
its founders--founding it in revolt against the cramping
sectarianism of another college. He had gloried in the spirit which
gave it birth, and it was he who, through the encroachings of
problems of administration and the ensnarements and entanglements of
practicality, had fought to keep unattached and unfettered that
spirit of freedom in the service of truth.

His own voice had been heard and recognised, and a number of times
during the years calls had come from more important institutions,
but he had not cared to go. For year by year there deepened that
personal love for the little college to which he had given the
youthful ardour of his own intellectual passion. All his life's
habits were one with it. His days seemed beaten into the path that
cut across the campus. The vines that season after season went a
little higher on the wall out there indicated his strivings by their
own, and the generation that had worn down even the stones of those
front steps had furrowed his forehead and stooped his shoulders. He
had grown old along with it! His days were twined around it. It was
the place of his efforts and satisfactions (joys perhaps he should
not call them), of his falterings and his hopes. He loved it because
he had given himself to it; loved it because he had helped to bring
it up. On the shelves all around him were books which it had been
his pleasure--because during some of those hard years they were to
be had in no other way--to order himself and pay for from his own
almost ludicrously meagre salary. He remembered the excitement there
always was in getting them fresh from the publisher and bringing
them over there in his arms; the satisfaction in coming in next day
and finding them on the shelves. Such had been his dissipations, his
indulgences of self. Many things came back to him as he sat there
going back over busy years, the works on philosophy looking down
upon him, the shadows of that spring afternoon gathering around him.
He looked like a very old man indeed as he at last reached out for
the letter he had written to the trustees, relieving them of their
embarrassment.

Twilight had come on. On the front steps he paused and looked around
the campus. It was growing dark in that lingering way it has in the
spring--daylight creeping away under protest, night coming gently,
as if it knew that the world having been so pleasant, day would be
loath to go. The boys and girls were going back and forth upon the
campus and the streets. They could not bear to go within. For more
than forty years it had been like that. It would be like that for
many times forty years--indeed, until the end of the world, for it
would be the end of the world when it was not like that. He was glad
that they were out in the twilight, not indoors trying to gain from
books something of the meaning of life. That course had its
satisfactions along the way, but it was surely no port of peace to
which it bore one at the last.

He shrunk from going home. There were so many readjustments he must
make, once home. So, lingering, he saw that off among the trees a
girl was sitting alone. She threw back her head in a certain way
just then, and he knew by the gesture that it was Gretta Loring. He
wondered what she was thinking about. What did one who thought think
about--over there on the other side of life? Youth and age looked at
life from opposite sides. Then they could not see it alike, for what
one saw in life seemed to depend so entirely upon how the light was
falling from where one stood.

He could not have said just what it was made him cross the campus
toward her. Part of it was the desire for human sympathy--one thing,
at least, which age did not deaden. But that was not the whole of
it, nor the deepest thing in it. It was an urge of the spirit to
find and keep for itself a place where the light was falling
backward upon life.

She was quiet in her greeting, and gentle. Her cheeks were still
flushed, her hair tumbled from her game, but her eyes were
thoughtful and, he thought, sad. He felt that the sadness was
because of him; of him and the things of which he made her think. He
knew of her affection for him, the warmth there was in her
admiration of the things for which he had fought. He had discovered
that it hurt her now that others should be seeing and not he, pained
her to watch so sorry a thing as his falling below himself, wounded
both pride and heart that men whom she would doubtless say had never
appreciated him were whispering among themselves about how to get
rid of him. Why, the poor child might even be tormenting herself
with the idea she ought to tell him!

That was why he told her. He pointed to the address on the envelope,
saying: "That carries my resignation, Gretta."

Her start and the tears which rushed to her eyes told him he was
right about her feeling. She did not seem able to say anything. Her
chin was trembling.

"I see that the time has come," he said, "when a younger man can do
more for the school than I can hope to do for it."

Still she said nothing at all, but her eyes were deepening and she
had that very steadfast, almost inspired look that had so many times
quickened him in the class-room.

She was not going to deny it! She was not going to pretend!

After the first feeling of not having got something needed he rose
to her high ground--ground she had taken it for granted he would
take.

"And will you believe it, Gretta," he said, rising to that ground
and there asking, not for the sympathy that bends down, but for a
hand in passing, "there comes a hard hour when first one feels the
time has come to step aside and be replaced by that younger man?"

She nodded. "It must be," she said, simply; "it must be very much
harder than any of us can know till we come to it."

She brought him a sense of his advantage in experience--his riches.
To be sure, there was that.

And he was oddly comforted by the honesty in her which could not
stoop to dishonest comforting. In what superficially might seem her
failure there was a very real victory for them both. And there was
nothing of coldness in her reserve! There was the fulness of
understanding, and of valuing the moments too highly for anything
there was to be said about it. There was a great spiritual dignity,
a nobility, in the way she was looking at him. It called upon the
whole of his own spiritual dignity. It was her old demand upon him,
but this time the tears through which her eyes shone were tears of
pride in fulfilment, not of sorrowing for failure.

Suddenly he felt that his life had not been spent in vain, that the
lives of all those men of his day who had fought the good fight for
intellectual honesty--spiritual dignity--had not been spent in vain
if they were leaving upon the earth even a few who were like the
girl beside them.

It turned him from himself to her. She was what counted--for she was
what remained. And he remained in just the measure that he remained
through her; counted in so far as he counted for her. It was as if
he had been facing in the wrong direction and now a kindly hand had
turned him around. It was not in looking back there he would find
himself. He was not back there to be found. Only so much of him
lived as had been able to wing itself ahead--on in the direction she
was moving.

It did not particularly surprise him that when she at last spoke it
was to voice a shade of that same feeling. "I was thinking," she
began, "of that younger man. Of what he must mean to the man who
gives way to him."

She was feeling her way as she went--groping among the many dim
things that were there. He had always liked to watch her face when
she was thinking her way step by step.

"I think you used a word wrongly a minute ago," she said, with a
smile. "You spoke of being replaced. But that isn't it. A man like
you isn't replaced; he's"--she got it after a minute and came forth
with it triumphantly--"fulfilled!"

Her face was shining as she turned to him after that. "Don't you
see? He's there waiting to take your place because you got him
ready. Why, you made that younger man! Your whole life has been a
getting ready for him. He can do his work be cause you first did
yours. Of course he can go farther than you can! Wouldn't it be a
sorry commentary on you if he couldn't?"

Her voice throbbed warmly upon that last, and during the pause the
light it had brought still played upon her face. "We were talking in
class about immortality," she went on, more slowly. "There's one
form of immortality I like to think about. It's that all those who
from the very first have given anything to the world are living in
the world to-day." There was a rush of tears to her eyes and of
affection to her voice as she finished, very low: "You'll never die.
You've deepened the consciousness of life too much for that."

They sat there as twilight drew near to night, the old man and the
young girl, silent. The laughter of boys and girls and the
good-night calls of the birds were all around them. The fragrance of
life was around them. It was one of those silences to which come
impressions, faiths, longings, not yet born as thoughts.

Something in the quality of that silence brought the rescuing sense
of its having been good to have lived and done one's part--that
sense which, from places of desolation and over ways rough and steep
and dark, can find its way to the meadows of serenity.


THE END





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