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diff --git a/old/74866-0.txt b/old/74866-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 24a30c2..0000000 --- a/old/74866-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3342 +0,0 @@ - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74866 *** - - - - - - “_Books that you may carry - to the fire, and hold - readily in your hand, are - the most useful after all_” - - —JOHNSON - -[Illustration: [Books]] - - - - - STORIES OF - - NEW YORK - - -[Illustration: [Couple]] - - - - - STORIES FROM SCRIBNER - - ❦ - - - - - STORIES OF - NEW YORK - - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1894 - - - - - _Copyright, 1893, by - Charles Scribner’s Sons_ - - - _Trow Print_ - - - - - STORIES OF NEW YORK - - - ❦ - - - FROM FOUR TO SIX - - A COMEDIETTA BY ANNIE ELIOT - - - THE COMMONEST POSSIBLE STORY - - BY BLISS PERRY - - - THE END OF THE BEGINNING - - BY GEORGE A. HIBBARD - - - A PURITAN INGÉNUE - - BY JOHN S. WOOD - - - MRS. MANSTEY’S VIEW - - BY EDITH WHARTON - - - - - FROM FOUR TO SIX - - BY ANNIE ELIOT - - A COMEDIETTA IN ONE ACT - - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - - - ESTHER VAN DYKE. HAROLD WHITNEY. A MAID. - - ESTHER _discovered seated in a New York drawing-room. She has been - reading and tearing old letters._ - -_E._ I am sure one might ask anyone to an afternoon tea, even if anyone -were one’s old lover; and I am sure one might come to anyone’s afternoon -tea, even if anyone were one’s quondam sweetheart. From both Harold’s -stand-point and mine, it seems to me perfectly safe. Certainly the -vainest man could not believe that a woman wished to rake up the leaves -of a dead past because she sent him an At-home from four to six card, -for a day when she is to be at home for two hundred people besides. If -it were an evening party, now—in summer with the lawn, or in winter with -a conservatory—or if there is not a conservatory there are always -stairs; and it’s daily more and more the fashion to build them curved. -Another generation may find discreet recesses at every landing. When -people are really thoughtful there will be a temporary addition where -people can go up and down. Oh, if it was an evening party I could not -blame Harold for staying away. Or if it was private theatricals—the -stage is itself one grand opportunity! Or a picnic—what innumerable -openings for raking up the dry leaves of a dead past on a picnic! But an -afternoon tea! Nothing stronger or dryer than tea-leaves to be had. -Harold need not be in the least afraid. Besides, it would have been -really unfriendly not to send him a card. Everybody knows he is at home -again, and from a four years’ trip. Even after all that has passed I -would not wish to be unfriendly. Four years, and they say that he is -engaged to Mattie Montgomery—and just before he went away he was engaged -to me. (_A little sadly._) Perhaps he was foolish. Perhaps—I was. -Undoubtedly we both were. I suppose I ought to feel flattered that he -waited four years—but somehow I don’t—altogether; “flattered” does not -seem to be the word. Well, it makes little difference now, and it will -make less when I tell him to-morrow that I am engaged to Dr. Tennant. I -thought I might as well look over his letters. I have burned all but the -last. (_Takes up letter from the table._) Here it is. (_Takes up a -second letter._) And here is Dr. Tennant’s first. Two models of -epistolary communication—but of different orders. (_Reads._) - - -“MY DEAR MISS VAN DYKE: I shall give myself the pleasure of calling upon -you this afternoon at five o’clock. It rests with you whether or not -this pleasure is to be intensified a hundredfold, or attended with -lasting pain. I remain always, - - “Yours most cordially, - “EDWARD TENNANT.” - - -What could be better suited to the circumstances than that? Not too -impassioned, but sufficiently interested. I am always affected by -well-turned phrases—I think this is charming. And here is Harold’s. -(_Reads other letter._) - - -“You have made it plain enough. There is no necessity for more words. -Heaven forgive you—and good-by.” - - -(_Thoughtfully._) He was in a pretty passion when he wrote that—and I -have not seen him since. I hope he will come to-morrow. He used to think -Mattie Montgomery was a doll of a thing. Perhaps he will tell her that I -am a—no, he won’t. Whatever I am, I’m not a doll of a thing, and he -knows it. (_Looks at the two letters side by side._) How amusing one’s -old flirtations look in the light of a new and serious reality—for I -have made up my mind what to say to Dr. Tennant. It will be rather good -fun to tell Harold of it confidentially to-morrow. I will drop it in his -tea with a lump of sugar. (_Glances at clock._) After four o’clock. -Well, I must go and make myself fascinating and give orders that Dr. -Tennant and I are not to be disturbed. We may as well begin to get used -to _tête-à-têtes_. (_Exit after putting the letters under a book, out of -sight._) - - - _Enter_ HAROLD WHITNEY. _He seems disturbed._ - - -_H._ This is certainly confoundedly odd. I expected to find fifty other -people here at least, and Esther in her best gown receiving them. I -can’t have mistaken the hour. It is some time after four. There is -certainly a mistake somewhere, however, and under the circumstances it -is likely to be a particularly awkward one. I would walk a good mile and -a half to avoid a _tête-à-tête_ with Esther Van Dyke. Because I have -been fool enough after four years to remember the color of her eyes, I -don’t care to have her know it and see it. I would leave now, like the -historic Arab, if I hadn’t been such an ass as to give my card to the -servant, and Esther has seen it by this time. I would rather face the -music than give her the pleasure of laughing at me for running away. But -what does it mean? I must—the blood curdles in my veins at the thought—I -must have mistaken the day! The Fate which I have felt dogging my -footsteps from the cradle has at last laid hold upon me! I have dreamed -of getting to a place the day before I was asked. I have loitered -irresolutely on door-mats. I have gone slowly by and watched until I saw -another carriage go in, but I have never _done_ it before. And to have -come to Esther Van Dyke’s after four years, and such a parting, a day -too soon! My bitterest foe would find it in his heart to pity me now. -What can I do? (_Walks around the room and fingers things restlessly._) -I might go off with the spoons to divert suspicion. I would rather be -arrested as a professional burglar, entering the house under false -pretences, than witness Esther’s smile when she comes to a realizing -sense of what I have done. Professional burglars probably retain their -self-respect. There is no reason why they shouldn’t. The date of _their_ -visit is not fixed by invitation. But, confound it! there won’t be any -spoons until to-morrow. Perhaps she won’t know I have come a day too -soon—but she always did know things—that was the kind of person she was. -(_Takes up a book from the table._) I might read to compose my mind. -“Familiar Quotations,”—I wish I could find an elegant and appropriate -one for the occasion. I can think of several, entirely familiar to the -most unlearned, but too forcible for a lady’s drawing-room. “Too late I -stayed” would hardly do. I wonder what the fellow would have sung if -“Too soon he’d come.” (_Throws down book._) I thought I could accept an -invitation to an afternoon tea, because I need only say a word to her, -see if she had changed, and leave. That seemed safe enough. Besides, -Miss Montgomery chaffed me about coming, and wouldn’t have hesitated to -make the most of it if I had stayed away. (_Looks about._) The room has -not changed much. I wonder—here she is. Now, for all I have learned in -four years, I would like to conceal myself in the scrap-basket, but it -is out of the question. - - _Enter_ ESTHER. - -_E._ How do you do, Mr. Whitney? I am very glad to see you. (_They shake -hands._) - -_H._ It is very good of you to say so, Esth—Miss Van Dyke. (_Aside._) I -never felt so fresh in my life. - -_E._ It was nice of you to think of coming this afternoon instead of -waiting until the crush to-morrow, when I should have an opportunity for -no more than a word with you. - -_H._ (_aside_). She does not _look_ satirical. Why didn’t I bring some -flowers or something? (_They sit. Aloud, with somewhat exaggerated ease -of manner._) When one’s hostess receives all the world, one’s own -reception cannot be a personal one. After four years I wished for -something more positive. Perhaps I have been too bold, but an afternoon -tea is so very impersonal, you know. - -_E._ (_a little embarrassed by his manner, aside_). Can it be that he -does not wish our relations to be impersonal? Of course not! (_Aloud._) -Yes, I know. Very impersonal indeed. I was thinking the same thing -before you came. - -_H._ (_aside_). Yes, and I was thinking the same thing before I came. We -haven’t either of us gotten on much. (_Aloud._) I was always an exacting -sort of fellow, you know, so you will not be surprised at my coming to -get a reception on my own account. - -_E._ (_aside_). I should think I did know. (_Aloud._) No, I am not -surprised. (_A moment’s pause—with a slight effort._) So you are an -exacting sort of fellow still? I am looking for the changes of four -years, you see. - -_H._ (_significantly_). You may not find many, after all (_Somewhat -gloomily._) The rose-color wears off one’s glasses somewhat in four -years, to be sure, but I don’t think the perspective changes much. - -_E._ Don’t you? It strikes me that time reverses the glasses—that we -find ourselves suddenly looking through the other end, and things that -once were so large are a long way off, and have become extremely small. - -_H._ (_aside_). Which means, I suppose, that I have taken a back seat, -and must keep at opera-glass distance. (_Aloud._) Things have no -importance of their own, then? I suppose it is a good deal a matter of -which way you look at it. - -_E._ Yes, education does everything for us—which is something of a -platitude. But I am sorry about the rose-color. I’d much rather you -should look at me through tinted glasses. I said the other day to a -confidential friend that my complexion is no longer what it was. - -_H._ (_refusing to be diverted_). No, I do not think one’s views of -persons change—or perhaps I should say one’s attitude toward -persons—as do those of abstractions. One does not expect to find -truth—trust—honor—_love_, growing so large. - -_E._ (_soberly_). In other words, truth is a hot-house, and one’s ideas -are tropical. Well, it is perhaps as well to come out into the open air, -even if things do seem a little—stunted—at first. - -_H._ Undoubtedly. Yet the comfort of the human frame demands something -in the way of a temperate zone between. A sudden plunge into the arctic -regions is apt to convey a chill—quite a serious one sometimes. - -_E._ (_aside_). I wonder if that is meant for a veiled allusion. -(_Aloud._) But nature generally provides a way of softening matters, and -makes such changes not chilling, but bracing. - -_H._ (_carelessly_). Yes—Nature has been much maligned in her time, but, -after all she is kinder than humanity in certain of even its most -attractive forms. She is impartial and she contrives to let one down -easily. I am sometimes astonished that Nature should be personified as a -woman. - -_E._ (_looking away from him_). I see you have become a cynic. - -_H._ (_with intention_). I have, perhaps, lived up to my opportunities. -They have not been unfavorable to cynicism. (_Laughing._) Do you know, -Esther, this is very much the way we used to talk? We were continually -dealing in the most artistic abstractions. How easily one drops into old -fashions! - -_E._ (_aside_). How can he speak so lightly of “the way we used to -talk,” or is it only I that remember? (_Aloud, coldly._) Possibly, but -old fashions are very readily seen not to belong to the present day. And -yet—I may be mistaken—but it seems to me that we used to talk in a way -that bordered on—on the concrete. - -_H._ (_a little nonplussed_). Yes—that is true—but we were not so -successful there. (_Aside._) Decidedly we did. On the very concrete, -indeed! And that was where she always had the better of me. She is quite -capable of doing it again—but she does not wish to. - -_E._ (_calmly_). But where were we in our abstractions? Ah, with Nature. -I always get beyond my depth when Nature is introduced into the -conversation. Human nature I do not mind at all, you know, but Nature by -itself frightens me. I think it is the capital N. I feel that I ought to -go out-of-doors and appreciate her. - -_H._ I remember you were always afraid of getting beyond your depth. I -was less prudent, however, which was sometimes unfortunate. (_Aside._) I -shall be floundering again if I go on with this remembering. (_Aloud._) -So you are still cautious? I have not had the four years to myself. Have -they not changed _you_ at all, Esth—Miss Van Dyke? - -_E._ (_pensively_). Yes. - -_H._ (_with attention_). You are not quite the same, then? I should not -have known it. - -_E._ (_with emphasis_). Wouldn’t you, really? - -_H._ Unfortunately for me—no. - -_E._ No, I am not the same. - -_H._ (_in a low tone_). Will you tell me how you have changed? - -_E._ (_after a pause_). I have grown stout! Yes, I have. I have gained -twenty pounds in the four years you have been away. - -_H._ (_laughing_). The inference pains me deeply. But twenty pounds can -be judiciously distributed without actual injury to the possessor. Is -there anything else? - -_E._ (_sentimentally_). Ah, yes, when I am introduced to a new man I no -longer expect to find him a mine of entertainment. I used to. Now I am -surprised if I have not to be clever for both of us. - -_H._ Is that so new? (_Thoughtfully._) I sometimes think I was stupid -for both of us—or—could it have been only that you were too wise? -(_Aside._) Oh, this fatal tendency to reminiscence—and I know better! - -_E._ (_with a slight effort_). You are carrying me too far back. I am -marking my progress since I saw you. (_Aside._) Certainly this is too -much like burrowing in the leaves of a dead past. No wonder he did not -wait until to-morrow. - -_H._ Forgive me, and go on with the disillusionments. - -[Illustration: [Couple]] - -_E._ Sadder yet, I no longer care when a younger and a fairer girl “cuts -me out,” to put it boldly. I think I shall, you know, but I don’t. I -sigh—but I forget them—_both_! - -_H._ This shows a callousness really alarming. You might at least -reserve the guiltier party for future punishment. Perfidy merits at -least remembrance. It is sometimes a man’s last hold. - -_E._ (_carelessly_). A man should risk little on so commonplace a -resource—if one wishes to be remembered, one should be unusual. Besides, -you would imply that the man is the guiltier party? - -_H._ Only as far as his lights are taken into consideration, of course. -Man is a poor creature at his best—in comparison. - -_E._ And sometimes a comparatively innocent one. To find another woman -more attractive is blamable, but to be a more attractive woman ought to -be unpardonable. - -_H._ “To err is human—fiendish to outshine.” I understand. (_With marked -politeness._) Permit me to suggest that it is rarely—— - -_E._ (_laughing_). But I have said I have lost my capacity for feeling -thrusts of this kind. (_In a lower tone._) At least, I believed that I -had. - -_H._ (_dryly_). I was always a little unfortunate in my attempts to make -amends—always too late, perhaps. - -_E._ (_meeting his eyes_). Yes, making amends was never your forte. - -_H._ Any more than cherishing illusions is yours. But, pray, go on with -your revelations. I must improve the unexpected pleasure of finding you -alone. - -_E._ (_a little embarrassed_). Whom, then, did you expect to find here? -(_Aside._) He cannot have known that Dr. Tennant is coming. (_Aloud._) -Who would interfere, did you think, with the personal welcome you so -desired? - -_H._ (_aside_). I was getting on so well. (_Lightly._) Oh, party calls, -you know, and—— - -_E._ (_dryly_). You will find that _customs_ have not changed so much in -four years. It is still unusual to pay party calls in advance. - -_H._ (_aside_). That was a brilliant way to recoup my falling fortunes! -(_Boldly._) Is this an indirect way of blaming me for coming this -afternoon? (_Rising._) I suppose it was unwise. (_Aside._) I should -rather think it was. (_Aloud._) I will go now—Esther. - -_E._ (_quickly_). You know, Harold, I did not mean anything so rude. Do -not go—unless you must. - -_H._ (_aside_). I must—theoretically. But I sha’nt—not after that -“Harold.” If I hadn’t prided myself for years on its being inalienable -property, I should say I was losing my head. (_Aloud._) Will you tell me -more of your four years? - -_E._ (_seriously_). Yes. I have grown wise. I have grown hard—a little. - -_H._ (_softly_). You were hard before—a little. - -_E._ Are they not the same—wisdom and hardness? I have learned to -believe that they are. - -_H._ (_impulsively_). Not always. - -_E._ And I, too, have acquired the sense of proportion. I have seen -that—that—Love is not all the world. I have learned that the comfortable -is more to be desired than gold—yea, than fine gold. - -_H._ Yes; Gold and Love must both be tried in the furnace, which is -seldom a comfortable operation. - -_E._ And you—do you not agree with me? Is it not better to look on? - -_H._ So long as it is not at another’s happiness that one has desired -for one’s self—yes. - -_E._ (_aside_). How if it be another’s unhappiness, I wonder. Poor Dr. -Tennant. (_Sighs._) - -_H._ (_aside_). I shall make an ass of myself in a moment. She is not -changed an atom. (_Aloud._) But what leaves of wisdom have you steeped -for me? I expected a cup of tea, and you have given me a decoction that -should heal all disappointments. - -_E._ (_half sadly_). If I had known I possessed such a secret I should -have brewed some for myself before this. But (_rising_) if you expected -a cup of tea you shall have it. - -_H._ (_eagerly_). By Jove! Esther! I beg pardon—but Miss Van Dyke, I beg -of you—— (_Stops helplessly._) - -_E._ I was just about to send for it for myself. (_She rings. Aside._) I -see it all. He has come a day too soon. And he would have had me believe -that he cared to see me alone. And I was actually growing sentimental. -He shall pay for it. (_Enter a maid._) Tea, Mary Ann. - -_H._ (_who has been fidgeting about the room—aside_). If only I had gone -half an hour ago—in the flush of triumph, as it were! It was -unnecessary, in order to avoid making a sentimental spectacle of myself, -to fall back upon the larder! - -_E._ (_going back to table and taking up a letter_). Do you know what I -was doing when you came this afternoon? - -_H._ Learning a new Kensington stitch? Studying a receipt-book? Putting -a man out of his misery by letter? These are, I believe, some -departments of “woman’s work.” - -_E._ No, I was reading an old letter—one by which a man put himself out -of misery. Your last letter, in fact. - -_H._ My last letter? - -_E._ Yes. - - MARY ANN _brings in the tea, and as_ ESTHER _moves things on the - table, she hands him_ DR. TENNANT’S _letter by mistake_. HAROLD - _glances at it and looks up surprised, but_ ESTHER _does not see - him_. - -_H._ Am I to read this? - -_E._ Certainly. - - MARY ANN _leaves the room_. ESTHER _busies herself with the - tea-things_. - -_H._ (_having read the letter—stiffly_). Very elegant penmanship. - -_E._ (_surprised but indifferently_). I had not thought of that. (_A -pause._) - -_H._ (_glancing at the letter again_). I fancy the writer did. - -_E._ (_coldly_). Possibly. (_Aside._) Oh, why did I show it to him? I -would not have believed he would be so hard. (_Aloud._) Rather a -forcible style, I think. - -_H._ Stiff, rather than forcible, I would suggest. - -_E._ (_with suppressed feeling_). Your criticisms are less pointed than -usual. If you had said unnatural it might express your meaning still -better. - -_H._ (_a little irritated_). He is a fortunate man who is able to -express himself with such justness and freedom from exaggeration. - -_E._ It seemed to me exaggerated at the time. - -_H._ (_with mock admiration_). Oh, how can you say so! It is positively -Grandisonian—almost Chesterfieldian. (_Aside._) And utterly detestable. - -_E._ (_almost with tears_). I was wrong to fancy you would be interested -in such a trifle. Please give it back. - -_H._ (_politely, handing it to her_). Not at all. Certainly, the writer -deserves the lasting happiness he refers to. (_Aside._) And I wish it -were nothing to me—if he gets it or not. - -_E._ What do you mean? Is this what I gave you? Oh, dear! (_Much -embarrassed._) It was the wrong one! Never mind. Here is your tea. - -_H._ (_takes the cup, after a short pause_). I feel as if I had forced -myself into your confidence. - -_E._ You need not. It was my own stupidity, of course. - -_H._ (_tastes his tea_). Might I see the other one? - -_E._ Yes. (_Gives it to him._) - -_H._ (_reads it while_ ESTHER _watches him_). Yes; well, I might have -said more. But that was enough. - -_E._ Yes, that was, as the children say, a great plenty. Oh, I neglected -your tea! One lump, or two? - -_H._ (_thoughtfully_). One. I wonder if it has? - -_E._ What has? - -_H._ Heaven. - -_E._ Heaven has what? - -_H._ Forgiven you. - -_E._ I think so, by this time. It doesn’t bear malice. Cream? - -_H._ Yes—prussic acid—anything. Thank you. You do not ask whether I have -or not. - -_E._ No. I understood you shifted the responsibility once for all. -(_Sipping her tea._) - -_H._ Perhaps I did. It is generally once for all with me. - -_E._ Is it? It is better to have all—for once. It is broader. It is more -liberal. It is my motto. - -_H._ Yes. So it was then. I have heard there is safety in numbers. -(_Aside._) If I believed that, I should begin to repeat the -multiplication-table. I shall never be in greater need of it. - -_E._ Not always. - -_H._ (_with an effort_). Possibly Sir Charles Grand—I mean Mr. Edward -Tennant—may have a narrowing influence. (_Aside._) It is no use. I can’t -be discreet. Confound Mr. Edward Tennant! - -_E._ (_innocently_). Perhaps. (_Drinks tea._) And so you are engaged to -Mattie Montgomery? - -_H._ (_formally_). You do me too much honor. - -_E._ Really! (_More coolly._) That is a pity. I hoped we might proffer -mutual congratulations. An exchange of compliments is such a promoter of -good feeling. - -_H._ (_more stiffly_). I see I have been remiss. But I did not -understand. - -_E._ No, it is not yet time—but I have betrayed his confidence -inadvertently. To-morrow you must congratulate me. To-morrow I shall -tell you that I am engaged. Let me give you another cup. - -_H._ (_rising_). No, one is enough. Once ought always to be enough! But -it seems I am fated to have it twice! I know I am incoherent—but never -mind! It’s the tea! - -_E._ (_playing with her teaspoon a little nervously_). And you have -forgiven me? - -_H._ I do not know that I have. But (_coldly_) whether I have or not is -of course only a personal matter. - -_E._ (_feebly_). Of course. - -_H._ And so you are to tell me to-morrow that you are engaged? Might I -ask you if, in taking this step, you were actuated by a wish to obtain -my forgiveness? - -_E._ (_laughing_). I expected you to ask mine—for being engaged to -Mattie Montgomery. - -_H._ (_sits_). Suppose this afternoon you tell me about the—to be -colloquial—the happy man. And I will have some more tea. - -_E._ (_looking into the sugar-bowl_). Well, to tell the truth this -afternoon—he doesn’t happen—to be—colloquially—the happy man. - -_H._ (_aside; walking about_). So that note was written to-day. I did -not see the date. It is not yet five o’clock, and it is not yet too -late. I shall gain nothing by getting rattled and making a fool of -myself. (_Aloud, coming back and holding out his cup, into which_ ESTHER -_drops sugar as they speak_.) Have I then taken his place? - -_E._ (_gravely_). No. He is (_lump_) conservative (_lump_) in his -(_lump_) tastes (_lump_). He takes (_lump_) no sugar (_lump_) at all -(_lump_) in his. - -_H._ (_who has been watching_ ESTHER’S _face, and not her fingers, sets -down his cup hastily_). Seven lumps is a little radical. Then you have -forgotten all in four years? (_Pacing the floor._) Forgotten what I, -Esther, have been fool enough to remember as if it had happened -yesterday! Who is it talks about woman’s constancy? - -_E._ (_aside_). Not I. But I am very much afraid I shall begin to. Has -the tea gone to my head too? - -_H._ (_with much feeling_). The bitterest lesson the four years have -taught me, Esther, is that one’s earliest lessons are never unlearned. -They have been kinder to you. - -_E._ (_in a tone_). Have they? Perhaps. They have taught us both, -however, that it is not necessary to unlearn them; one can go on as if -one had never studied—old lessons. - -_H._ Or old letters? (_Coming nearer and taking up the letter._) But you -did care for me enough to keep this letter—to read it over to-day—to -give one thought to old happiness in the presence of new? - -_E._ (_recovering herself with an effort_). I thought enough of myself -to keep it. It is a mistaken theory that a woman keeps old love-letters -for the sake of the sender. She keeps them because they are -flattering—because they—they sound nice. I have lots more. - -_H._ (_offended_). And you were only weeding them out to-day? Very well. -That is enough. No further words are necessary. - -_E._ Yes—so you said before (_glancing at letter_), or something very -like it (_Looking into the teapot._) There is no more tea for us, and -the lamp has gone out. (_Looking about._) And no matches—unless you have -one in your pocket. - -_H._ (_who has been thinking, moodily feels in all his pockets_). I am -very sorry—but I cannot supply you with even the necessaries of life. - -_E._ Never mind, I can light it from the fire. - -_H._ (_pushes the letters toward her_). Make a lamplighter of one of -these, and I will light it for you. - - ESTHER _hesitates an instant, takes up one letter, and then the - other_. - -_H._ Oh, use mine. It has failed to rekindle a passion, but it may do -for a teakettle. It may as well be reduced to ashes along with the rest -of the poor little love-story. - - ESTHER _turns her head a little away and slowly twists both letters - into lamp-lighters_. - -_H._ (_aside_). I shall let all my hopes burn in the flame with my -letter. If she uses that, I give her up. I shall know she is not mine to -give up. I have come to the pass where folly is my only reason. She is -twisting Dr. Tennant’s! But now she is twisting mine. (_She rises to go -to the fire and he rises to do it for her._) - -_E._ I prefer to do it myself. - - _She returns with one burning, with which she lights the lamp, and - lays the other down on the table. He takes it up eagerly._ - -_H._ So, Esther, you did not burn it, after all? (_Rising and coming -toward her._) You did not care that the last of it should go out in -ashes? - -_E._ (_speaking lightly_). It was not that so much, but I was afraid it -was better suited for an—extinguisher. I think that was more what you -meant it for. - - HAROLD _goes back to his seat gloomily and tastes his tea._ ESTHER - _plays with the teaspoon—a pause._ - -_E._ How do you like your tea? - -_H._ It is a little—cloying. - -_E._ (_rising and moving about the room_). A bad fault. - -_H._ (_dryly_). But fortunately an uncommon one. - -_E._ (_with feeling_). I have made a great many mistakes in my -life—suffered a great deal of unhappiness—because I have been afraid of -being cloying. (_Aside._) Am I mad, that I should tell him the foolish -truth! - -_H._ (_rising_). I should say it was a fault to which you were not -constitutionally inclined. (_Aside._) That sounds much firmer than I -feel. - -_E._ No, but on that very account people should have borne with me more -than they have! (_Still with feeling._) Things might have been -different. - -_H._ (_going toward her_). Esther! (_A bell._) - -_E._ (_hurriedly_). Never mind! There is the door-bell! Things are going -to be different! (_With a faint smile._) I told you he did not like any -sweet at all in his. - -_H._ (_impetuously_). And have I not had my full allowance of bitter? It -is time you began dispensing sweets—so let him stay away. - -_E._ (_laughing nervously_). But—but it wasn’t my idea to get rid of -him. - -_H._ The plan is ready for your acceptance. You were going to tell me -you were engaged to-morrow—tell him so to-day, instead! - -_E._ (_glancing at clock_). I cannot. His engagement was made with me a -week ago. - -_H._ And mine five years ago. (_She hesitates._) Besides, he is -late—half an hour late. What is it about a lover who is late? He has -divided his time into more than “the thousandth part of a minute.” - -_E._ (_laughing_). And are you not later—by four years? - -_H._ (_firmly_). I am twenty-four hours ahead of time. - - _A knock. Enter maid with a card._ - -_E._ Show him into the reception-room. I will come in a moment. (_Exit -maid._) It is he, Harold. I must go. - -_H._ (_taking her hands_). Esther, think one moment. Forget the four -years. I have come a day too soon. I have swallowed two cups of tea and -eight lumps of sugar and made a general ass of myself—but—I love you. - -_E._ But—but this is so shameless! I thought I should have to -say—something like that—to him. - -_H._ (_coolly_). And I am in time to save you from so unfortunate a -mistake. You had much better tell it to me. - -_E._ But I must give him an answer. - -_H._ Give me one first! Adopt my plan, it is so simple. Send word—or -tell him, if you like—that you are engaged. But come back! - -_E._ Indeed, he shall have his answer first. His right demands -precedence at least. But (_opening the door_) I will come back. - -_H._ To five years ago? - -_E._ Perhaps. (_Returns just as she is leaving the room._) But, Harold, -Harold, I thought an afternoon tea was so safe, or I should _never_ have -asked you. - -_H._ And so did I—or I should never have come. - -CURTAIN. - -[Illustration: [Couple]] - - - - - THE COMMONEST POSSIBLE STORY - - BY BLISS PERRY - - -[Illustration: [Flowers]] - - -Philander Atkinson, bachelor of law and writer of light verse, sat one -murky August evening in his hall-bedroom, with the gas turned low, -wondering whether the night would be too hot for sleep. At a quarter -before ten a loitering messenger-boy brought him a line from his friend -Darnel: _Come around at once. Just back. The very greatest news._ -Thereupon Atkinson discarded his smoking-jacket, reluctantly exchanged -his slippers for shoes, and took the car down to Twelfth Street, -remembering meanwhile that Darnel’s brief vacation from the Broadway -Bank expired that day, and speculating as to the nature of the great -news which the clerk had brought back from Vermont. The lawyer was a -Vermonter too, and it was this fact, as well as a common literary -ambition, that had drawn the young fellows together at first, long -before Philander, on the strength of having two triolets paid for, had -moved up to Thirty-first Street. Philander Atkinson liked Darnel, -admired his feverish energy and his pluck, envied his acquaintance with -books. He had always persisted in thinking that Darnel’s stories would -sell, if only some magazine would print one for a starter; and he had -patiently listened to most of these stories, and to some of them several -times over. Yet Darnel had never had any luck; had never had even his -deserts; and the sincerity of his congratulations whenever Atkinson’s -verses saw the light always caused Philander to feel a trifle awkward. -He knew that the indefatigable clerk had two or three manuscripts -“out”—out in the mails—when the vacation began, and as he turned in at -Darnel’s boarding-house he had almost persuaded himself that _The Æon_ -had accepted “Laki,” his friend’s Egyptian story. It was a long climb up -to Darnel’s room, and the writer of light verse mounted deliberately, -being fat with overmuch sitting in his office chair. On the third floor -the air was heavy with orange-flowers and Bonsilene roses, and a caterer -was carrying away ice-boxes. A whimsical rhyme came into Philander’s -head, and he made a mental note of it. Just then Darnel appeared, -leaning over the balustrade of the fourth-floor landing, his coat off, -his collar visibly the worse for the railway journey, and an eager smile -upon his thin, homely face. - -“Hullo, D.,” said Philander. “Here I am. Been having a wedding here?” he -added in a low voice, as he grasped Darnel’s hand. - -“I believe so. I’m just back. Come in, Phil. You got my message?” - -“Why else should I be here, old fellow? Is it ‘Laki,’ sure?” - -Without answering, Darnel led the way into his tiny room. His trunk lay -upon the floor, half-unpacked, the folding-bed was down, for the better -accommodation of some of the trunk’s contents, and the desk in the -corner, under the single jet of gas, was covered with piles of finely -torn paper. Darnel’s manner, usually nervous and somewhat conscious, -betrayed a certain exhilaration, but he was under perfect self-control. - -“‘Laki?’” he said, seating himself in his revolving chair and whirling -around to the desk, while Atkinson threw himself upon the bed, “‘Laki?’ -Oh, I had forgotten. It’s probably here.” He pulled over the mail -accumulated during his absence. “Yes.” He tore open the big envelope. -“‘The editor of _The Æon_ regrets to say,’ etc.;” and he tossed the -printed slip, with the manuscript, into his waste-basket, with a laugh. - -Atkinson’s heart sank. Poor Darnel; it was not a cheerful welcome home. -But Darnel was busied with his letters. - -“And here are the others,” he went on. “I thank the Lord none of them -were accepted.” - -“What!” exclaimed Philander, turning upon his elbow. - -Darnel looked at him with a puzzling smile. - -“That’s why I sent for you,” said he. “Phil, all that I’ve been writing -here for three years is stuff, and I’ve only just found it out. I can do -something different now.” - -Atkinson stared. Darnel had rarely talked about his own work, and then -in a scarcely suppressed fever of excitement and anxiety. Many a time -had Atkinson noticed his big hollow eyes turn darker, and his sallow -face grow ashy, even in reading over with a shaking voice some of that -same “stuff.” - -“I have learned the great secret,” Darnel added, quietly. - -“You have Aladdin’s ring?” said Atkinson. “Or are you in love?” - -“Both,” replied Darnel. “It is the same thing.” - -Philander flung himself back upon the pillow, with a little laugh. “Go -ahead, D.” - -“I have found her, and myself. Let me turn down the gas a little; I see -it hurts your eyes. I belong in the world now; I am in the heart of it—I -said to myself coming down the river this afternoon—in the heart of the -world.” He lingered over the words. “Phil,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “all -the time I was trying to write I was really trying to lift myself by the -boot-straps. I was laboring to imagine things and people, and to get -them on paper. It was all wrong. Do you remember that French poem you -read me last winter, about the idol and the Eastern princess—how she lay -on her couch sleeping—the night was hot—with the bronze idol gazing at -her with its porphyry eyes, while her brown bosom rose and sank in her -sleep, and the porphyry eyes kept staring at her—staring—but they never -saw? Well, I believe my eyes have been like that. In ‘Laki,’ now, you -know I wanted to describe the exact color of the stone in the quarry, -and asked the Egyptologist up at the Museum to tell me what it was? He -laughed at me. Very well. It was a dull-red stone, with bright-red -streaks across it; I saw the same thing in Troy this afternoon, when a -hod-carrier fell five stories and they picked him up from a pile of -bricks.” - -“You’re getting rather realistic,” muttered Philander. Darnel was not -looking at him, and went on unheeding. - -“I have but to tell what I see. I have stopped imagining; my head has -ached—Phil, you don’t know how it has ached—trying to imagine things. I -am past that now; if you only shut your eyes and look, it is all easy. -Take that old Edda story that I tried to work up, about the fellow who -fought all day long against his bride’s father, and when night came the -bride stole out and raised all the dead men on both sides, by magic, so -that the next day, and every day, the battle raged on as before. I used -to plan about the magic she used, and tried to invent a charm. Why, all -she did was to pass over the battle-field at night, where the dead lay -twisted in the frost, and while the wolves snarled around her and the -spray from the fiord wet her cheek, she stooped to touch the dead men’s -wrists; and they loosed their grip upon broken sword and split linden -shield, their breath came again, soft and low like a baby’s, and so they -slept till the red dawn.” - -“Look here,” said Atkinson, sitting up very straight, “you’ve been -reading ‘The Finest Story in the World,’ and it has turned your head.” - -“Oh, the London clerk who was conscious of pre-existences, and forgot -them all when he fell in love? I could have told Rudyard Kipling better -than that myself.” Darnel gave an impatient whirl to the revolving -chair. - -“You mean you think you can,” replied Atkinson, sharply. - -“As you like.” He spoke dreamily, and Atkinson dropped back on the -pillow again, watching his friend as narrowly as the dim light would -allow. Hard work and unearthly hours had told on Darnel; he certainly -seemed light-headed. - -“Sickening heat—black frost—” he was murmuring; “marching, stealing, -fighting, toiling—joy, pain—the life of the race—is a man to grow -unconscious of these things in the moment that he really enters the life -of the race, that he feels himself a part of it? What do you think, -Phil?” - -“I think,” was the slow reply, “that whatever has happened to you in -Vermont has shaken you up pretty well, old fellow. They say that when -someone asked Rachel how she could play _Phèdre_ so devilishly well, she -just opened her black Jewish eyes and said, ‘I have seen her.’ And I -think, in the mood you’re in now, you can see as far back as Rachel or -anybody else. It’s like being opium-drunk; if you could keep so, and put -on paper what you see, you could beat Kipling and all the rest of them. -But you can’t keep drunk, and you can’t write prose or verse on -love-delirium. It’s been tried.” - -“Suppose Rachel had said, ‘I _am Phèdre_?’” - -Atkinson lifted his stout shoulders, laughing uneasily. “So much the -worse. I should say, the less pre-existence of that sort the better. You -might as well tell me the whole story, D. What is her name?” - -“In a moment. She loves me, Phil. She is waiting for me in her little -house among the hills. I left her only this morning, and soon I shall go -back and leave New York forever. I can write the story up there—the -story I have dreamed of writing—for I shall always have the secret of -it. I have but to shut my eyes and tell what I see; and it is because -she loves me. All the life of all the past—I can call that ‘A Story of -the Road.’ Then there will be the future to write of—the men and women -that are to come; for we shall have children, Phil, and in them——” - -“You’re making rapid progress,” ejaculated Philander. - -“——I shall know the story of the future. Even now I know it; I do not -simply foresee it, I see it. Why not ‘A Story of the Goal!’ For I belong -to it—do you not understand? Yet, after all, what is that compared with -the present? It shall be ‘A Story of the March!’ Look there!” - -He threw his eyes up to the ceiling, which was brightened for an instant -by the headlight of an elevated train as it rushed past. - -“Do you know what that engineer was really thinking of as he went by? -That would be story enough. Or what was in the heart of the bride -to-night, down on the third landing—you smelled the orange-flowers as -you came up? To feel that your heart is in them, and theirs in you——” - -But Philander Atkinson was not listening to the lover’s rhapsody. He was -thinking of a certain summer when he, too, had had strange fancies in -his head; when his thoughts played backward and forward with swift -certainty; when he had grown suddenly conscious of great desires and -deep affinities, and for a space of some three months he had dreamed of -being something more than a mere verse-maker, a master of the file. -Then—whether it was that she grew tired of him, or they both realized -that some dull mistake had been made—it was all over. There was still in -his drawer a package of manuscript he had written that summer; in blank -verse, none too noble a form for the high thoughts which then filled -him; in a queer new rhythm, too, the secret of whose beat he had caught -at and then lost, for the lines read harshly to him now. He looked these -things over occasionally, as a sort of awful example of himself to -himself; though he had gone so far as to borrow some of their imagery, -not without a certain shame, to adorn his light verse. His card-house -had fallen, but some of the colored pasteboard was pretty enough to be -used again. Curiously, he found that he could cut pasteboard into more -ingenious shapes than ever since his brief experience in piling it; -fancy served him better after imagination left him; his triolets were -admirably turned, and his luck with the magazines began. Altogether it -had been an odd experience; half those crazy ideas of Darnel had been -his two years before, but he was quite over them—yes, quite—and now it -was D.’s turn. He listened again to something that Darnel was murmuring. - -“And she is an ordinary woman, one would say; a common woman. That is -the mystery and the glory of it. I do not know that she is even -beautiful. There must be thousands of women like her; I can see it -plainly enough, that there must be thousands of women in the world like -_her_.” There was a reverent hush in his voice. - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - -Atkinson choked back an exclamation. Was D.’s head really turned? “A -common woman”—“not know whether she is beautiful?” A face rose before -him, unlike any face in all the world: eyes with the blue of Ascutney, -when you look at it through ten miles of autumn haze; hair brown as the -chestnut leaf in late October; mouth—— - -Philander trembled slightly, and rising to his feet, stood looking down -at Darnel, haggardly. It was quite over, that experience of two summers -before, but while it lasted he had at least never dreamed that there -were thousands of women in the world like _her_. - -“Sit down, Phil, I am almost through. A woman like other women, and the -story, when I write it, a common story. It will be the commonest -possible story; common as a rose, common as a child. I am going back to -Vermont, where I was born, and where I have been born anew. There will -be plenty of time for the story—years, and years, and years. I have only -to close my eyes some day, and she will write down all I tell her, and I -shall call the story hers and mine.” - -But Atkinson still stood, his hands in his pockets, his heavy figure -stooping, the lines hardening in his face, while he watched the rapt -gaze of Darnel, and drearily reflected how strange it was that a woman -should open all the gates of the wonder-world to one man’s imagination, -and that some other woman should close those secret gates, quietly, -inexorably, upon that man’s friend. - -“Wait,” said Darnel. “Must you go back to your triolets? Let me show you -her picture first.” He turned the gas up to its fullest height, and held -out a photograph. - -It was the same woman. - -[Illustration: [Landscape]] - - - - - THE END OF THE BEGINNING - - BY GEORGE A. HIBBARD - - -[Illustration: [Man]] - - - CITY OF NEW YORK, - April 10, 1887. - -DEAR SIR: It is with some hesitation that I venture to trespass upon -your valuable time, knowing as I do that the demands of clients, of -constituents, of friends, are so exacting. Still, as what I am about to -ask relates to a matter lying very near my heart, I hope you will -forgive me. A young man in whom, in spite of the usual extravagances and -follies of youth, I discern some promise, and whom I hope, for his own -sake and from my friendship for his excellent father, dead long ago, to -see occupying a respectable position in the community, has, with the -heedlessness peculiar to his age, involved himself in certain -difficulties which, although at present of a sufficiently distressing -nature, may, I hope, be satisfactorily overcome. Knowing so well your -distinguished abilities, ripe judgment, and great experience, I can -think of no one to whom I can, in this critical period of his life, more -confidently send him for counsel, instruction, and aid, and I -accordingly commend him to you, trusting to our old friendship to -account for and excuse my somewhat unusual act. Though what I ask of you -is something not usually required of a lawyer, I think you will -understand my reason for thus troubling you. No one can have a more -thorough knowledge of the world than an old practitioner like yourself, -and what you may say must fall upon the ears of youth with weighty -authority. Talk to him as you would to your son, if you had one, not as -to a client, and I will be inexpressibly indebted to you, for I know you -will lead him to appreciate the serious realities of life, which, at -present, he is so disposed to disregard. - -I need only add that he is a young man of some fortune, and, certainly, -by birth worthy of much consideration. He will call upon you in person -and himself explain his present embarrassments. - - I remain, now as always, - Your obedient servant, - RICHARD BEVINGTON. - - THE HON. JACOB MASKELYNE, - Counsellor at law, - Number — William Street, - City of New York. - -This was the letter that the Honorable Jacob Maskelyne read, reread, and -read yet again. Indeed, not content with its repeated perusal, he turned -it this way and that, looked at it upside and down, and finally, laying -it upon the table, he held up its envelope in curious study, as people -so often do when thus perplexed. It bore the common, dull-red two-cent -stamp and was post-marked the day before. Both it and the letter were -apparently as much matters of the every-day world as a jostle on the -sidewalk. Nevertheless, the old lawyer was more than puzzled—more than -puzzled, although he, of all men in the great, wideawake city, would in -popular opinion have been thought perhaps the very last to be thus at -fault. If millstones were to be worn as monocles—if there was any seeing -what the future might bring forth—the chances of a project, the risks of -rise or fall in a stock, the hazards of a corner in a staple, the -prospects of a party or of a partisan, Jacob Maskelyne would be regarded -as the man of men for the work. But, under the circumstances, even to -him this letter was more than perplexing. Here, on this spring morning, -with floods of well-authenticated sunshine pouring into every nook and -corner, dissipating every mystery of shadow and, it might seem, every -shadow of mystery—here, in his office, bricked in by the unimaginative -octavos of the law—those hide-bound volumes, heavy literature of all -things most amazingly matter of fact; here, in the eighteen hundred and -eighty-seventh year of the Christian era, in the one hundred and -eleventh year of the Republic, he had received a letter from his old -guardian, whom, when he himself was not more than twenty, he remembered -walking about a feeble old man with many an almost Revolutionary -peculiarity in speech and manner, and whose funeral he, with the heads -and scions of most of the first families of the town, had attended full -twenty-five years ago. It certainly was enough to bewilder anyone. He -again took up the letter. It was unquestionably in old Bevington’s best -style, courtly enough, but a trifle pompous. Had it not been for its -true tone he would undoubtedly have thought the thing a hoax and -immediately have dismissed it from his mind. He touched a hand-bell, and -in response a young man—a very prosaic young man—over whose black -clothes the gray of age had begun to gather, appeared. - -[Illustration: [Man]] - -“Bring me the letters received of the year eighteen sixty—letter B,” -said the lawyer, sharply. - -That was the year in which his father’s estate had been finally settled, -and he knew that there would be many examples of his guardian’s -handwriting in the correspondence of that time. - -The clerk soon returned with a tin case, and laid it on the table. Mr. -Maskelyne took one from among the many papers therein, and, striking it -sharply against the arm of his chair, to scatter the dust that invests -all things in the garment the outfitter Time warrants such a perfect -fit, he spread it out beside the letter he had just read with such blank -wonder. - -“Identically the same,” he muttered. “No other man ever made an _e_ like -that.” - -The clerk had vanished and the lawyer was again alone. - -He glanced once more at the mysterious missive, and then, with the -purposelessness of abstraction, he rose and went to the window. Nothing -caught his eye but the sign-bedecked front of the opposite building and -one small patch of blue sky—near, gritty, limestone fact and a faraway -something without confine. Still, amazed as he was the contagious joy of -the time sensibly affected him. - -[Illustration: [Bridge]] - -The sparrows, quarrelsome gamins of the air, for the time reformed by -honest labor into respectable artisans, upon an opposite entablature, in -garrulous amity plied their small, nest-making joinery. The sunlight -falling through a haze of wires, wrought into something bright with its -own glow a tuft of grass which clumped its spears in its fortalice, -taken in assault, on the opposite frieze. Of even these small things, -and of much more, Mr. Maskelyne was partially conscious. But the letter! -Clear-sighted as he was, he knew but little—so forthright was his look, -so fixed toward mere gain—of the wonderful country which lies beneath -every man’s nose, less even of the vanishing tracts which retrospection -sometimes sees over either shoulder. But the letter! It peopled his -vision with things long gone. It brought into view old Bevington—“Dick -Bevington,” as he was called to the last day of his life—and a nickname -at fifty indicates much of character; brought up before him Dick -Bevington as he was before age had stiffened his easy but dignified -carriage or taught his once polished but positive utterance to veer and -haul in sudden change; brought up old Bevington, as he himself, in -childhood, had seen him, stately but debonair, the perfection of -aristocratic exclusiveness, affable, however, in the genial kindliness -of a kind-hearted man secure in every position—a genuine Knickerbocker -in every practice and in every principle—a well-born, well-bred -gentleman. And that once active and once ebullient life had long ago -gone out! It almost seemed that such vitality, so held in self-contained -management, so wisely put forth, so well invested, so to speak, should -have lasted forever. But now there was nothing left to bring him to mind -but a portrait in the rooms of the Historical Society, or a name in the -list of directors when the history of some bank was given, or in the -pamphlet in which the story of some charitable institution was told from -the beginning—really there was nothing more than this to recall Dick -Bevington, foremost among the city’s fathers, the leader of the _ton_. -When he had last seen his guardian he had thought him of patriarchal -age. And was not he himself now nearly as old? In spite of the -blithesome aspects of the morning, Jacob Maskelyne turned away from the -window with an unwonted weight at his heart and a new wrinkle on his -brow. The whole world seemed to be going from him, losing charm and -significance in a sort of blurring dissatisfaction, as upon a globe, -when swiftly turned, lines of longitude and of latitude, and even -continents and seas, vanish from sight, and all because his own life -suddenly seemed but vexed nothingness. He had not even mellowed into age -as had Bevington. He was as sharp and as rough-edged as an Indian’s -flint arrow-head, and he knew it. - -He seated himself at his table. Automatically he was about to take up -the first of several bundles of law-papers, when he was startled by the -entrance of the clerk. He leaned back in his chair, and his reawakened -wonder grew the more when a card was placed before him upon which was -written, in a dashing hand, “From Mr. Bevington.” - -“A gentleman to see you,” said the clerk. - -“What does he look like?” asked Mr. Maskelyne, suspiciously. - -“Nobody I ever saw before,” answered the clerk; “and he seems rather -strange about his clothes,” he added, in a rather doubtful, tentative -manner. - -“Let him come in,” said Mr. Maskelyne, after a moment’s pause. - -[Illustration: [Man]] - -The door had hardly closed upon the vanishing messenger when it again -swung upon its hinges, and a new figure stood in relief against the -clearer light from without. In his eagerness to see of what nature a -being so introduced might be, Mr. Maskelyne turned his chair completely -around, and silently gazed at the new-comer as he entered. His eyes fell -upon a slim, graceful young man dressed in the mode of at least -forty-five years ago—a mode not without its own good tone undoubtedly, -but with a tendency toward gorgeousness which an exquisite of these days -of assertive unobtrusiveness might think almost vulgar. His whole attire -was touched in every detail with that nameless something which really -makes the consummate result unattainable by any not born to such -excellence; but in the bright intelligence shining in his dark eyes and -the clear intellectual lines of his face, even Maskelyne could see that -if he had given much thought to his dress it was only from a proper -self-respect, and not because dress was the ultimate or the best -expression of what he was. Few could look into the luminous countenance -and not feel a glow of sudden sympathy with the high aspirations, the -pure disinterestedness, the clear intellect, that lit up and -strengthened his features. Even the old lawyer, disciplined as he was by -years of hard experience to disregard all such misleading impulses, felt -his heart warm toward the young man. - -“I hope,” said the new-comer, with a smile so pleasant, so ingenuous, so -confiding, that all Maskelyne’s ideas of deception—had he had time to -recognize them in the moment before a strange, unquestioning -acquiescence took complete possession of him—were at once dissipated, -“that I do not intrude too greatly on your time.” - -Won really in spite of himself by the appearance of his visitor, the -famous counsellor waved his hand toward a chair. - -“I suppose,” continued the stranger, with an almost boyish sweetness, as -he seated himself, “that Mr. Bevington has already told you why I am -here.” - -Mr. Maskelyne might very well have answered that Mr. Bevington was -hardly to be looked to for any information on any subject, but he did -not—the wonderful circumstances of the interview had been so driven from -his mind by the potent charm of the young man’s personality. - -“Mr.”—and he paused as if waiting for enlightenment as to the name of -the stranger. - -“I’m in a devil of a scrape,” continued the young man, apparently -imagining that the letter had made all necessary explanations, and -mentioning the devil as though he was an every-day acquaintance, a -pleasant fellow whom he had just left at the door awaiting his return. - -“Ah!” murmured the lawyer. - -“I did not wish to see you,” continued the other, his singularly -trustful smile breaking again over lip and cheek. - -“Indeed,” said Maskelyne, his wits and perceptions in most confusing -entanglement. - -“No,” went on the unaccountable visitor. “I supposed that you would give -me what the world calls good advice. But I don’t want that. I want to -hear something better.” - -He laughed aloud in such a joyous, cheery fashion that the old lawyer -even smiled. - -“You don’t think I am a good man to come to for bad advice?” he said. - -“The last in the world. I don’t suppose that you ever did a foolish -thing in your life.” - -“And therefore am perhaps less competent to advise others who have,” -replied Maskelyne, half heedlessly, for his thoughts were slowly turning -in a new direction. The more he looked the more the eager, spirited face -seemed familiar. He had certainly seen the young fellow before, but -where? It seemed to him that he could certainly remember in a moment, if -he only had time to think. - -“Mr. Bevington——” - -“Pardon me,” interrupted Maskelyne, in a significant tone, “you said Mr. -Bevington?” - -“Certainly,” said the stranger, suddenly looking up in evident surprise. -“Didn’t he write?” - -“I have received a letter,” said the old lawyer, cautiously. - -He was on the point of making some further inquiries, but the impulse -came to nothing. The former feeling of acquiescent but expectant apathy -again possessed him; indeed, he had never been much in the habit of -asking questions. He knew that he often learned more than was suspected -even, by letting people talk on in their own way. - -“In the first place,” and he paused a moment—“I am very much in debt.” -The young man spoke as he might of taking a cold asleep in the open -air—as if he had been exposed to debt and had caught it. - -The first look of sadness rose and deepened over his face as he shook -his head dejectedly. - -“But I’ll get over it—‘Time and I.’ Don’t you rather like the astute old -king after all, Mr. Maskelyne?” - -“By your own exertions?” asked the lawyer, dryly, and evading the -question. - -“I write a little,” replied the impenitent, modestly. “I have even heard -of people who admired some of my verses.” - -“You have no other occupation?” - -Old Maskelyne was asking enough questions now. Indeed, under the magic -of the stranger’s manner he had quite forgotten himself, his usual -caution, and even the exceptional manner in which his companion had been -introduced to him. - -“Yes,” the other admitted, “I am a lawyer.” - -“Don’t you think,” said the older man, answering almost instinctively, -“that on the whole you might find the employments of the law more -remunerative than the calling of a—poet?” - -[Illustration: [Algebra]] - -“Mr. Maskelyne, I sometimes think that the world really believes in the -sort of thing underlying your question—that there is wisdom in what it -so complacently repeats as indisputable. And I am sent here -phrase-gathering—to carry off small packages of words put up in little -flat, portable sentences, alternatives ready for daily use. But there -are gains you cannot invest in lands and stocks—columns with statues at -the top as well as columns whose sums are at the bottom. Wasn’t ‘Le -Barbier’ a better investment than any in Roderigue Hortales et Cie., and -what could John Ballantyne & Co. show beside ‘Guy Mannering?’ If the -world says what it does, it mustn’t do as it does. It’s inconsistent. -Who will undertake to strike the balance between fame and fortune; what -mathematician will undertake to say that _x_, the unknown quantity of -fame, does not equal the dollar-mark?” Then he added, after a moment’s -pause, “Mr. Maskelyne, don’t you think it is true that - - “‘One crowded hour of glorious life, - Is worth a world without a name,’— - -don’t you really?” - -It was hard to resist such enthusiasm, such unquestioning certainty. The -old lawyer did not even smile as he lay back in his chair, a new life -shooting through every nerve, his gaze fixed on the flushing face of the -young man. - -“And the consciousness of best employing the best that is in you,” he -continued. “Who dare shorten the reach or blunt the nicety of man’s wit, -make purblind the imagination, stiffen the cunning hand? Tell men that -in some Indian sea, fathoms deep, lie hid forever Spanish galleons in -which doubloons and moidores, as when honey more than fills the comb, -almost drip from their sacks, and you will see in their sudden -thoughtfulness how quickly they appreciate such loss; tell them, if you -can, what, through poverty, erring endeavor, uncongenial occupation, the -world with each year loses in intellectual riches, and they will stand -heedless.” - -Speaking with the incomparable confidence of youth, its own glorious -nonsense, the young man’s voice sent old Maskelyne’s blood hastening -through his veins in almost audible pulsations. - -“What if I do not wish great wealth,” the speaker continued, “must I be -made to have it? I want but little. Give me food, clothing, habitation, -sufficient that my eyes may see the delights this world has to show, -that my ears may catch the whispered harmonies of all things beautiful, -gladden me with the radiance of common joy, and that’s all I want. Who -is unreasonable when what he wants is all he wants? Are the worldly so -insecure that, as the frightened kings sought to still beneath their -tread the first throb of the French Revolution, they must stamp out the -first symptom of revolt against the almighty dollar? - - “‘Chi si diverte di poco, è ricco di molto.’ - -Mr. Maskelyne, must I eat when I am only thirsty, drink when I am only -hungry?” - -He paused, and glanced triumphantly at the old man. He felt in some -secret, instinctive way that he was gaining ground. A squadron of fauns -had charged from amid the vine-leaves, and the legion upon the highway -was in rout. Fine sense was victorious for the moment over common sense. - -“I think,” said Maskelyne, at last, and with a strange, sad, patient -air, unwearied, however, by the young man’s dithyrambic, sometimes -almost incoherent speech, “I think I cannot attempt to advise you. -Having discarded the wisdom of ages, what heed will you give the wisdom -of age?” - -A cloud seemed to cast its shadow over the other’s face. Could it be -that, lost in himself, he had spoken almost in presumptuous disrespect -to a man so distinguished, to a man whom he honored and whom he felt -that he could even like? - -“If I speak strongly,” he said, “it is because I feel strongly. If I did -not feel strongly I would not attempt to withstand the amount of -testimony against me.” - -“Might I ask,” said Maskelyne, gently, in his inexplicable sympathy with -the young fellow, “why, if you feel such confidence in all you say, you -do not, without hesitation, enter on a life in accordance with your -convictions?” - -At last there was hesitation in the young stranger’s manner. He turned -his hat nervously in his hand, and sat silent for a moment. - -“You see,” he began, paused, and began again—“You see, if I were alone -it would be one thing. But I’m not—not at all alone,” he added, -evidently gaining confidence. - -“Ah!” exclaimed the old lawyer, a sudden gleam of new intelligence -shining in his dull, weary old eyes. - -“And how am I to get married, Mr. Maskelyne?” - -“The lady does not approve of your—poetic aspirations?” - -“Not approve!” cried the young fellow, eagerly; “she has made me promise -that I will give nothing up, that I will refuse all Mr. Bevington has -arranged for me. You can’t tell how inspiring our misery is. And our -courage,—a young Froissart must be our chronicler, sir. We take our -sorrows gladly.” - -“And may I ask——” - -“Anything, anything,” interrupted the young man, gayly. “I’m sent here -to be talked out of what they may call my folly. You see I can’t be -talked out of it. Don’t that prove that it is no folly?” - -“You seem,” said Maskelyne, dryly, “to have settled it between you—you -and she.” - -“Settled it! We did not need help about that. It’s the unsettling. There -comes a time when friends are the worst enemies. You know that, Mr. -Maskelyne?” - -The old lawyer paused. “Indeed I do,” he said at last, and the sneer -stealing over the outlines of his face slunk away before the look of -regret that came swiftly on. Almost in embarrassment, with nervous hand, -he shuffled the papers on his table. - -Far back in the past, when his eyes were not yet dimmed by the dust -blown from law-books, nor his ears deadened by the stridulent clamor of -litigation, before his life had gone in attempts at - - “Mastering the lawless science of our law,” - -or he had lost himself in - - “That codeless myriad of precedent, - That wilderness of single instances;” - -when he, too, dwelt in that other-world of the young, forgotten by -everyone but himself, but, although hardly ever remembered, never -forgotten by him—not one grain of its golden sand, not one drop of its -honey-dew, not one tremor of its slightest thrill—then even he had had -his romance. The freshness of the early spring morning, the airy -brightness of his young visitor, himself no bad exponent of the day, the -awe-footed shadow which, with almost unrecognized obtrusion, skirts the -border where the ripened grain fills the field of life and nods to the -ready sickle—was it something of such kind, or was it the simple story -of which he had had such telling intimation, that brought it all up in -memory’s half-tender glow? He, too, had once been in love. He, too, had -written verses to his inamorata. He remembered it all now, with a smile -of mingled pity and contempt. It needed no ransacking of the brain now -to quicken into full view his own “It might have been”—to people once -more the mystic world whose first paradise is rich in the slight -garniture of glances and sighs and smiles and tears. Lost in himself, -the old man forgot his visitor. - -“You are very young,” he said at last, absently. - -“Twenty-three,” was the answer. - -“And she?” - -“Eighteen.” - -It was strange, but he, too, had been twenty-three and she eighteen when -the end came in that glimmering, gleaming past. He remembered, and how -strange the recollection seemed, taking her some flowers and some slight -silver gift—a poor, inexpensive thing; she would let him give no more -because he, too, was in debt—on her birthday. And now, with strange -revulsion, he hardened almost into his habitual self, and grimly thought -that it all was youthful nonsense, and that all such follies were very -much alike. Had he spoken, he would have been guilty of one of those -faults often packed with error, an apothegm—he would have said that we -only become original, even in our folly, as age gives us character. - -“We could be so happy with so little,” said the youthful lover. - -The old man started. These were his own words many, many years ago; his -very words to his guardian when the final appeal was made by old -Bevington to what he called his better judgment so very, very long ago, -in the dark, stately house upon Second Avenue. - -“So very little,” repeated the young man. “I have always said,” he -continued, as pleased with the conceit as if it had never before -glittered in the song of finches of his feather, “that we should have -gold enough in her hair.” - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - -“And is her hair golden?” asked Maskelyne, and, startled by the sound of -such words dropped from the lips of the distinguished counsel for many a -soulless corporation and many as soulless a man, he added, hurriedly, -“light.” And then the old lawyer remembered that he too, had a lock of -hair that he had not sent back when he returned her letters and her -picture. How bright it was! What had become of it? Where was it? In what -pigeon-hole, what secret drawer? He could not for the moment remember. -He looked out of the window. How bright the sunshine was! How empty the -world! It seemed to build up its vacancy around him as a wall. - -“And she, of course, has no money?” he said, turning again. - -“None.” - -He had been sure of it. He rose and went to the window. The joyful -attributes of the morning were there, but they were no longer joyful to -him. The light fell in the same broad flood, still promising the glory -of summer, the ripened harvest, but there was no promise for him. The -sparrows preluded still the full-voiced singers of the year, when leaves -are heavy with the dust and brooks run dry, but he heard only a quick, -petulant twitter. A sort of dull despondency suddenly settled upon him. -He forgot his visitor, and even time and place. Amid the glimmering -lights and shaking shadows of the past he sought a vision, as at -twilight one seeks in some deserted corridor a statue which would seem -to have so taken into its grain the last rays of the already sunken sun -that the marble glows in the gathering darkness with a radiance not its -own. - -The young man grew impatient as the revery was prolonged. He stirred -uneasily. The old lawyer turned and looked curiously at him. Of course, -of course! Was a man to be changed, the bone of what he was to have its -marrow drawn, the fibre of every muscle to be untwisted, by this -nonsense of a boy? Of course old Bevington was right—and for the moment -he did not remember that Bevington was dead—in sending the young fool to -such a cool old hand as himself. But if Bevington had known what a -turbulence of disappointment, discontent, and revolt had risen, and -poured in strength-gathering torrent, even at that instant, through his -heart, would he not have kept his young charge away? He would talk to -him—certainly he would—pave his way for him, perhaps, as with flagstones -of wisdom. Perhaps—and then he thought with grim satisfaction of what -Bevington might think should he learn that he recognized that there were -other paths than those edged by a curbstone. - -[Illustration: [Man]] - -“You have been sent to me,” he said, very seriously, coming from the -window and leaning with both hands on the table, “for advice and -admonition. I will give my lesson in sternest characters. I will teach -by example, but I may not teach what you were sent here to learn. When I -was young as you—do not start, I was young once,” and he spoke with -infinite sadness, “I loved as you love, and, as with you, love was -returned. They who called themselves my friends strove, with what they -called reason, to tear me from what they called my folly. My folly! It -was the wisdom that it takes all that is blent into humanity, at -supremest moments, to attain; their reason, the fatuous folly only -enough to give habitual stir to an earth-beclotted brain! I yielded, as -you have not yielded. I killed out even the natural impulses of my -nature. Gradually almost new instincts came, desire for delight sank -into appetite for gain, hope for the joy of higher existence was lost in -the ambition for mere advancement. I wrought out in myself that fearful -piece of handiwork whose every effort is but to grasp the worthless -handful man can only wrest from the mere world. I lost, and I have not -won. I was a man and I am only a lawyer, and to him you have been sent -for advice. I can find no precedent better, no authority more weighty -for your guidance than my own life. Such strength as enabled me to work -such a change will also enable you to make yourself a new being, to -accomplish self-overthrow, to bring you to what I am—a man rich, -successful, courted, revered—most miserable. He who has so won, so lost, -stands alone or he would not so win. Choose rather the close -companionship of worldly defeat, if it must be, and I say to you in the -rapture of your youth, clay plastic to the moment’s touch, hold to -yourself, and believe that no fame, no power, no wealth, can compensate -for a contentious life, an empty heart, a desolate old age. If I were -you——” - -He did not finish. Slowly the young stranger rose to his full height, -every lineament of his face clear in cold light. His whole aspect was -one of steadfast command. - -“Stop!” he cried, in a stern tone. “I am yourself. No ghost walks save -that which is what a man might have been. We throng the world. Beside -everyone through life moves the image of a past potentiality, the thing -he could have become had he held along another course. I am what you -were, the promise of what you might have been. For forty years I have -walked by your side. I have touched you and you have shuddered, I have -chilled you and you have shrunk from me. Your nature has so grown -athwart, all impulse has been so long gone, all that softens or ennobles -so thrown off that, in almost final self-assertion, what you really were -or might have been stands by your side and bids you measure stature with -itself. Your life has entered upon its wintry days, but sunlight is -sunshine even in December and in youth.” - -The old lawyer, almost shuddering, stepped back with repelling gesture. -He passed his hand quickly across his eyes, and then, as if his heart -had beat recall, summoning back every retreating force in quick rally, -compelled but not unwilling, he turned in combative instinct to meet the -stranger face to face, nature to nature, turned—and found himself alone. - -Once more the clerk opened the door. - -“Eleven o’clock, sir,” he said, “and you know the General Term this -morning——” - -“You saw the gentleman who just went out?” asked the lawyer. - -“I, sir,” answered the man; “I saw no one go out.” - -“No one?” - -“No one.” - -“You certainly brought me a card and showed a young gentleman in a few -minutes ago?” - -“I, sir!” repeated the clerk. “I brought in a card and showed a young -gentleman in! Aren’t you well this morning, sir?” - -“That will do,” said Maskelyne, sternly. - -As soon as he was again alone he stepped to the table. The card and the -letter were gone. And still he knew he had not been dreaming. A man -swung high in the air was busy painting a sign upon a building not far -away, and he was conscious that all through the strange interview he had -watched him at work. He had seen him finish one letter and then another, -and now if he found him adding the final consonant he would be assured -that he could not have been asleep. He looked up and found that he was -right. The man had just made the heavy shaded side and was busy putting -the little finishing line at the bottom of the letter. - - -Two men—one of rotund middle age, the other younger but yet not -young—came down the steps of the Union Club one day a few weeks later. -They met an old man rounding the corner of the Avenue. - -“See what you would come to if you had your own way,” said the elder of -the two. “There’s old Maskelyne. He’s got everything you’re making -yourself wretched to get. Do you want to be like him?” - -“No,” said the other. “Then you haven’t heard?” - -“Heard what?” - -“He’s a changed man, all within a month.” - -“Has his brain or his heart softened?” - -“As you look at life,” said the younger. “He has sent for that clever, -improvident, gracefully graceless good-fellow of a good-for-nothing, his -nephew, him and his pretty-handed, big-eyed wife—he hadn’t seen either -of them since they ran away and were married—sent for them and put them -in his great, old house and—didn’t you hear Maceration growling about -the luck some people have just before we left? He says the nephew will -have all the old man’s property.” - -“What’s the world coming to?” said the senior, “or what is coming to the -world?” - -[Illustration: [Inkwell]] - - - - - A PURITAN INGÉNUE - - BY JOHN SEYMOUR WOOD - - -[Illustration: [Man]] - - - I - -The Archibald house, on West Forty-— Street, was of the character -described as a “modernized front.” A handsome arch in rough stone -surmounted the front-door, which was done in polished oak and -plate-glass. The stoop was on a level with the sidewalk; a richly carved -bow-window jutted out from the second story. “No. 41,” in old iron open -work, formed a pretty grating above the door. There was, in fact, -nothing which would lead an ordinary person to conceive of the house as -given over to boarders, except, possibly, the sign, - - +----------------------+ - | TO LET, FURNISHED. | - +----------------------+ - -which was posted conspicuously below the first-story window, and at an -angle which enabled him that ran to read. - -Old Mr. Archibald’s death, the autumn before, had left his widow rather -poorer than she anticipated. He was a great collector of pretty things. -His taste was exquisite, and he had gratified it by filling his house -with a variety of _bric-à-brac_, pictures, statuary, and old furniture, -which made it a centre of attraction to many of the old gentleman’s -artistic friends. Mrs. Archibald, loath to dispose of her husband’s art -collections, determined to let the house, as it stood, “at an exorbitant -figure, to a very rich tenant without children.” Under these terms, on -her departure for Europe, her agent was entrusted with the house, and -her son Jerome, when he saw her off on the steamer, received a parting -injunction, “Be sure and see that they have no children.” Jerome -Archibald saw his mother and sisters depart—in no very enviable frame of -mind; but he was a good son, and he resolved to forego Newport, if it -would tend to dispose of the house as his mother wished, and add to her -diminished income. - -His mother and sisters sailed in May. It was now July, and very warm and -disagreeable. As the “heated term” set in, he began to think it too bad, -you know, of mamma and the girls to remain abroad for three whole years. -It was positively absurd. What was he to do? After the house was -let—where was he to go? By Jove, he felt deuced lonely, don’t you know! -It was especially trying for a sensitive man to go in and out of a house -with a great placard on it, “To Let, Furnished,” but it was a deal more -trying to have people come and want board. Yes, actually, two ladies -came one morning and wanted to know if they could see the landlord. It -was positively ridiculous! His agent was a clevah fellow, but even he -gave up hope of letting the house until fall. Hadn’t he better run down -to Newport? He got a letter from Dick Trellis that morning, and they -really didn’t see how they were going to get on without him in the polo -matches. It put him in a fuming fury. He had never stayed late in the -city in summer before. How infernally hot it was—and nahsty—don’t you -know! His collars were in a perpetual state of wilt—they never wilted at -Newport. Then everybody was not only out of town, having a good time -somewhere, but they had a provoking way now of ostentatiously boarding -up their front-doors—yes—and their windows, too—which made it doubly -disagreeable for those who had to remain. It was bad enough to see the -blinds drawn down, but boxing up their stonework and planking up their -front-doors caused Mr. Jerome Archibald unutterable pangs. Then they -thought it was a boarding-house! - -_They_ were coming again in the afternoon, at four. There were two of -them—ladies. In his rather depressing and solitary occupation of living -alone in his house, with one solemn apoplectic cook and one chalk-faced -maid, in order to exhibit it to that endless raft of females with -“permits,” who universally condemned or “damned with faint praise” his -father’s exquisite taste in rugs and furniture, Mr. Jerome Archibald had -to-day admitted to himself a distinct pleasure in showing “Miss Perkins” -and her niece (whose name did not happen at the time to be mentioned) -over the house, and pointing out in his quiet way its excellences. - -They saw the sign, they said, and so made bold to enter. Evidently Miss -Perkins was a prim, thin, tall, spectacled, New England old maid. She -had the delicate air and manner of a lady. A lady faded, perhaps, and -unused to a larger social area than that surrounding her native village -green. She had also the timid manner of hesitancy of New England -spinsters—hesitancy concerning everything except questions of casuistry -and religion—and seemed, in what she did, to be spurred on from behind -by the niece, who was, on the whole, as Mr. Jerome Archibald told a -friend at the club later, “quite extraordinary.” - -In the first place, as he said, the niece was undeniably beautiful. - -“She wore rawther an odd street dress,” he said, “made up in the country -somewhere, by a seamstress who gathered her crude notions of the -prevailing fashions from some prevaricating ladies’ journal, and her hat -was something positively ridiculous—but her _face_!” The fastidious Mr. -Jerome Archibald at once conceded to it a certain patrician quality of -elegance. It denoted pure blood and pure breeding, somewhere up among -Vermont hills or Maine forests. A long line of “intelligent ancestors,” -perhaps. It was fine, and—beautiful. The forehead high, nose straight, -the large eyes gray, the mouth and chin sweet, and yet quite determined. -When he showed them a large room at the rear, on the second story, -facing the north, the niece had observed, with a lofty air—mind, the -room was literally crammed with the most costly _bric-à-brac_—“I think -this will suit me very well, aunt dear, on account of the light.” - -He noticed in her unfashionable dress a certain artistic sense of -freedom, a _soupçon_ of colored ribbon here and there, and he concluded -that she was all the more interesting, as an artist, in that she so -quietly accepted the elegancies around her. She gave an unconscious sigh -over a small glass-covered “Woodland Scene,” by Duprez. Mr. Jerome -Archibald noticed it, and inwardly smiled, delighted. - -Perhaps the niece captivated him the more by her silent appreciation of -some things he himself admired exceedingly. It was odd that she seemed -always to choose _his_ favorites. There was nothing said as to the rent, -the size of the house, the lot, the plumbing. He spent an hour showing -his etchings alone, and in the afternoon, at four, they were coming -again, “to decide.” - - - II. - -Of course Mr. Jerome Archibald must have been an extremely susceptible -young man to have fallen in love at first sight with a strange young -woman, who had come to look at his house with a view to renting. But he -was—“rawther down and depressed.” The usual summer malaria had set in. -The usual excavations in the streets were going on—they were digging -with “really extraordinary energy” that summer—the pavements were up on -all the Fortieth streets. Fifth Avenue presented the appearance of a -huge empty canal. It was something more, this presidential year, than -the perennial laying down and taking up of pipes. “He was really ripe -for _une grande affaire du cœur_,” said one of his club friends, he was -getting so lonesome. He _did_ fall quite entirely in love, -precipitately, unquestionably, in spite of the fact that they took the -house for a boarding-place! They asked to hire but one room only. - -When they arrived, at 4 P.M., they sat a few moments in the -reception-room, while the chalk-faced, alert maid announced them to -Archibald in the room above. Miss Perkins folded her faded, gloved hands -in her lap and sat up on the sofa stiffly. They had looked at ever so -many houses, and they had come back to No. 41 with instinctive -preference. - -“I don’t think one room would be so very expensive,” said Miss Perkins. -“He could put up two beds easily in that north room, and the room we saw -on Thirty-fourth Street was only twelve dollars—what do you think, -Elvira?” - -“I think twelve dollars is altogether too high,” said the niece, looking -up from a delicate little Elzevir she was holding. “I think he wants to -let the rooms very much; none of them seem to be taken. Remember it is -midsummer, aunt dear.” - -There was a little pause. - -“Of course he will prefer having _nice_ people. It will be a great help -to your art, Elvira—you can study at great advantage. There are so many -pictures for you to copy. I think your father would say it was a ‘lucky -find.’ If you will persist in your art, why, I think we are very -fortunate.” - -“You are always ready to sneer at my art, Aunt Perkins.” And she gave a -peculiar laugh. - -“It is something that has come up since my day,” she replied, glancing -about over the pictures and the rare editions on the table. “I was -brought up to plain living. But I guess if we can get it all for twelve -dollars we ought to be satisfied. It’s a pleasant change to see the -city. It’s pleasant to see these ornaments. Yes, I don’t blame art so -much as your father does, Elvira, and I don’t believe _he_ would blame -it if he knew we could have so much of it for twelve dollars.” - -“Father secretly admires it as much as I do,” said the niece; “only he -likes to talk.” - -Just then Mr. Jerome Archibald entered. He was faultlessly dressed in -half-mourning for his father. Indeed, he had dressed himself with -exceeding care, being desirous, he frankly admitted to himself, of -making an impression. He bowed graciously, and took Elvira’s extended -gloved hand, which, as she offered it, he held a moment. “Have you -decided?” he asked. - -They had explained, when they left in the morning, that they should want -only one room, and he tacitly inferred that they would require board. He -received a dreadful shock, but made up his mind that the charming niece -would prove the more charming on closer acquaintance, and he -deliberately decided to keep both the gentle New Englanders under his -roof for a time, if he could! The more he thought of the plan, the more -interesting the situation became to him. He fairly dreaded, at last, -lest they should find their way into a remote boarding-house in some -cheap quarter of the city, where it would be quite impossible for him to -follow them. He gravely announced to the astonished maid that he had -determined to let out the rooms to the ladies, who, he pretended for her -benefit, were old acquaintances. When they were announced he was -scarcely able to conceal his pleasure. Mr. Jerome Archibald had fallen -in love. - -“We have decided to take one room,” said Elvira, “if we can agree upon -the price; and we wish to know the price of board—” - -“We shan’t want much to eat,” put in Miss Perkins, with a nervous -twitch. - -Archibald admirably concealed a smile. His long mustache aided him a -good deal in doing this. He was still standing, and he put his hand to -his lips: “I think we shall agree very easily upon the price,” he said. - -Miss Perkins again twitched a little. “We thought twelve dollars—room -and board——” she said, leaving the sentence half finished, while Elvira -looked up at him, expectantly. - -“My dear ladies, I should not think of charging more than ten. You are -strangers in the city, and I would not impose upon you for the world. It -happens that this is the dull season——” - -“So we thought,” said Miss Perkins, “and board and lodging ought to come -a little cheaper.” - -“Precisely. The maid will show you your sleeping-room—and, of course, -the entire house is at your service. I hope you will find everything to -your comfort. I am very anxious to please.” He laughed a little. - -Elvira gave him a grateful, but at the same time a rather patronizing, -glance. He felt at once that in carrying out his little _ruse_ he had -placed himself deliberately upon a questionable footing with the -beautiful girl. He hoped, however, to redeem himself by impressing her -with his knowledge of the pursuit which, he accurately judged, had -brought the ladies to the city. Archibald had at one time done a little -painting himself. He had dreamed dreams, as a young man, which indolence -and the stern business atmosphere of the city had choked off -prematurely. As he looked down upon the girl’s sweet gray eyes a vision -of this youthful period came back to him. Twenty-two and thirty-two have -this in common, that the latter age is not too far away to quite despise -the younger enthusiasm. Archibald at thirty-two still believed in -himself, don’t you know. - - - III. - -Several days passed, during which the ladies settled themselves very -readily in their new surroundings. They were very methodical, preferring -to rise at an hour which, to Archibald, was something savoring of -barbarism. He studied their habits, with a view to conforming to them as -far as possible, but found that he could not bring himself to give up -his nine-o’clock breakfasts, and so went to his club, leaving orders -that the ladies should be accommodated at the earliest hour they might -choose. He found that they had discovered Central Park, and came to make -it a habit to stroll with them of a morning upon the Mall, and around -the stagnant lakes. Central Park was a novelty to him, except as seen -from horseback, or a four-in-hand, and it really seemed very beautiful -those summer mornings—he was really surprised, don’t you know! He -wondered that nice people did not use the Park more—as they did Hyde -Park in London. As the days went on he filled his house with flowers, -turned the second floor into an immense studio for Elvira, sat about and -watched her, criticised, encouraged her. He forgot Newport, forgot his -polo. He had strangely ceased to be bored. He was happy in New York in -midsummer! Dick Trellis told his polo friends at Newport that Archibald -was probably undergoing private treatment for softening of the brain, -which theory, in fact, they deemed sufficiently complimentary. - -As for his mother and sisters in Europe—why, pray, should he inform them -of his little joke? - -Elvira worked away at her easel when the light was best—during the -afternoon. In the evening, after dinner, the ladies became socially -inclined. It was then that they allowed Archibald to smoke in the -“studio” and talk Art with Elvira. Indeed he found it very difficult to -talk anything else with the shy New England primrose. - -About Art—with a big A—she was rapturous. There seemed to be in her soul -a strange hunger for everything ornate and richly beautiful. Archibald -devoted himself to studying her. He became strangely interested in East -Village, Vt., where, he gathered, the Hon. Ephraim B. Price, her father, -was a very distinguished Republican lawyer and politician. He drew Aunt -Perkins out concerning her Congregational church, her minister, her fear -of the Catholics, her fondness for cats, her secret disbelief in Art. -Once in a while they read him a letter from the Hon. Ephraim, in which -he could see reflected their own liking for _him_. He found that he was -spoken of as “Landlord Archibald.” The Hon. Ephraim was a shrewd old -fellow, however, and his counsels and advice were generally of the -“trust-not-too-much-to-appearances” order. One evening Miss Perkins -complained of a headache, and Archibald found himself alone for an hour -with Elvira. She sat beneath the rich brazen lamp, with its pretty -crimson shade, absorbing some of the red glow in her lovely face. They -had been two weeks in the city, and out of delicate feeling had -deposited two ten-dollar bills upon the mantelpiece in the library, -where Archibald would see them. He had roared with laughter over them -and intended having them framed, but ultimately he found a different use -for their amusing board-money. - -He made some little allusion to the time they had been with him. - -“Two very short weeks,” said Elvira, “and you have been so very -unusually kind, Mr. Archibald. You have done so much for us. We have -noticed it. Is it usual for landlords to—to do so much, in the city?” - -“It depends,” he said, gravely. “Landlords do more for people who are -congenial—you are congenial——” - -“Oh!” A slight pause. - -“You are more than congenial, _really_,” said Archibald. “For you take -an interest, Miss Price. I have secretly espied both you and your aunt -dusting——” - -Elvira bit her lip. “We _have_ dusted,” she admitted, reddening a -little, “but it is merely out of force of habit.” - -“Really,” said Archibald, “I rawther like you the better for it, don’t -you know!” - -“I’m afraid,” said Elvira, her face lighting up with conscious pleasure, -“that you have made up your mind as a landlord to like us, whatever we -do. I’m afraid you would not like it at all if you knew everything that -aunt has done.” - -“Tell me—I will keep it a profound secret, I assure you,” he laughed. - -“She has actually dared to invade your kitchen!” - -“Has she?” said Archibald, dubiously; “really!” - -“Yes, and she declares that your cook wastes enough every day to keep -four families!” - -“Really!” said Archibald; “I’ll have to look into it.” - -“You won’t save much out of what we pay,” said Elvira, “and we don’t -want to stay if it doesn’t pay you; but——” - -“Well?” - -“Mr. Archibald, we are poor.” She looked down. - -“I’m very sorry, I’m sure—I—” he really did feel a compassion which -found its way into his voice, and made it tremble a little. - -“Aunt says you _can’t_ be making any money. Now, we don’t think it is -right to stay another day and be _burdens_, do you see?” - -A solemn pause. - -“Isn’t that what they are talking about so much now in the novels?” he -asked, at length. - -“What?” - -“The terrible New England conscience?” - -“Right is right and wrong is wrong, Mr. Archibald, disguise it how we -may,” and Elvira compressed her pretty lips firmly. - -Archibald puffed on his cigar, lazily. - -“I wasn’t sure,” he said, as if a doubt had crept into his mind. - -She glanced at him impatiently. - -“Can’t you _see_ how wrong it would be for us to stay here and enjoy all -we have in your beautiful house, knowing that we were swindling you?” -She stamped her foot. “Mercy!” she added, half to herself, “what _can_ -you be made of?” - -He hastened to a display of rugged conscience, which relieved her. - -“Oh, of course, I see how wicked it would be if you _did_ swindle; but -I’m making money! Really—I haven’t spent the twenty dollars board-money -yet. Oh, pray rest assured—I shan’t lose. I will tell you when I run -behind.” - -A great sense of relief seemed to come over the girl. - -“But it is all we can pay. I told father I would not ask for more. -Father said he knew it would take more, but I said I would give up Art -first.” - -“Oh, I say!” he protested. - -“And to-morrow I am going to begin taking lessons, but I _will_ not call -on father for another cent. He shan’t be able to throw it in my face -that it turned out as he said, and that I was wrong. When he and I -dispute it always does turn out as he says—this time it _shan’t_.” - -Archibald laughed a little. The poor fool, don’t you know, was so -captivated that every word, every action of the girl was music to him. -The two weeks of observation had told on her dress. To-night she wore a -white muslin, elaborated with pretty ribbons. She no longer seemed -especially rustic to him. He noticed that she was doing her hair now in -the prevailing style. “By Jove!” he said to himself, “I’ll see that she -comes out at the Patriarchs’ next winter!” - -This was his highest earthly happiness for a _débutante_. - -“I am going to make money,” she went on; “I’m going to paint vases, -plates, odds and ends, pot-boilers, you know, and so father shan’t know -what it costs.” - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - -“Oh, by the way, if you do,” he pretended, lazily blowing out a ring of -smoke, “I happen to know a fellow—an old friend of mine—who gives very -fair prices for those sort of things. Now, I am sure he will take any -gimcrack you may do.” - -Somehow the word gimcrack displeased her. - -“My Art work has always been thought very pretty in East Village,” she -said. “It would never _sell_, but it was thought pretty. I used to long -to help father—and our family is so large, you know, four little -brothers and two sisters younger than I am—and now, if I only _could_ -get on, and help father! Oh, Mr. Archibald, you don’t know how _little_ -law there is to go round in East Village!” She heaved a deep sigh. - -He tried to appear sympathetic. - -“I know a fellow who gets a thousand dollars for a portrait, and he has -only just commenced. You can’t help but succeed, Miss Price, really!” - -She gave him a grateful glance. - -“Oh, if I _could_!” she said, anxiously. “I taught school one winter, -but the pay was so small. And I’ve tried—you will laugh, Mr. Archibald, -at my telling you these things—but I’ve tried story writing. I was _so_ -hopeful about it, and it took as many as ten rejections before I became -convinced; and now, if my Art fails me——” - -She gave a little fluttering sigh. - -“I think you have talent.” - -“Perhaps it is only enthusiasm——” - -“That amounts to the same thing. It will keep you up to your work. They -used to tell me I had talent, but I had no enthusiasm, so I dropped it. -I wish to encourage you,” he added; “I hope you will go on. It takes a -lot of work, but you have just the right temperament. You _will_ work. -You _will_ get on, and when you become celebrated, Miss Price, you won’t -forget your old friends?” - -He realized that it was a rather bold step forward, and he trembled for -her reply. - -“I shall always recommend your house,” she said, a little stiffly, -making him feel more than ever her aristocratic superiority to -landlords, “and I shall always remember your kindness. We went to at -least six boarding-houses until we saw your sign—we saw the landladies. -Really, Mr. Archibald, you have no idea how vulgar and unartistic _most_ -of the houses were. There was always a disagreeable odor, as if somebody -was frying something. If I _do_ succeed, as I wish, and make friends, -and get to be known, and all, you may be certain that I shan’t forget -you. I may organize an Art class, and take the whole house myself!” - -He went no further. It was enough to him, as he sat opposite her in his -evening dress, his rich opal, set with diamonds, flashing on his white -shirt-front, his lawn tie, low shoes, white waistcoat—everything in the -latest and most expensive style—it was enough for Mr. Jerome Archibald -to sit there and smoke his delicate Havana, and reflect that he at least -had her promise to do what she could to recommend his boarding-house! - -The next day, at dinner, he again suggested, in an offhand way, that -Miss Price should turn her attention to portrait-painting. Miss Perkins -seriously objected at once. - -“Your father would never give his consent,” she said. “There was old Mr. -Raymond, who lived on the Poor Farm, because he found portrait-painting -didn’t pay.” - -“Mr. Raymond painted dreadful, hideous caricatures,” said Elvira. “He -painted my mother’s portrait, and father is always throwing him in my -face. But I don’t know. I have no one to begin on except aunt, and I -have tried and tried, and I can’t get anything but the expression of her -spectacles.” - -Even Aunt Perkins laughed at this a little. - -“Begin on me,” ventured Archibald. “Call it the ‘Portrait of an Ideal -Landlord.’” - -There was a little pause. The ladies rose without replying, and -Archibald followed them into the drawing-room, feeling indefinitely that -he had been too forward. As he lit his cigar and sat near an open -window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not -improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the -keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive, -quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East -Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in -politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the -temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss -Perkins as the days went on into August. The easy sense of accommodation -to their new surroundings also amused him. - -[Illustration: [Man]] - -Archibald returned to the portrait. “I’d rawther like to have one for -the dining-room,” he said; “I think it would interest some of my -boarders when they come back next winter. I could give you no end of -sittings, Miss Price——” - -Elvira exhibited some hesitancy: - -“Well, I might try,” she said. “But I’m not at all good at hair——” - -“Shave off my mustache if you like,” said the infatuated Archibald, with -a grimace. - -The ladies changed the subject decorously. It was plain that -Archibald’s little advances toward an intimacy, to be derived from -portrait-painting, were being met in rather an unencouraging spirit, -don’t you know! The next day he invited them, as an agreeable -diversion, to visit Coney Island; but Elvira made an excuse that she -had no time for “pleasuring.” They seemed, indeed, to have few -pleasures. The morning walk in Central Park was given up; Miss Perkins -spent the greater part of the time when Elvira was at the Art School -in riding to and fro, apparently, upon street-cars. One day she came -home very late to dinner, saying that she had discovered the “Belt -Line.” While waiting her return for dinner, Archibald had an agreeable -_tête-à-tête_ with Elvira. - - - IV. - -He was growing more and more in love with this self-contained, charming, -young New Englander. It had come to a time when he felt that he must -speak. They had been at No. 41 now these four weeks, aunt and niece, and -yet they had managed to preserve their distance. He was no nearer than -the day they arrived. - -He reflected that the pleasant little daily comedy which had amused him -so entirely would have to be given up the instant he made known to her -his state of feeling. But at the same time he felt he could act out the -equivocation no longer. He must, as a gentleman, make a clean breast of -his deception. Archibald had seen a great deal of women, and he believed -that he understood them pretty well. He believed he understood Miss -Price well enough to reckon upon the flattery of her sudden fascination -that first day, for him, as the cause of his deceit. He planned to -boldly tell her this, one day, while they were waiting for Miss Perkins -to revolve around the “Belt Line.” But Elvira turned the conversation -against his will. She seemed to have remarkable intuitions, this strange -creature! Perhaps she had an intuition then. At any rate, she announced -their determination to return to East Village the following Saturday. - -“Father writes that his ague is no better—that I must come home,” she -said. “There are, besides, the preserves——” - -Archibald expressed no surprise. “If you go,” he said, “I think I’ll -take a run up there also. I have the greatest curiosity about East -Village.” - -“There is nothing—it is dreadfully—I wouldn’t have you visit East -Village for all the world!” - -“Why?” - -“Because—” she replied, sedately. - -Recognizing this as a sufficient reply, Archibald took a seat on the -sofa near her. She was in one of her pretty, soft, white muslins, tied, -this evening, with ribbons of the very latest shade of fashionable -apple-green. He had noticed the steady growth of fashion in the girl’s -appearance, but he was not quite prepared for the dozen silver bangles, -which jingled as she raised her hand to her hair. She had a pretty arm -and hand, and were it not for the bangles, which somehow altered the -current of his thought, he had nerved himself up to the point of taking, -or trying to take, her hand in his, and telling her in a manly way his -story. The bangles, however, don’t you know, diverted him. He could not -be serious. He laughed. It was as if he had happened upon a wood nymph -in seven-button kid gloves! She misinterpreted his laughter, believing -that he intended to ridicule the pastoral delights of East Village. - -“I’m not ashamed of Vermont,” she said, drawing away a little. “I can’t -bear to have it laughed at. You would laugh at East Village, Mr. -Archibald—you laugh at everything. You are not sincere. You have too -much of the city in you—too much of its glitter and—” She caught his -eyes directed laughingly upon her bangles, and blushed guiltily. - -“Time works its changes, don’t you know,” he said. “Even you, Miss -Elvira, are a _little_ affected.” - -“I hate myself for it,” she said; “I _do_ find myself growing to like -things I never cared for before. I think of what I have on from morning -to night,” she confessed, guiltily, with an imploring glance at her -landlord. - -“Can the dead dulness of midsummer in the city have wrought so wondrous -a change?” he laughed. “How very gay, really, you will be next winter.” - -“Seriously,” said Elvira, “I look forward to a visit to East Village as -a complete change and rest. When I think of the white, dead walls of our -meetinghouse, I am glad; when I think of the lack of color in everybody -up there, it makes me glad; when I think of the plainness of everything, -the simpleness, the _truth_ of everything, I’m glad to go back. But -don’t you—don’t come up to Vermont, Mr. Archibald. Really, please, -don’t.” - -Again Archibald felt impelled to seize her white, pretty hand, and tell -his story. He had never come to so intimate a point before. What chance -had he ever to come so near again? All that his mother and sisters could -write would have no effect upon him now. All that his friends at the -club would say, all that his Aunt Newbold would say—his Aunt Newbold was -the formidable dragon of his family—nothing, he felt sure, would alter -his mind. He had deliberated a month, he would deliberate no more. -Besides, she was going away; perhaps if he did _not_ speak his -opportunity would never again occur. He paled a little as he was about -to open his lips. - -Bother! - -The chalk-faced maid entered with a card on a silver tray. - - - V. - -Mr. Jerome Archibald had very few hatreds; people whom he disliked he -carefully avoided. Being fastidious to an extreme, he had few friends, -but he likewise had no enemies. He had, however, a certain cousin who -lived in Boston, who had in some way early offended him, and for whom he -continued to have a most inexplicable dislike. Hunnewell Hollis was a -Harvard man, who had been a great swell at college, and who was -considered “clevah.” He was a year or two older than Archibald, and he -usually presumed a little upon his age and upon his superior education. -It was Hunnewell Hollis’s card which was brought up on the silver tray. - -Archibald impatiently rose and went down to the reception-room. There he -found Hollis walking up and down the room, apparently in some -excitement. - -“Jerry, this won’t do, old man!—heard ladies’ voices upstairs! ’Twon’t -do! Lucky I ran down with the yacht. Now I’m going to carry you off with -me. By the way, Somers and Billy Nahant and Jack Chadwick are here, and -I took the liberty to invite them here overnight—knew you were -alone—knew you would be glad to put them up.” - -“By Jove, you do me great honor! Unfortunately I haven’t room for -you—I’ve only just let the house—taken—by Jove! I must take in the -sign.” - -Archibald’s face betrayed no sign of his justifiable prevarication. - -“Well, then, as it is dinner-time I’ll stay to dinner with you.” - -“Sorry, very sorry. But the ladies who have taken the house would think -it very odd——” - -“Well, how in the devil are _you_ dining with them, Jerry?” - -“They asked me, in order to discuss the terms. A few details before -signing the lease, don’t you know!” - -“Well, it puts me in a rather awkward position; I’ve left the fellows -your address; they’ll be here shortly.” - -“Why don’t you head ’em off?” suggested Archibald, coolly. - -Mr. Hunnewell Hollis gave his cousin a glance of anger. “The whole thing -is rather fishy,” he said, suspiciously. “I trust, Jerry, for the honor -of the family——” - -Archibald never quite detested his cousin so much before. - -“There are a great many adventuresses about; they are on the lookout for -rich young men like you, Jerry,” and Hunnewell Hollis, giving his cousin -a rather gravely serious nod, took up his hat and cane and departed. - -Archibald went directly upstairs. He heard a rustle of a dress against -the furniture. Had Elvira been listening? He hoped not. - - - VI. - -Adventuress! How that odious word rang in his ears as he entered the -room where the sweet primrose face was still in its corner of the sofa. -He swore he would never write to, nor speak to, Hunnewell Hollis again. -He had done with him forever. Yet, had he heard the rustle of her dress? -It gave him a slightly disagreeable sensation to think that it were -possible. Elvira Price apparently had not moved from her seat. She was -in the same pretty attitude in which he had left her, leaning back, -easily, against the corner of the sofa, her hands crossed in her lap. As -he entered it seemed to him that she was studying his face. - -“I was so anxious about aunt,” she said. “I went out to the stairs -thinking I heard her come in. Do you know, it isn’t the Belt Line only; -she goes to a mission—a boy’s mission. She has taken the greatest -interest in it; all the teachers have gone away for the summer. It is in -an out-of-the-way part of the city, and it worries me.” - -Archibald hesitated a moment, then he said: - -“Did you hear the row with my cousin? He was very impertinent; but all -Bostonians are impertinent.” - -The name Bostonian seemed to give her a slight sensation. - -“You have been in Boston?” he asked. - -“N—yes, and I, too, found Bostonians impertinent.” She gave him an -appealing glance; then she added, after a pause, “I find New York quite -different.” - -Miss Perkins came in shortly after, much fatigued, and Archibald after -dinner went over to the club, where he fell in with Hunnewell Hollis -again, in spite of the fact that he did his best to avoid him. Hunnewell -had found his yachting friends, and they had had a very good dinner. -They were all very talkative—Somers, Billy Nahant, and Jack Chadwick. -They were in flannel suits and yachting caps, and each was bronzed and -sunburned to a fine copper hue. - -“What is the name of the people who have taken your house?” asked -Hunnewell, bluntly, after he had introduced Archibald to his friends. - -“Miss Perkins and her niece, Miss Elvira Price,” replied Archibald, -coldly. - -Instantly Billy Nahant pricked up his ears. “Why,” he said, “isn’t she -an actress? Didn’t she play in Boston last winter?” - -“Who?” asked Archibald. - -“Why, Elvira Price. She made quite a hit, I believe—her _début_ too—at -the Boston Theatre. She played to crowded houses exactly two weeks; at -the end of that time, to everyone’s surprise, she went home to Vermont, -whence she came, and she calmly gave up the stage forever!” - -Archibald’s face was a study. - -“Did you know you were letting your mother’s house to actresses?” asked -Hollis, with a sneer. - -“Miss Price is probably a different person from the one to whom Mr. -Nahant has reference,” said Archibald, coldly. - -“I remember the girl,” said Jack Chadwick. “She was very young and -beautiful, and fitted her part admirably. She made an excellent -_ingénue_. She held herself well—not at all gushing, don’t you know—but -poetic, _spirituelle_. She played in ‘A Scrap of Paper’—some picked-up -company with her. She carried the play very well. I have often wondered -what became of her.” - -“So this is the creature who has rented your house, and whom you dined -with to-night,” sneered Hollis; “an _ingénue_, indeed!” - -“Miss Price is a lady—not a ‘creature,’” said Archibald, haughtily. “As -far as I have seen, she can only honor our house by remaining under its -roof.” And Archibald bowed stiffly, and took his leave in the midst of -an embarrassed silence. - - - VII. - -He preferred not to see Elvira again before she took her departure for -Vermont the next day. Her aunt remained in the city to look after her -“mission work.” Archibald presented her, as the gift of a rich, unknown -friend, fifty dollars—their board-money—to send some of her boys into -the country. After Elvira’s departure he became very despondent. -Elvira’s image was broken to him, and while she had not become in his -mind quite an adventuress, yet she had concealed her former life from -him. She had deceived him. - -But as the days went by and he missed her, he found that he must speak -to Miss Perkins about Elvira’s acting, or go through a serious case of -nervous prostration. He said very bluntly to her, one day, at dinner: - -“So I hear your niece is a great actress.” - -Miss Perkins gave him a quick, sharp glance. - -“She _has_ acted,” she replied. “But Elvira Price had too much -conscience to act _long_.” - -He gave a sigh of relief. - -“She acted in Boston, because she was bound to try it. She wanted to try -everything—everything that would keep her father out of the poor-house -and educate the family. But acting, Mr. Archibald, is a dreadful -business! As soon as Elvira saw into it a little she quit. The air -wasn’t pure enough, somehow, for her. Elvira, she needs awful pure air!” - -Again Archibald felt a certain glow of satisfaction steal over him. - -“Do you know,” he said, after a suitable pause, “I am more than -half-inclined to make her angry by running up to East Village.” - -Miss Perkins gave a little quinzied laugh of satisfaction. She was -beginning to like Archibald very much. - -“It would startle Elvira; but she’d be pleased,” ventured the thin old -maid. “She’d be pleased—in spite of everything!” - -A few days later Archibald, after half a day’s journey, found himself in -Vermont. As the train drew near East Village the mountains grew higher -and the scenery wilder. He could see the great August moon roll itself -above the high crest of the mountains to the west. Though Archibald was -far from superstitious, he was pained to observe that he saw the moon -over his left shoulder. - -It was late when he stumbled from the steps of the car upon the wooden -platform of the station at East Village. It was dark, also, and to him, -extraordinarily cold. He groped his way, shivering, past a blinding -reflector, where half a dozen men in cow-hide boots were examing a list -of invoices, to what he could dimly outline as the village stage. No one -spoke to him, and he found that no one seemed to care whether he, the -sole passenger, was carried. He had visions of an unpleasant nature of -being deposited inside the coach in a shed or stable to await the -morning. He felt the stage pitch and toss for twenty minutes like a bark -upon an angry sea. When all was still again he found that the driver had -drawn up before a white-pillared old-fashioned house, which stood a -little back from the street. At the side of the gate a small wooden -building bore the sign, which was illuminated by the stage lamp, - - _Ephraim B. Price, Attorney at Law._ - -“Oh,” said Archibald, “this is Elvira’s house, and the driver is -delivering my box of flowers.” - -He leaned forward, hoping to catch sight of the fair young girl when the -front-door opened to take in the box. But he was disappointed. The -impatient driver had merely left it on the steps of the high, -white-pillared portico, after giving the door-bell a vigorous pull. - -Then followed a further few minutes of pitching and tossing, and the -stage drew up before the tavern-door. A row of a dozen men, whose hats -were drawn down over their eyes, and whose feet fell instantaneously -from the rail to the floor as the coach drew up, came forward, and one -of them betrayed a desire to grasp Archibald’s in his own horny hand. -“Guess ye’ll stop overnight? Th’ain’t no other place. ’Sprised to see a -stranger to-night, tew. Will you go in an’ sign—will you, sir?” - -“So this uncouth ruffian,” thought Archibald, “is Elvira’s ideal -landlord! No wonder she distrusts me!” - -“We’re local temp’rance,” said the landlord. “An’ no licker’s being seen -to East Village for nigh six years. Not a drop, sir, an’ it’s bustin’ my -ho-tel higher’n a kite. Yes, it is!” - -Archibald expressed commiseration. - -“As I tell’d Squar’ Price, ‘yeou high-toned, ’ristocratic temp’rance -folk’ll hurt East Village when ye close the hotel!’ Why, when a gent -comes up here fr’ the city, he wants to be able to call fer a glass o’ -gin or a glass o’ whiskey ’s often ’s he likes.” - -Archibald thought he detected the faint smell of liquor upon the -landlord’s breath as he talked, and it occurred to him that his -obtrusively free-and-easy-manner was the result of a secret violation of -the prohibitory local license law. “Bein’ fr’ the city, as you be,” said -the landlord, lowering his voice to a whisper, and placing his heavy -hand on Archibald’s shoulder familiarly, “I calc’late you’re cold an’ -ready for a tidy drink. I calc’late I’m talkin’ to a gent as is used ter -lickerin’ up, even ef ’tis agin the law?” To humor him, Archibald -admitted that he had no stringent prohibitory sentiments. - -“Well then, good! Jest you foller me!” - -Archibald followed the landlord out into the hotel yard, where the -latter pulled up the flaps of a cellar-door. Hearing the creaking sound, -and taking it for an admonitory signal, the row of men on the hotel -piazza, who had resumed their seats, again dropped their feet on the -floor, rose, and came out into the yard in Indian file, in perfect -silence. Archibald followed his landlord down into the darkness of the -cellar, where, beneath the dim light of a solitary candle he perceived a -cask with a wooden spigot, and near it half a dozen tin cups. The men -filed down the steps behind him. “You’ve heerd o’ apple jack?” asked the -landlord, in a whisper. - -Archibald nodded. - -“Drink that, then!” and the landlord handed him a cupful of the -beverage. It was enough to intoxicate him. He drank but a very little; -as he saw the other men were waiting, he passed the cup on to them. - -“Welcome to East Village, stranger,” said one of the men, drinking. “Be -you up ’ere a-sellin’ marchandize?” - -“Oh, no!” - -“Be you come to see the Squar’?” - -“Well—perhaps—yes.” - -“Wa’l, this is a dead give away!” and the men laughed noisily, as -rustics will. “Don’t mention this ’ere cider to Squar’ Price!” - - -The next morning was delicious, the air clear and smelling of the -mountains. The mist hung above the distant river, and a line of hills -showed their green wooded outline above it. As Archibald breathed the -sweet country air, he stepped more briskly, felt less of his city -malaria, drew into his lungs a long breath of the fresh, invigorating -summer wind, which seemed to come to him across the high upland, from -such a vast distance. - -He came to the old colonial gate and entered. The Hon. Ephraim B. Price -was just at the moment sauntering down the gravel path from his house to -his law office. As he saw Archibald enter, he came forward somewhat more -rapidly. He was a man of large frame, gaunt rather than spare, of -prominent cheekbones, of lengthy chin-beard. His eyes were very keen, -and his entire expression was one of patient alertness—as if there was -very little to be alert over, but a deep necessity of keeping up a -reputation. Archibald learned afterward how indefatigable a partisan, -and how strenuous a believer in the Republican party the Hon. Ephraim -was. - -“Sir,” he said, after greeting Archibald, and looking with a grin of -pity upon his engraved card—a grin directed chiefly to the “Mr.” before -Archibald’s name—“you are Elvira’s landlord down to New York—tell me, -how is your city and State going, do you think?” - -Archibald felt taken aback. Politics were something of which he knew -nothing. He was but barely aware that it was a presidential year. In the -city he kept severely out of politics, as hardly the employment of -gentlemen. - -“I—I—think it will go Democratic.” - -A more violent frown than before. “If I thought so, sir; if I imagined -so; if for one instant I believed that what we fought for during the -war—Eh, Elvira? Here is Mr. Archibald!” - -Then the Hon. Ephraim turned abruptly and entered his office, where, it -may be added, he sat for the next hour, his feet on the cold stove -before him, meditating where his next fee was to come from, and breaking -out with an occasional invective against the wicked democracy. - -Before the old gentleman was a square window which looked out over the -town. All day long he sat before this, as upon a watch-tower—a censor of -village morals and deportment. - -“Father is so interested in the election,” apologized Elvira. “But how -strange to see you here; and I told you not to!” - -She held a small gray kitten in her arms, which she stroked slowly. She -was still in his favorite white muslin, and she had a gentle, sweet -flush of pleasure in her face. - -“I came, Miss Price—because—don’t you know—I—aw—missed you,” and he -smiled. - -“You are very good. How is Aunt Perkins? Did she bring her mission boys -to your house? She has written that a friend of yours has given fifty -dollars for the boys. Do tell me about it. Is she well? Have any more -boarders come?” - -She plied him with questions as they strolled toward the white-pillared -portico. The house was old and shabby, but he did not notice it. The -place was run down and impoverished, but it seemed very beautiful to -him, for he noticed that she wore one of his roses in her lustrous hair. - -Entering the hallway he met some of the younger brothers and sisters, -and felt a sudden strange affection spring up in his heart for them. -Elvira took him through into a gloomy parlor, lined with plain -hair-cloth furniture. On the walls were several portraits. “This was my -mother,” said the girl, affectionately, pointing to what Archibald felt -to be a hideous daub, a red-faced woman in black, against a green -background. It was the portrait by Mr. Raymond, whose abode was now the -poor-house. “She died only two years ago——” - -“I fancy if she had lived,” said Archibald, “you would not have -tried—the stage?” - -She looked at him calmly a moment. - -“That Boston man has told you?” - -“Yes, I learned the fact from his friends.” - -“I shall never—again.” There was a despairing pathos in her voice. - -“Elvira,” he said, slowly, “as I see it—I think it was very noble of you -to try.” - -Then, unaccountably to him, she burst into tears. - -“It is what I love—what I long for—to be an actress—a great actress,” -she sobbed. “But I can’t—I can’t! I can’t exist with those -creatures—those horrible men who hang about you! No one knows what I -endured! No one knows what, too, I gave up when I left the stage and -came home; but I _had_ to.” - -He leaned forward in sympathy. - -“You may say what you will, but there is no Art like acting, and nothing -so fine as applause. Oh, that I could bring myself to do it—to be strong -enough to do it—to save our fortunes—to help father. You little know how -I have suffered, Mr. Archibald.” - -“By Jove—I—I quite like you for it!” - -He was on his feet at her side. Impulsively he bent down and whispered -close to her ear. “Let me be your audience the rest of my life! Act for -_me_—let me applaud everything—anything you do, my darling! always! -always!” - -She put him away. - -“I don’t feel I have acted just right _with_ you,” she said. “I should -have told you that I was—or might be again—an actress.” She spoke -coldly. “I don’t believe you want them in your boarding-house. They are -not always desirable, I believe!” Elvira’s eyes were fastened on the -floor. - -Archibald paced to and fro in the parlor. “Confound her odd New England -conscience!” he muttered to himself. Seizing her hands, he cried, -passionately, “I, too, must confess. Elvira, I loved you that first day -you came. _I loved you!_ Therefore I let you think—it _was_ a boarding -house.” - -“And it isn’t—it’s your own private—Oh, Mr. Archibald!” - -She sat and looked at him with a horrified stare. The full truth of his -imposition began to steal upon her gradually. Then her face fell and she -averted it, as she felt that a fatal untruth had come between them. She -rose quietly and left him standing near her. She went upstairs to her -room and threw herself upon her bed in an agony of tears. - -Through it all Archibald had merely smiled! - - - VIII. - -But when she left him he felt rather weak for a moment, as if his city -malaria had returned upon him with a double force. As Elvira showed no -signs of returning, he amused himself by turning over the leaves of the -family photograph album. Face by face revealed the stern, set, arid, -Puritan features, the hard, determined chins, and the “firmness,” which, -in the person of the Hon. Ephraim, he felt still dominated and -controlled the public affairs of East Village. He threw down the album -with a feeling of impotent rage against the survival of this colonial -“narrowness,” as he liked to call it. He walked out of the house and -wandered, much crestfallen and full of malaria, along the village street -toward the hotel. A great many farm wagons were tied along the sidewalk, -and there were numbers of fresh-cheeked country girls walking in threes -and fours, and sweeping the sidewalk as they went. Upon a slight -elevation stood a white wooden meetinghouse, with a white steeple, and -it gave him a chill even on that warm morning to look at it—it _looked_ -so cold. Small groups of hard-featured farmers in fur caps stood on the -corners of the streets discussing, presumably, the crops. He wondered if -the fur caps were needed in that arid, bleak region to keep warm the -natives’ sense of Right and Wrong? He made his way out, beneath some -beautiful elms, into a small, old-fashioned burying-ground, where he -discovered that “erring sinners” apparently comprised the only element -of those who were requested to “_Pause and Read_.” Feeling himself to be -now, for some reason, a distinctly immoral person, he read some of the -quaint epitaphs, to which he was invited, in a spirit of humility, which -presently changed to amusement. In death as in life, the hard, stern old -village characters preserved on their headstones a fund of grim humor -for the “sinner,” which in Archibald’s instance made him smile. “Oh,” he -sighed to himself, “I long to take her away from all this sort of -thing—forever!” - -He took a long walk in the afternoon, and returned to the hotel to find -a coldly worded note from Elvira inviting him around to tea. He removed -the stains of his walk, and dressed himself with his usual care. He -found Elvira waiting for him beneath the high white pillars, in an -unbecoming, and as it seemed to him, forbidding dress of black. Her face -seemed unusually stern and relentless. There were traces of tears in her -red eyelids, but the tears were dried away now, and her eyes were very -bright and hard. - -“Don’t say anything _now_. Father feels very deeply about it. We have -had a long talk. When he heard of the—of the unfortunate house affair—he -was _so_ angry I could hardly pacify him.” - -Archibald’s heart sank within him. He fairly shivered. - -“He said that he did not want me to lower my standard,” continued -Elvira, in her clear, musical, passionless voice. “And I told him that -he need have no fears. I wanted to see you first, and tell you. Let us -not have any _feeling_ about it.” - -“Any _feeling_!” exclaimed Archibald. “Why—how can we help it!” - -“Let us act as if we had never understood one another. I will go back to -the city with you, and Aunt Perkins and I will find some other place at -once.” - -“Go back with me—and expect me to show no feeling! Elvira, this is -preposterous!” - -“Then I will go back alone.” She compressed her lips, just as he had -observed her father do. - -“I beg pardon, Elvira, do you mean—can you mean that I can never—I can -never hope!” - -She nodded her pretty flower-like head gravely. “Come in to tea, won’t -you?” she said, coolly. “I want father to hear you talk about Art.” - -He turned on his heel. At last he, too, was angry. - -“Thanks, awfully,” he said. “But if I go back to the hotel now, I shall -just have time to pack my valise and catch the evening train.” - -He walked rapidly away, leaving her standing upon the white-pillared -portico, looking with pure, sweet, upturned face, like a saint who has -for all time renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil. Had he -looked back, Mr. Jerome Archibald’s tender heart would have been touched -by her attitude; he would have returned, and, against her will, clasped -her in his arms and covered her pale lips with warm kisses. It might -have melted her high “standard” a little. But he let a night intervene -without seeing her, and the entering wedge of her high sense of duty did -its work before morning. He determined to remain another day and make a -further trial. When he called the next day she was obdurate. “Love -cannot be built upon deceit and untruth,” she said, sententiously. “I -was not frank, you were not. It is better that we should part. I could -never hold up my head—I could never face the world. I know what they -would call me. They would call me an _adventuress!_ and they would hate -me for being successful. Yes—your mother, your sisters—everyone.” - -“But you were perfectly innocent about it, Elvira.” - -There was a little pause. - -“I, too, was innocent. I meant no more than to have you near me, where I -could learn to know you—love you—and now, really, it seems as if you had -built up a mountain of ice between us, don’t you know.” - -She merely shook her head. - -When Archibald returned to the city his malaria compelled him to go away -again almost immediately to Newport. There, a few weeks later, his agent -wrote him that he had succeeded in renting the house “at an exorbitant -figure to a very rich tenant without children”—thus fulfilling his -mother’s conditions to the letter. He went back to the city, recovered -in health, to pack up a few personal effects, and found to his surprise -that Miss Perkins and her niece were, at the moment he arrived, in the -house. They had taken board on Ninth Street, and had gone up to take a -last look of the charming interior where, Elvira guiltily acknowledged, -life had been “so wrongly pleasant.” He found Elvira holding a fan in -her hand and seated pensively in an old Venetian chair in what was -formerly her studio. As he entered the room she rose, blushing a most -vivid red, and as rapidly turning pale again. - -“Mr. Archibald!” she exclaimed. “I did not know you were in the city!” - -“I have been here only an hour,” he said, stiffly. - -“It is time for us to go;” and she turned to the door. - -“Elvira!” His face looked sick and ghastly. - -“Well?” She drew herself up very coldly. - -“Are you made of stone?” - -“Mr. Archibald, what can you mean?” - -“My child, you are capable of grinding one who loves you into -powder—like—er—a millstone!” - -“Aunt Perkins!” she called out, “let us go!” - -“No,” he cried, “I will not let you go. You shall hear me! I love you! -Do you hear? And you shall not leave this house until you say you will -be my wife! I know you care for me—everything tells me so—but you will -wear your own and my heart out with your hard, cruel conscience! What -brought you here? _You loved me!_ Why have you been sitting in this -room? You love me, Elvira—I know it—I feel it!” - -Gently he drew her to him and kissed her. She laid her head on his -shoulder and breathed a little contented sigh. “_I don’t think this—is -right!_” she said. - - - - - MRS. MANSTEY’S VIEW - - BY EDITH WHARTON - - -The view from Mrs. Manstey’s window was not a striking one, but to her -at least it was full of interest and beauty. Mrs. Manstey occupied the -back room on the third floor of a New York boarding-house, in a street -where the ash-barrels lingered late on the sidewalk and the gaps in the -pavement would have staggered a Quintus Curtius. She was the widow of a -clerk in a large wholesale house, and his death had left her alone, for -her only daughter had married in California, and could not afford the -long journey to New York to see her mother. Mrs. Manstey, perhaps, might -have joined her daughter in the West, but they had now been so many -years apart that they had ceased to feel any need of each other’s -society, and their intercourse had long been limited to the exchange of -a few perfunctory letters, written with indifference by the daughter, -and with difficulty by Mrs. Manstey, whose right hand was growing stiff -with gout. Even had she felt a stronger desire for her daughter’s -companionship, Mrs. Manstey’s increasing infirmity, which caused her to -dread the three flights of stairs between her room and the street, would -have given her pause on the eve of undertaking so long a journey; and -without, perhaps, formulating these reasons she had long since accepted -as a matter of course her solitary life in New York. - -She was, indeed, not quite lonely, for a few friends still toiled up now -and then to her room; but their visits grew rare as the years went by. -Mrs. Manstey had never been a sociable woman, and during her husband’s -lifetime his companionship had been all-sufficient to her. For many -years she had cherished a desire to live in the country, to have a -hen-house and a garden; but this longing had faded with age, leaving -only in the breast of the uncommunicative old woman a vague tenderness -for plants and animals. It was, perhaps, this tenderness which made her -cling so fervently to the view from her window, a view in which the most -optimistic eye would at first have failed to discover anything -admirable. - -Mrs. Manstey, from her coign of vantage (a slightly projecting -bow-window where she nursed an ivy and a succession of -unwholesome-looking bulbs), looked out first upon the yard of her own -dwelling, of which, however, she could get but a restricted glimpse. -Still, her gaze took in the topmost boughs of the ailanthus below her -window, and she knew how early each year the clump of dicentra strung -its bending stalk with hearts of pink. - -But of greater interest were the yards beyond. Being for the most part -attached to boarding-houses they were in a state of chronic untidiness -and fluttering, on certain days of the week, with miscellaneous garments -and frayed table-cloths. In spite of this Mrs. Manstey found much to -admire in the long vista which she commanded. Some of the yards were, -indeed, but stony wastes, with grass in the cracks of the pavement and -no shade in spring save that afforded by the intermittent leafage of the -clothes-lines. These yards Mrs. Manstey disapproved of, but the others, -the green ones, she loved. She had grown used to their disorder; the -broken barrels, the empty bottles and paths unswept no longer annoyed -her; hers was the happy faculty of dwelling on the pleasanter side of -the prospect before her. - -[Illustration: [Magnolia]] - -In the very next enclosure did not a magnolia open its hard white -flowers against the watery blue of April? And was there not, a little -way down the line, a fence foamed over every May by lilac waves of -wistaria? Farther still, a horse-chestnut lifted its candelabra of buff -and pink blossoms above broad fans of foliage; while in the opposite -yard June was sweet with the breath of a neglected syringa, which -persisted in growing in spite of the countless obstacles opposed to its -welfare. - -But if nature occupied the front rank in Mrs. Manstey’s view, there was -much of a more personal character to interest her in the aspect of the -houses and their inmates. She deeply disapproved of the mustard-colored -curtains which had lately been hung in the doctor’s window opposite; but -she glowed with pleasure when the house farther down had its old bricks -washed with a coat of paint. The occupants of the houses did not often -show themselves at the back windows, but the servants were always in -sight. Noisy slatterns, Mrs. Manstey pronounced the greater number; she -knew their ways and hated them. But to the quiet cook in the newly -painted house, whose mistress bullied her, and who secretly fed the -stray cats at nightfall, Mrs. Manstey’s warmest sympathies were given. -On one occasion her feelings were racked by the neglect of a housemaid, -who for two days forgot to feed the parrot committed to her care. On the -third day, Mrs. Manstey, in spite of her gouty hand, had just penned a -letter, beginning: “Madam, it is now three days since your parrot has -been fed,” when the forgetful maid appeared at the window with a cup of -seed in her hand. - -But in Mrs. Manstey’s more meditative moods it was the narrowing -perspective of far-off yards which pleased her best. She loved, at -twilight, when the distant brown-stone spire seemed melting in the fluid -yellow of the west, to lose herself in vague memories of a trip to -Europe, made years ago, and now reduced in her mind’s eye to a pale -phantasmagoria of indistinct steeples and dreamy skies. Perhaps at heart -Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at all events she was sensible of many -changes of color unnoticed by the average eye, and dear to her as the -green of early spring was the black lattice of branches against a cold -sulphur sky at the close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny -thaws of March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like -ink-spots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better -still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced the -clear-cut tracery of winter. She even watched with a certain interest -the trail of smoke from a far-off factory chimney, and missed a detail -in the landscape when the factory was closed and the smoke disappeared. - -Mrs. Manstey, in the long hours which she spent at her window, was not -idle. She read a little, and knitted numberless stockings; but the view -surrounded and shaped her life as the sea does a lonely island. When her -rare callers came it was difficult for her to detach herself from the -contemplation of the opposite window-washing, or the scrutiny of certain -green points in a neighboring flowerbed which might, or might not, turn -into hyacinths, while she feigned an interest in her visitor’s anecdotes -about some unknown grandchild. Mrs. Manstey’s real friends were the -denizens of the yards, the hyacinths, the magnolia, the green parrot, -the maid who fed the cats, the doctor who studied late behind his -mustard-colored curtains; and the confidant of her tenderer musings was -the church-spire floating in the sunset. - -One April day, as she sat in her usual place, with knitting cast aside -and eyes fixed on the blue sky mottled with round clouds, a knock at the -door announced the entrance of her landlady. Mrs. Manstey did not care -for her landlady, but she submitted to her visits with ladylike -resignation. To-day, however, it seemed harder than usual to turn from -the blue sky and the blossoming magnolia to Mrs. Sampson’s unsuggestive -face, and Mrs. Manstey was conscious of a distinct effort as she did so. - -“The magnolia is out earlier than usual this year, Mrs. Sampson,” she -remarked, yielding to a rare impulse, for she seldom alluded to the -absorbing interest of her life. In the first place it was a topic not -likely to appeal to her visitors and, besides, she lacked the power of -expression and could not have given utterance to her feelings had she -wished to. - -“The what, Mrs. Manstey?” inquired the landlady, glancing about the room -as if to find there the explanation of Mrs. Manstey’s statement. - -“The magnolia in the next yard—in Mrs. Black’s yard,” Mrs. Manstey -repeated. - -“Is it, indeed? I didn’t know there was a magnolia there,” said Mrs. -Sampson, carelessly. Mrs. Manstey looked at her; she did not know that -there was a magnolia in the next yard! - -“By the way,” Mrs. Sampson continued, “speaking of Mrs. Black reminds me -that the work on the extension is to begin next week.” - -“The what?” it was Mrs. Manstey’s turn to ask. - -“The extension,” said Mrs. Sampson, nodding her head in the direction of -the ignored magnolia. “You knew, of course, that Mrs. Black was going to -build an extension to her house? Yes, ma’am, I hear it is to run right -back to the end of the yard. How she can afford to build an extension in -these hard times I don’t see; but she always was crazy about building. -She used to keep a boarding-house in Seventeenth Street, and she nearly -ruined herself then by sticking out bow-windows and what not; I should -have thought that would have cured her of building, but I guess it’s a -disease, like drink. Anyhow, the work is to begin on Monday.” - -Mrs. Manstey had grown pale. She always spoke slowly, so the landlady -did not heed the long pause which followed. At last Mrs. Manstey said: -“Do you know how high the extension will be?” - -“That’s the most absurd part of it. The extension is to be built right -up to the roof of the main building; now, did you ever?” - -Mrs. Manstey paused again. “Won’t it be a great annoyance to you, Mrs. -Sampson?” she asked. - -“I should say it would. But there’s no help for it; if people have got a -mind to build extensions there’s no law to prevent ’em, that I’m aware -of.” Mrs. Manstey, knowing this, was silent. “There is no help for it,” -Mrs. Sampson repeated, “but if I _am_ a church member, I wouldn’t be so -sorry if it ruined Eliza Black. Well, good-day, Mrs. Manstey; I’m glad -to find you so comfortable.” - -So comfortable—so comfortable! Left to herself the old woman turned once -more to the window. How lovely the view was that day! The blue sky with -its round clouds shed a brightness over everything; the ailanthus had -put on a tinge of yellow-green, the hyacinths were budding, the magnolia -flowers looked more than ever like rosettes carved in alabaster. Soon -the wistaria would bloom, then the horse-chestnut; but not for her. -Between her eyes and them a barrier of brick and mortar would swiftly -rise; presently even the spire would disappear, and all her radiant -world be blotted out. Mrs. Manstey sent away untouched the dinner-tray -brought to her that evening. She lingered in the window until the windy -sunset died in bat-colored dusk; then, going to bed, she lay sleepless -all night. - -Early the next day she was up and at the window. It was raining, but -even through the slanting gray gauze the scene had its charm—and then -the rain was so good for the trees. She had noticed the day before that -the ailanthus was growing dusty. - -“Of course I might move,” said Mrs. Manstey aloud, and turning from the -window she looked about her room. She might move, of course; so might -she be flayed alive; but she was not likely to survive either operation. -The room, though far less important to her happiness than the view, was -as much a part of her existence. She had lived in it seventeen years. -She knew every stain on the wallpaper, every rent in the carpet; the -light fell in a certain way on her engravings, her books had grown -shabby on their shelves, her bulbs and ivy were used to their window and -knew which way to lean to the sun. “We are all too old to move,” she -said. - -That afternoon it cleared. Wet and radiant the blue reappeared through -torn rags of cloud; the ailanthus sparkled; the earth in the -flower-borders looked rich and warm. It was Thursday, and on Monday the -building of the extension was to begin. - -On Sunday afternoon a card was brought to Mrs. Black, as she was engaged -in gathering up the fragments of the boarders’ dinner in the basement. -The card, black-edged, bore Mrs. Manstey’s name. - -“One of Mrs. Sampson’s boarders; wants to move, I suppose. Well, I can -give her a room next year in the extension. Dinah,” said Mrs. Black, -“tell the lady I’ll be upstairs in a minute.” - -Mrs. Black found Mrs. Manstey standing in the long parlor garnished with -statuettes and antimacassars; in that house she could not sit down. - -Stooping hurriedly to open the register, which let out a cloud of dust, -Mrs. Black advanced to her visitor. - -“I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Manstey; take a seat, please,” the landlady -remarked in her prosperous voice, the voice of a woman who can afford to -build extensions. There was no help for it; Mrs. Manstey sat down. - -“Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?” Mrs. Black continued. “My -house is full at present, but I am going to build an extension, and——” - -“It is about the extension that I wish to speak,” said Mrs. Manstey, -suddenly. “I am a poor woman, Mrs. Black, and I have never been a happy -one. I shall have to talk about myself first to—to make you understand.” - -Mrs. Black, astonished but imperturbable, bowed at this parenthesis. - -“I never had what I wanted,” Mrs. Manstey continued. “It was always one -disappointment after another. For years I wanted to live in the country. -I dreamed and dreamed about it; but we never could manage it. There was -no sunny window in our house, and so all my plants died. My daughter -married years ago and went away—besides, she never cared for the same -things. Then my husband died and I was left alone. That was seventeen -years ago. I went to live at Mrs. Sampson’s, and I have been there ever -since. I have grown a little infirm, as you see, and I don’t get out -often; only on fine days, if I am feeling very well. So you can -understand my sitting a great deal in my window—the back window on the -third floor——” - -“Well, Mrs. Manstey,” said Mrs. Black, liberally, “I could give you a -back room, I dare say; one of the new rooms in the ex——” - -“But I don’t want to move; I can’t move,” said Mrs. Manstey, almost with -a scream. “And I came to tell you that if you build that extension I -shall have no view from my window—no view! Do you understand?” - -Mrs. Black thought herself face to face with a lunatic, and she had -always heard that lunatics must be humored. - -“Dear me, dear me,” she remarked, pushing her chair back a little way, -“that is too bad, isn’t it? Why, I never thought of that. To be sure, -the extension _will_ interfere with your view, Mrs. Manstey.” - -“You do understand?” Mrs. Manstey gasped. - -“Of course I do. And I’m real sorry about it, too. But there, don’t you -worry, Mrs. Manstey. I guess we can fix that all right.” - -Mrs. Manstey rose from her seat, and Mrs. Black slipped toward the door. - -“What do you mean by fixing it? Do you mean that I can induce you to -change your mind about the extension? Oh, Mrs. Black, listen to me. I -have two thousand dollars in the bank and I could manage, I know I could -manage, to give you a thousand if——” Mrs. Manstey paused; the tears were -rolling down her cheeks. - -“There, there, Mrs. Manstey, don’t you worry,” repeated Mrs. Black, -soothingly. “I am sure we can settle it. I am sorry that I can’t stay -and talk about it any longer, but this is such a busy time of day, with -supper to get——” - -Her hand was on the door-knob, but with sudden vigor Mrs. Manstey seized -her wrist. - -“You are not giving me a definite answer. Do you mean to say that you -accept my proposition?” - -“Why, I’ll think it over, Mrs. Manstey, certainly I will. I wouldn’t -annoy you for the world——” - -“But the work is to begin to-morrow, I am told,” Mrs. Manstey persisted. - -Mrs. Black hesitated. “It shan’t begin, I promise you that; I’ll send -word to the builder this very night.” Mrs. Manstey tightened her hold. - -“You are not deceiving me, are you?” she said. - -“No—no,” stammered Mrs. Black. “How can you think such a thing of me, -Mrs. Manstey?” - -Slowly Mrs. Manstey’s clutch relaxed, and she passed through the open -door. “One thousand dollars,” she repeated, pausing in the hall; then -she let herself out of the house and hobbled down the steps, supporting -herself on the cast-iron railing. - -“My goodness,” exclaimed Mrs. Black, shutting and bolting the hall-door, -“I never knew the old woman was crazy! And she looks so quiet and -ladylike, too.” - -Mrs. Manstey slept well that night, but early the next morning she was -awakened by a sound of hammering. She got to her window with what haste -she might and, looking out, saw that Mrs. Black’s yard was full of -workmen. Some were carrying loads of brick from the kitchen to the yard, -others beginning to demolish the old-fashioned wooden balcony which -adorned each story of Mrs. Black’s house. Mrs. Manstey saw that she had -been deceived. At first she thought of confiding her trouble to Mrs. -Sampson, but a settled discouragement soon took possession of her and -she went back to bed, not caring to see what was going on. - -Toward afternoon, however, feeling that she must know the worst, she -rose and dressed herself. It was a laborious task, for her hands were -stiffer than usual, and the hooks and buttons seemed to evade her. - -When she seated herself in the window, she saw that the workmen had -removed the upper part of the balcony, and that the bricks had -multiplied since morning. One of the men, a coarse fellow with a bloated -face, picked a magnolia blossom and, after smelling it, threw it to the -ground; the next man, carrying a load of bricks, trod on the flower in -passing. - -“Look out, Jim,” called one of the men to another who was smoking a -pipe, “if you throw matches around near those barrels of paper you’ll -have the old tinder-box burning down before you know it.” And Mrs. -Manstey, leaning forward, perceived that there were several barrels of -paper and rubbish under the wooden balcony. - -At length the work ceased and twilight fell. The sunset was perfect and -a roseate light, transfiguring the distant spire, lingered late in the -west. When it grew dark Mrs. Manstey drew down the shades and proceeded, -in her usual methodical manner, to light her lamp. She always filled and -lit it with her own hands, keeping a kettle of kerosene on a -zinc-covered shelf in a closet. As the lamp-light filled the room it -assumed its peaceful aspect. The books and pictures and plants seemed, -like their mistress, to settle themselves down for another quiet -evening, and Mrs. Manstey, as was her wont, drew up her armchair to the -table and began to knit. - -That night she could not sleep. The weather had changed and a wild wind -was abroad, blotting the stars with close-driven clouds. Mrs. Manstey -rose once or twice and looked out of the window; but of the view nothing -was discernible save a tardy light or two in the opposite windows. These -lights at last went out, and Mrs. Manstey, who had watched for their -extinction, began to dress herself. She was in evident haste, for she -merely flung a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress and wrapped her -head in a scarf; then she opened her closet and cautiously took out the -kettle of kerosene. Having slipped a bundle of wooden matches into her -pocket she proceeded, with increasing precautions, to unlock her door, -and a few moments later she was feeling her way down the dark staircase, -led by a glimmer of gas from the lower hall. At length she reached the -bottom of the stairs and began the more difficult descent into the utter -darkness of the basement. Here, however, she could move more freely, as -there was less danger of being overheard; and without much delay she -contrived to unlock the iron door leading into the yard. A gust of cold -wind smote her as she stepped out and groped shiveringly under the -clothes-lines. - -That morning at three o’clock an alarm of fire brought the engines to -Mrs. Black’s door, and also brought Mrs. Sampson’s startled boarders to -their windows. The wooden balcony at the back of Mrs. Black’s house was -ablaze, and among those who watched the progress of the flames was Mrs. -Manstey, leaning in her thin dressing-gown from the open window. - -The fire, however, was soon put out, and the frightened occupants of the -house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find that -little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes and -smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was Mrs. -Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a not -unnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an -open window at her age in a dressing-gown. It was easy to see that she -was very ill, but no one had guessed how grave the doctor’s verdict -would be, and the faces gathered that evening about Mrs. Sampson’s table -were awe-struck and disturbed. Not that any of the boarders knew Mrs. -Manstey well; she “kept to herself,” as they said, and seemed to fancy -herself too good for them; but then it is always disagreeable to have -anyone dying in the house, and, as one lady observed to another: “It -might just as well have been you or me, my dear.” - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - -But it was only Mrs. Manstey; and she was dying, as she had lived, -lonely if not alone. The doctor had sent a trained nurse, and Mrs. -Sampson, with muffled step, came in from time to time; but both, to Mrs. -Manstey, seemed remote and unsubstantial as the figures in a dream. All -day she said nothing; but when she was asked for her daughter’s address -she shook her head. At times the nurse noticed that she seemed to be -listening attentively for some sound which did not come; then again she -dozed. - -The next morning at daylight she was very low. The nurse called Mrs. -Sampson, and as the two bent over the old woman they saw her lips move. - -“Lift me up—out of bed,” she whispered. - -They raised her in their arms, and with her stiff hand she pointed to -the window. - -“Oh, the window—she wants to sit in the window. She used to sit there -all day,” Mrs. Sampson explained. “It can do her no harm, I suppose?” - -“Nothing matters now,” said the nurse. - -They carried Mrs. Manstey to the window and placed her in her chair. The -dawn was abroad, a jubilant spring dawn; the spire had already caught a -golden ray, though the magnolia and horse-chestnut still slumbered in -shadow. In Mrs. Black’s yard all was quiet. The charred timbers of the -balcony lay where they had fallen. It was evident that since the fire -the builders had not returned to their work. The magnolia had unfolded a -few more sculptural flowers; the view was undisturbed. - -It was hard for Mrs. Manstey to breathe. Each moment it grew more -difficult. She tried to make them open the window, but they would not -understand. If she could have tasted the air, sweet with the penetrating -ailanthus savor, it would have eased her; but the view at least was -there—the spire was golden now, the heavens had warmed from pearl to -blue, day was alight from east to west, even the magnolia had caught the -sun. - -Mrs. Manstey’s head fell back, and smiling she died. - -That day the building of the extension was resumed. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - STORIES FROM SCRIBNER - - ❦ - - STORIES OF - NEW YORK - -[Illustration: [Woman]] - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1893 - - -In this series of little books, issued under the general title “Stories -from Scribner,” the purpose has been to gather together some of the best -and most entertaining short stories written for Scribner’s Magazine -during the past few years, and to preserve them in dainty volumes -grouped under attractive subjects and decorated by a few illustrations -to brighten the pages. - -The set as arranged consists of six volumes, the first two appearing -together and the other four at intervals of about a month, as follows: - - Stories of New York. - Stories of the Railway. - Stories of the South. - Stories of the Sea. - Stories of Italy. - Stories of the Army. - -The books are furnished in three bindings, the paper being the same in -all. Each edition is prepared with great care, and every effort has been -made to secure an example of book-making as dainty and perfect as -possible. - -The paper edition is enclosed in a transparent wrapper, fastened by a -gold seal which should remain unbroken until the book reaches the hands -of the reader. Price, 50 cents a volume. - -The cloth edition has gilt top and rough edges. Price, 75 cents a -volume. - -The half calf edition is bound in the best leather and in two -colors—blue and claret—gilt top. Price, $1.50 a volume. - -_Orders for the entire set may be sent to the publishers or to any -bookseller._ - - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, New York. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. - ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74866 *** |