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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Quaint Courtships, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Quaint Courtships
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: William Dean Howells
+        Henry Mills Alden
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9490]
+This file was first posted on October 5, 2003
+Last Updated: February 25, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUAINT COURTSHIPS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Stan Goodman, David Widger, and the Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+QUAINT COURTSHIPS
+
+
+Harper's Novelettes
+
+
+Edited By William Dean Howells And Henry Mills Alden
+
+
+1906
+
+
+MARGARET DELAND
+
+AN ENCORE
+
+
+NORMAN DUNCAN
+
+A ROMANCE OF WHOOPING HARBOR
+
+
+MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN
+
+HYACINTHUS
+
+
+SEWELL FORD
+
+JANE'S GRAY EYES
+
+
+HERMAN WHITAKER
+
+A STIFF CONDITION
+
+
+MAY HARRIS
+
+IN THE INTERESTS OF CHRISTOPHER
+
+
+FRANCIS WILLING WHARTON
+
+THE WRONG DOOR
+
+
+WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+
+BRAYBRIDGE'S OFFER
+
+
+ELIA W. PEATTIE
+
+THE RUBAIYAT AND THE LINER
+
+
+ANNIE HAMILTON DONNELL
+
+THE MINISTER
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+To the perverse all courtships probably are quaint; but if ever human
+nature may be allowed the full range of originality, it may very well be
+in the exciting and very personal moments of making love. Our own
+peculiar social structure, in which the sexes have so much innocent
+freedom, and youth is left almost entirely to its own devices in the
+arrangement of double happiness, is so favorable to the expression of
+character at these supreme moments, that it is wonderful there is so
+little which is idiosyncratic in our wooings. They tend rather to a
+type, very simple, very normal, and most people get married for the
+reason that they are in love, as if it were the most matter-of-course
+affair of life. They find the fact of being in love so entirely
+satisfying to the ideal, that they seek nothing adventitious from
+circumstance to heighten their tremendous consciousness.
+
+Yet, here and there people, even American people, are so placed that
+they take from the situation a color of eccentricity, if they impart
+none to it, and the old, old story, which we all wish to have end well,
+zigzags to a fortunate close past juts and angles of individuality which
+the heroes and heroines have not willingly or wittingly thrown out. They
+would have chosen to arrive smoothly and uneventfully at the goal, as by
+far the greater majority do; and probably if they are aware of looking
+quaint to others in their progress, they do not like it. But it is this
+peculiar difference which renders them interesting and charming to the
+spectator. If we all love a lover, as Emerson says, it is not because of
+his selfish happiness, but because of the odd and unexpected chances
+which for the time exalt him above our experience, and endear him to our
+eager sympathies. In life one cannot perhaps have too little romance in
+affairs of the heart, or in literature too much; and in either one may
+be as quaint as one pleases in such affairs without being ridiculous.
+
+W.D.H.
+
+
+
+
+AN ENCORE
+
+
+BY MARGARET DELAND
+
+
+According to Old Chester, to be romantic was just one shade less
+reprehensible than to put on airs. Captain Alfred Price, in all his
+seventy years, had never been guilty of airs, but certainly he had
+something to answer for in the way of romance.
+
+However, in the days when we children used to see him pounding up the
+street from the post-office, reading, as he walked, a newspaper held at
+arm's length in front of him, he was far enough from romance. He was
+seventy years old, he weighed over two hundred pounds, his big head was
+covered with a shock of grizzled red hair; his pleasures consisted in
+polishing his old sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to
+his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the
+chimney-closet in his own room; added to this, he swore strange oaths
+about his grandmother's nightcap. “He used to blaspheme,” his
+daughter-in-law said, “but I said, 'Not in my presence, if you please!'
+So now he just says this foolish thing about a nightcap.” Mrs. Drayton
+said that this reform would be one of the jewels in Mrs. Cyrus Price's
+crown; and added that she prayed that some day the Captain would give up
+tobacco and _rum_. “I am a poor, feeble creature,” said Mrs. Drayton; “I
+cannot do much for my fellow men in active mission-work. But I give my
+prayers.” However, neither Mrs. Drayton's prayers nor Mrs. Cyrus's
+active mission-work had done more than mitigate the blasphemy; the “rum”
+ (which was good Monongahela whiskey) was still on hand; and as for
+tobacco, except when sleeping, eating, playing on his harmonicon, or
+dozing through one of Dr. Lavendar's sermons, the Captain smoked every
+moment, the ashes of his pipe or cigar falling unheeded on a vast and
+wrinkled expanse of waistcoat.
+
+No; he was not a romantic object. But we girls, watching him stump past
+the schoolroom window to the post-office, used to whisper to each other,
+“Just think! _he eloped_.”
+
+There was romance for you!
+
+To be sure, the elopement had not quite come off, but, except for the
+very end, it was all as perfect as a story. Indeed, the failure at the
+end made it all the better: angry parents, broken hearts,--only, the
+worst of it was, the hearts did not stay broken! He went and married
+somebody else; and so did she. You would have supposed she would have
+died. I am sure, in her place, any one of us would have died. And yet,
+as Lydia Wright said, “How could a young lady die for a young gentleman
+with ashes all over his waistcoat?”
+
+However, when Alfred Price fell in love with Miss Letty Morris, he was
+not indifferent to his waistcoat, nor did he weigh two hundred pounds.
+He was slender and ruddy-cheeked, with tossing red-brown curls. If he
+swore, it was not by his grandmother nor her nightcap; if he drank, it
+was hard cider (which can often accomplish as much as “rum”); if he
+smoked, it was in secret, behind the stable. He wore a stock, and (on
+Sunday) a ruffled shirt; a high-waisted coat with two brass buttons
+behind, and very tight pantaloons. At that time he attended the Seminary
+for Youths in Upper Chester. Upper Chester was then, as in our time, the
+seat of learning in the township, the Female Academy being there, too.
+Both were boarding-schools, but the young people came home to spend
+Sunday; and their weekly returns, all together in the stage, were
+responsible for more than one Old Chester match....
+
+“The air,” says Miss, sniffing genteelly as the coach jolts past the
+blossoming May orchards, “is most agreeably perfumed. And how fair is
+the prospect from this hilltop!”
+
+“Fair indeed!” responded her companion, staring boldly.
+
+Miss bridles and bites her lip.
+
+“_I_ was not observing the landscape,” the other explains, carefully.
+
+In those days (Miss Letty was born in 1804, and was eighteen when she
+and the ruddy Alfred sat on the back seat of the coach)--in those days
+the conversation of Old Chester youth was more elegant than in our time.
+We, who went to Miss Bailey's school, were sad degenerates in the way of
+manners and language; at least so our elders told us. When Lydia Wright
+said, “Oh my, what an awful snow-storm!” dear Miss Ellen was displeased.
+“Lydia,” said she, “is there anything 'awe'-inspiring in this display of
+the elements?”
+
+“No, 'm,” faltered poor Lydia.
+
+“Then,” said Miss Bailey, gravely, “your statement that the storm is
+'awful' is a falsehood. I do not suppose, my dear, that you
+intentionally told an untruth; it was an exaggeration. But an
+exaggeration, though not perhaps a falsehood, is unladylike, and should
+be avoided by persons of refinement.” Just here the question arises:
+what would Miss Ellen (now in heaven) say if she could hear Lydia's
+Lydia, just home from college, remark--But no: Miss Ellen's precepts
+shall protect these pages.
+
+But in the days when Letty Morris looked out of the coach window, and
+young Alfred murmured that the prospect was fair indeed, conversation
+was perfectly correct. And it was still decorous even when it got beyond
+the coach period and reached a point where Old Chester began to take
+notice. At first it was young Old Chester which giggled. Later old Old
+Chester made some comments; it was then that Alfred's mother mentioned
+the matter to Alfred's father. “He is young, and, of course, foolish,”
+ Mrs. Price explained. And Mr. Price said that though folly was
+incidental to Alfred's years, it must be checked.
+
+“Just check it,” said Mr. Price.
+
+Then Miss Letty's mother awoke to the situation, and said, “Fy, fy,
+Letitia.”
+
+So it was that these two young persons were plunged in grief. Oh,
+glorious grief of thwarted love! When they met now, they did not talk of
+the landscape. Their conversation, though no doubt as genteel as before,
+was all of broken hearts. But again Letty's mother found out, and went
+in wrath to call on Alfred's family. It was decided between them that
+the young man should be sent away from home. “To save him,” says the
+father. “To protect my daughter,” says Mrs. Morris.
+
+But Alfred and Letty had something to say.... It was in December; there
+was a snow-storm--a storm which Lydia Wright would certainly have called
+“awful”; but it did not interfere with true love; these two children met
+in the graveyard to swear undying constancy. Alfred's lantern came
+twinkling through the flakes, as he threaded his way across the hillside
+among the tombstones, and found Letty just inside the entrance, standing
+with her black serving-woman under a tulip-tree. The negress, chattering
+with cold and fright, kept plucking at the girl's pelisse; but once
+Alfred was at her side, Letty was indifferent to storm and ghosts. As
+for Alfred, he was too cast down to think of them.
+
+“Letty, they will part us.”
+
+“No, my dear Alfred, no!”
+
+“Yes. Yes, they will. Oh, if you were only mine!”
+
+Miss Letty sighed.
+
+“Will you be true to me, Letty? I am to go on a sailing-vessel to China,
+to be gone two years. Will you wait for me?”
+
+Letty gave a little cry; two years! Her black woman twitched her sleeve.
+
+“Miss Let, it's gittin' cole, honey.”
+
+“(Don't, Flora.)--Alfred, _two years!_ Oh, Alfred, that is an eternity.
+Why, I should be--I should be twenty!”
+
+The lantern, set on a tombstone beside them, blinked in a snowy gust.
+Alfred covered his face with his hands, he was shaken to his soul; the
+little, gay creature beside him thrilled at a sound from behind those
+hands.
+
+“Alfred,”--she said, faintly; then she hid her face against his arm; “my
+dear Alfred, I will, if you desire it--fly with you!”
+
+Alfred, with a gasp, lifted his head and stared at her. His slower mind
+had seen nothing but separation and despair; but the moment the word was
+said he was aflame. What! Would she? Could she? Adorable creature!
+
+“Miss Let, my feet done get cole--”
+
+(“Flora, be still!)--Yes, Alfred, yes. I am thine.”
+
+The boy caught her in his arms. “But I am to be sent away on Monday! My
+angel, could you--fly, _to-morrow_?”
+
+And Letty, her face still hidden against his shoulder, nodded.
+
+Then, while the shivering Flora stamped, and beat her arms, and the
+lantern flared and sizzled, Alfred made their plans, which were simple
+to the point of childishness. “My own!” he said, when it was all
+arranged; then he held the lantern up and looked into her face, blushing
+and determined, with snowflakes gleaming on the curls that pushed out
+from under her big hood. “You will meet me at the minister's?” he said,
+passionately. “You will not fail me?”
+
+“I will not fail you!” she said; and laughed joyously; but the young
+man's face was white.
+
+She kept her word; and with the assistance of Flora, romantic again when
+her feet were warm, all went as they planned. Clothes were packed,
+savings-banks opened, and a chaise abstracted from the Price stable.
+
+“It is my intention,” said the youth, “to return to my father the value
+of the vehicle and nag, as soon as I can secure a position which will
+enable me to support my Lefty in comfort and fashion.”
+
+On the night of the elopement the two children met at the minister's
+house. (Yes, the very old Rectory to which we Old Chester children went
+every Saturday afternoon to Dr. Lavendar's Collect class. But of course
+there was no Dr. Lavendar there in those days.)
+
+Well; Alfred requested this minister to pronounce them man and wife; but
+he coughed and poked the fire. “I am of age,” Alfred insisted; “I am
+twenty-two.” Then Mr. Smith said he must go and put on his bands and
+surplice first; and Alfred said, “If you please, sir.” And off went Mr.
+Smith--_and sent a note to Alfred's father and Letty's mother!_
+
+We girls used to wonder what the lovers talked about while they waited
+for the traitor. Ellen Dale always said they were foolish to wait. “Why
+didn't they go right off?” said Ellen. “If I were going to elope, I
+shouldn't bother to get married. But, oh, think of how they felt when in
+walked those cruel parents!”
+
+The story was that they were torn weeping from each other's arms; that
+Letty was sent to bed for two days on bread and water; that Alfred was
+packed off to Philadelphia the very next morning, and sailed in less
+than a week. They did not see each other again.
+
+But the end of the story was not romantic at all. Letty, although she
+crept about for a while in deep disgrace, and brooded upon death--that
+interesting impossibility, so dear to youth,--_married_, if you please!
+when she was twenty, and went away to live. When Alfred came back, seven
+years later, he got married, too. He married a Miss Barkley. He used to
+go away on long voyages, so perhaps he wasn't really fond of her. We
+tried to think so, for we liked Captain Price.
+
+In our day Captain Price was a widower. He had given up the sea, and
+settled down to live in Old Chester; his son, Cyrus, lived with him, and
+his languid daughter-in-law--a young lady of dominant feebleness, who
+ruled the two men with that most powerful domestic rod--foolish
+weakness. This combination in a woman will cause a mountain (a masculine
+mountain) to fly from its firm base; while kindness, justice, and good
+sense leave it upon unshaken foundations of selfishness. Mrs. Cyrus was
+a Goliath of silliness; when billowing black clouds heaped themselves in
+the west on a hot afternoon, she turned pale with apprehension, and the
+Captain and Cyrus ran for four tumblers, into which they put the legs of
+her bed, where, cowering among the feathers, she lay cold with fear and
+perspiration. Every night the Captain screwed down all the windows on
+the lower floor; in the morning Cyrus pulled the screws out. Cyrus had a
+pretty taste in horseflesh, but Gussie cried so when he once bought a
+trotter that he had long ago resigned himself to a friendly beast of
+twenty-seven years, who could not go much out of a walk because he had
+string-halt in both hind legs.
+
+But one must not be too hard on Mrs. Cyrus. In the first place, she was
+not born in Old Chester. But, added to that, just think of her name! The
+effect of names upon character is not considered as it should be. If one
+is called Gussie for thirty years, it is almost impossible not to become
+gussie after a while. Mrs. Cyrus could not be Augusta; few women can;
+but it was easy to be gussie--irresponsible, silly, selfish. She had a
+vague, flat laugh, she ate a great deal of candy, and she was afraid
+of--But one cannot catalogue Mrs. Cyrus's fears. They were as the sands
+of the sea for number. And these two men were governed by them. Only
+when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed will it be understood
+why a man loves a fool; but why he obeys her is obvious enough: Fear is
+the greatest power in the world; Gussie was afraid of thunder-storms, or
+what not; but the Captain and Cyrus were afraid of Gussie! A hint of
+tears in her pale eyes, and her husband would sigh with anxiety and
+Captain Price slip his pipe in his pocket and sneak out of the room.
+Doubtless Cyrus would often have been glad to follow him, but the old
+gentleman glared when his son showed a desire for his company.
+
+“Want to come and smoke with me? 'Your granny was Murray!'--you're
+sojering. You're first mate; you belong on the bridge in storms. I'm
+before the mast. Tend to your business!”
+
+It was forty-eight years before Letty and Alfred saw each other
+again--or at least before persons calling themselves by those old names
+saw each other. Were they Letty and Alfred--this tousled, tangled,
+good-humored old man, ruddy and cowed, and this small, bright-eyed old
+lady, led about by a devoted daughter? Certainly these two persons bore
+no resemblance to the boy and girl torn from each other's arms that cold
+December night. Alfred had been mild and slow; Captain Price (except
+when his daughter-in-law raised her finger) was a pleasant old roaring
+lion. Letty had been a gay, high-spirited little creature, not as
+retiring, perhaps, as a young female should be, and certainly
+self-willed; Mrs. North was completely under the thumb of her daughter
+Mary. Not that “under the thumb” means unhappiness; Mary North desired
+only her mother's welfare, and lived fiercely for that single purpose.
+From morning until night (and, indeed, until morning again, for she rose
+often from her bed to see that there was no draught from the crack of
+the open window), all through the twenty-four hours she was on duty.
+
+When this excellent daughter appeared in Old Chester and said she was
+going to hire a house, and bring her mother back to end her days in the
+home of her girlhood, Old Chester displayed a friendly interest; when
+she decided upon a house on Main Street, directly opposite Captain
+Price's, it began to recall the romance of that thwarted elopement.
+
+“Do you suppose she knows that story about old Alfred Price and her
+mother?” said Old Chester; and it looked sidewise at Miss North with
+polite curiosity. This was not altogether because of her mother's
+romantic past, but because of her own manners and clothes. With painful
+exactness, Miss North endeavored to follow the fashion; but she looked
+as if articles of clothing had been thrown at her and some had stuck. As
+to her manners, Old Chester was divided. Mrs. Barkley said she hadn't
+any. Dr. Lavendar said she was shy. But, as Mrs. Drayton said, that was
+just like Dr. Lavendar, always making excuses for wrong-doing!--“Which,”
+ said Mrs. Drayton, “is a strange thing for a minister to do. For my
+part, I cannot understand impoliteness in a _Christian_ female. But we
+must not judge,” Mrs. Drayton ended, with what Willy King called her
+“holy look.” Without wishing to “judge,” it may be said that, in the
+matter of manners, Miss Mary North, palpitatingly anxious to be polite,
+told the truth. She said things that other people only thought. When
+Mrs. Willy King remarked that, though she did not pretend to be a good
+housekeeper, she had the backs of her pictures dusted every other day,
+Miss North, her chin trembling with shyness, said, with a panting smile:
+
+“That's not good for housekeeping; it's foolish waste of time.” Which
+was very rude, of course--though Old Chester was not as displeased as
+you might have supposed.
+
+While Miss North, timorous and truthful (and determined to be polite),
+was putting the house in order before sending for her mother, Old
+Chester invited her to tea, and asked her many questions about Letty and
+the late Mr. North. But nobody asked whether she knew that her opposite
+neighbor, Captain Price, might have been her father;--at least that was
+the way Miss Ellen's girls expressed it. Captain Price himself did not
+enlighten the daughter he did not have; but he went rolling across the
+street, and pulling off his big shabby felt hat, stood at the foot of
+the steps, and roared out: “Morning! Anything I can do for you?” Miss
+North, indoors, hanging window-curtains, her mouth full of tacks, shook
+her head. Then she removed the tacks and came to the front door.
+
+“Do you smoke, sir?”
+
+Captain Price removed his pipe from his mouth and looked at it. “Why! I
+believe I do, sometimes,” he said.
+
+“I inquired,” said Miss North, smiling tremulously, her hands gripped
+hard together, “because, if you do, I will ask you to desist when
+passing our windows.”
+
+Captain Price was so dumbfounded that for a moment words failed him.
+Then he said, meekly, “Does your mother object to tobacco smoke, ma'am?”
+
+“It is injurious to all ladies' throats,” said Miss North, her voice
+quivering and determined.
+
+“Does your mother resemble you, madam?” said Captain Price, slowly.
+
+“Oh no! my mother is pretty. She has my eyes, but that's all.”
+
+“I didn't mean in looks,” said the old man; “she did not look in the
+least like you; not in the least! I mean in her views?”
+
+“Her views? I don't think my mother has any particular views,” Miss
+North answered, hesitatingly; “I spare her all thought,” she ended, and
+her thin face bloomed suddenly with love.
+
+Old Chester rocked with the Captain's report of his call; and Mrs. Cyrus
+told her husband that she only wished this lady would stop his father's
+smoking.
+
+“Just look at his ashes,” said Gussie; “I put saucers round everywhere
+to catch 'em, but he shakes 'em off anywhere--right on the carpet! And
+if you say anything, he just says, 'Oh, they'll keep the moths away!' I
+worry so for fear he'll set the house on fire.”
+
+Mrs. Cyrus was so moved by Miss North's active mission-work that the
+very next day she wandered across the street to call. “I hope I'm not
+interrupting you,” she began, “but I thought I'd just--”
+
+“Yes; you are,” said Miss North; “but never mind; stay, if you want to.”
+ She tried to smile, but she looked at the duster which she had put down
+upon Mrs. Cyrus's entrance.
+
+Gussie wavered as to whether to take offence, but decided not to;--at
+least not until she could make the remark which was buzzing in her small
+mind. It seemed strange, she said, that Mrs. North should come, not only
+to Old Chester, but right across the street from Captain Price!
+
+“Why?” said Mary North, briefly.
+
+“_Why_?” said Mrs. Cyrus, with faint animation. “Why, don't you know
+about your mother and my father-in-law?”
+
+“Your father-in-law?--my mother?”
+
+“Why, you know,” said Mrs. Cyrus, with her light cackle, “your mother
+was a little romantic when she was young. No doubt she has conquered it
+now. But she tried to elope with my father-in-law.”
+
+“What!”
+
+“Oh, bygones should be bygones,” Mrs. Cyrus said, soothingly; “forgive
+and forget, you know. If there's anything I can do to assist you, ma'am,
+I'll send my husband over;” and then she lounged away, leaving poor Mary
+North silent with indignation. But that night at tea Gussie said that
+she thought strong-minded ladies were very unladylike; “they say she's
+strong-minded,” she added, languidly.
+
+“Lady!” said the Captain. “She's a man-o'-war's man in petticoats.”
+
+Gussie giggled.
+
+“She's as thin as a lath,” the Captain declared; “if it hadn't been for
+her face, I wouldn't have known whether she was coming bow or stern on.”
+
+“I think,” said Mrs. Cyrus, “that that woman has some motive in bringing
+her mother back here; and _right across the street_, too!”
+
+“What motive?” said Cyrus.
+
+But Augusta waited for conjugal privacy to explain herself: “Cyrus, I
+worry so, because I'm sure that woman thinks she can catch your father
+again.--Oh, just listen to that harmonicon downstairs! It sets my teeth
+on edge!”
+
+Then Cyrus, the silent, servile first mate, broke out: “Gussie, you're a
+fool!”
+
+And Augusta cried all night, and showed herself at the breakfast-table
+lantern-jawed and sunken-eyed; and her father-in-law judged it wise to
+sprinkle his cigar ashes behind the stable.
+
+The day that Mrs. North arrived in Old Chester, Mrs. Cyrus commanded the
+situation; she saw the daughter get out of the stage, and hurry into the
+house for a chair so that the mother might descend more easily. She also
+saw a little, white-haired old lady take that opportunity to leap
+nimbly, and quite unaided, from the swinging step.
+
+“Now, mother!” expostulated Mary North, chair in hand, and breathless,
+“you might have broken your limb! Here, take my arm.”
+
+Meekly, after her moment of freedom, the little lady put her hand on
+that gaunt arm, and tripped up the path and into the house, where, alas!
+Augusta Price lost sight of them. Yet even she, with all her disapproval
+of strong-minded ladies, must have admired the tenderness of the
+man-o'-war's man. Miss North put her mother into a big chair, and
+hurried to bring a dish of curds.
+
+“I'm not hungry,” protested Mrs. North.
+
+“Never mind. It will do you good.”
+
+With a sigh the little old lady ate the curds, looking about her with
+curious eyes. “Why, we're right across the street from the old Price
+house!” she said.
+
+“Did you know them, mother?” demanded Miss North.
+
+“Dear me, yes,” said Mrs. North, twinkling; “why, I'd forgotten all
+about it, but the eldest boy--Now, what was his name? Al--something.
+Alfred,--Albert; no, Alfred. He was a beau of mine.”
+
+“Mother! I don't think it's refined to use such a word.”
+
+“Well, he wanted me to elope with him,” Mrs. North said, gayly; “if that
+isn't being a beau, I don't know what is. I haven't thought of it for
+years.”
+
+“If you've finished your curds you must lie down,” said Miss North.
+
+“Oh, I'll just look about--”
+
+“No; you are tired. You must lie down.”
+
+“Who is that stout old gentleman going into the Price house?” Mrs. North
+said, lingering at the window.
+
+“Oh, that's your Alfred Price,” her daughter answered; and added that
+she hoped her mother would be pleased with the house. “We have boarded
+so long, I think you'll enjoy a home of your own.”
+
+“Indeed I shall!” cried Mrs. North, her eyes snapping with delight.
+“Mary, I'll wash the breakfast dishes, as my mother used to do!”
+
+“Oh no,” Mary North protested; “it would tire you. I mean to take every
+care from your mind.”
+
+“But,” Mrs. North pleaded, “you have so much to do; and--”
+
+“Never mind about me,” said the daughter, earnestly; “you are my first
+consideration.”
+
+“I know it, my dear,” said Mrs. North, meekly. And when Old Chester came
+to make its call, one of the first things she said was that her Mary was
+such a good daughter. Miss North, her anxious face red with
+determination, bore out the assertion by constantly interrupting the
+conversation to bring a footstool, or shut a window, or put a shawl over
+her mother's knees. “My mother's limb troubles her,” she explained to
+visitors (in point of modesty, Mary North did not leave her mother a leg
+to stand on); then she added, breathlessly, with her tremulous smile,
+that she wished they would please not talk too much. “Conversation tires
+her,” she explained. At which the little, pretty old lady opened and
+closed her hands, and protested that she was not tired at all. But the
+callers departed. As the door closed behind them, Mrs. North was ready
+to cry.
+
+“Now, Mary, really!” she began.
+
+“Mother, I don't care! I don't like to say things like that, though I'm
+sure I always try to say them politely. But to save you I would say
+anything!”
+
+“But I enjoy seeing people, and--”
+
+“It is bad for you to be tired,” Mary said, her thin face quivering
+still with the effort she had made; “and they sha'n't tire you while I
+am here to protect you.” And her protection never flagged. When Captain
+Price called, she asked him to please converse in a low tone, as noise
+was bad for her mother. “He had been here a good while before I came
+in,” she defended herself to Mrs. North, afterwards; “and I'm sure I
+spoke politely.”
+
+The fact was, the day the Captain came, Miss North was out. Her mother
+had seen him pounding up the street, and hurrying to the door, called
+out, gayly, in her little, old, piping voice, “Alfred--Alfred Price!”
+
+The Captain turned and looked at her. There was just one moment's pause;
+perhaps be tried to bridge the years, and to believe that it was Letty
+who spoke to him--Letty, whom he had last seen that wintry night, pale
+and weeping, in the slender green sheath of a fur-trimmed pelisse. If
+so, he gave it up; this plump, white-haired, bright-eyed old lady, in a
+wide-spreading, rustling black silk dress, was not Letty. It was Mrs.
+North.
+
+The Captain came across the street, waving his newspaper, and saying,
+“So you've cast anchor in the old port, ma'am?”
+
+“My daughter is not at home; do come in,” she said, smiling and nodding.
+Captain Price hesitated; then he put his pipe in his pocket and followed
+her into the parlor. “Sit down,” she cried, gayly. “Well, _Alfred!_”
+
+“Well,--_Mrs. North!_” he said; and then they both laughed, and she
+began to ask questions: Who was dead? Who had so and so married? “There
+are not many of us left,” she said. “The two Ferris girls and Theophilus
+Morrison and Johnny Gordon--he came to see me yesterday. And Matty
+Dilworth; she was younger than I,--oh, by ten years. She married the
+oldest Barkley boy, didn't she? I hear he didn't turn out well. You
+married his sister, didn't you? Was it the oldest girl or the second
+sister?”
+
+“It was the second--Jane. Yes, poor Jane. I lost her in fifty-five.”
+
+“You have children?” she said, sympathetically.
+
+“I've got a boy,” he said; “but he's married.”
+
+“My girl has never married; she's a good daughter,”--Mrs. North broke
+off with a nervous laugh; “here she is, now!”
+
+Mary North, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway, gave a questioning
+sniff, and the Captain's hand sought his guilty pocket; but Miss North
+only said: “How do you do, sir? Now, mother, don't talk too much and get
+tired.” She stopped and tried to smile, but the painful color came into
+her face. “And--if you please, Captain Price, will you speak in a low
+tone? Large, noisy persons exhaust the oxygen in the air, and--”
+
+_“Mary!”_ cried poor Mrs. North; but the Captain, clutching his old felt
+hat, began to hoist himself up from the sofa, scattering ashes about as
+he did so. Mary North compressed her lips.
+
+“I tell my daughter-in-law they'll keep the moths away,” the old
+gentleman said, sheepishly.
+
+“I use camphor,” said Miss North. “Flora must bring a dust-pan.”
+
+“Flora?” Alfred Price said. “Now, what's my association with that name?”
+
+“She was our old cook,” Mrs. North explained; “this Flora is her
+daughter. But you never saw old Flora?”
+
+“Why, yes, I did,” the old man said, slowly. “Yes. I remember Flora.
+Well, good-by,--Mrs. North.”
+
+“Good-by, Alfred. Come again,” she said, cheerfully.
+
+“Mother, here's your beef tea,” said a brief voice.
+
+Alfred Price fled. He met his son just as he was entering his own house,
+and burst into a confidence: “Cy, my boy, come aft and splice the
+main-brace. Cyrus, what a female! She knocked me higher than Gilroy's
+kite. And her mother was as sweet a girl as you ever saw!” He drew his
+son into a little, low-browed, dingy room at the end of the hall. Its
+grimy untidiness matched the old Captain's clothes, but it was his one
+spot of refuge in his own house; here he could scatter his tobacco ashes
+almost unrebuked, and play on his harmonicon without seeing Gussie wince
+and draw in her breath; for Mrs. Cyrus rarely entered the “cabin.” “I
+worry so about its disorderliness that I won't go in,” she used to say,
+in a resigned way. And the Captain accepted her decision with
+resignation of his own. “Crafts of your bottom can't navigate in these
+waters,” he agreed, earnestly; and, indeed, the room was so cluttered
+with his belongings that voluminous hoop-skirts could not get
+steerageway. “He has so much rubbish,” Gussie complained; but it was
+precious rubbish to the old man. His chest was behind the door; a
+blowfish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored
+prints of the “Barque _Letty M_., 800 tons,” decorated the walls; his
+sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the
+mantelpiece, on which were many dusty treasures--the mahogany spoke of
+an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory;
+a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red lip
+serving to hold a loose bunch of cigars. In the chimney-breast was a
+little door, and the Captain, pulling his son into the room after that
+call on Mrs. North, fumbled in his pockets for the key. “Here,” he said;
+(“as the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South
+Carolina)--Cyrus, she gave her mother _beef tea!_”
+
+But Cyrus was to receive still further enlightenment on the subject of
+his opposite neighbor:
+
+“She called him in. I heard her, with my own ears! 'Alfred,' she said,
+'come in.' Cyrus, she has designs; oh, I worry so about it! He ought to
+be protected. He is very old, and, of course, foolish. You ought to
+check it at once.”
+
+“Gussie, I don't like you to talk that way about my father,” Cyrus
+began.
+
+“You'll like it less later on. He'll go and see her to-morrow.”
+
+“Why shouldn't he go and see her to-morrow?” Cyrus said, and added a
+modest bad word; which made Gussie cry. And yet, in spite of what his
+wife called his “blasphemy,” Cyrus began to be vaguely uncomfortable
+whenever he saw his father put his pipe in his pocket and go across the
+street. And as the winter brightened into spring, the Captain went quite
+often. So, for that matter, did other old friends of Mrs. North's
+generation, who by and by began to smile at each other, and say, “Well,
+Alfred and Letty are great friends!” For, because Captain Price lived
+right across the street, he went most of all. At least, that was what
+Miss North said to herself with obvious common sense--until Mrs. Cyrus
+put her on the right track....
+
+“What!” gasped Mary North. “But it's impossible!”
+
+“It would be very unbecoming, considering their years,” said Gussie;
+“but I worry so, because, you know, nothing is impossible when people
+are foolish; and of course, at their age, they are apt to be foolish.”
+
+So the seed was dropped. Certainly he did come very often. Certainly her
+mother seemed very glad to see him. Certainly they had very long talks.
+Mary North shivered with apprehension. But it was not until a week later
+that this miserable suspicion grew strong enough to find words. It was
+after tea, and the two ladies were sitting before a little fire. Mary
+North had wrapped a shawl about her mother, and given her a footstool,
+and pushed her chair nearer the fire, and then pulled it away, and
+opened and shut the parlor door three times to regulate the draught.
+Then she sat down in the corner of the sofa, exhausted but alert.
+
+“If there's anything you want, mother, you'll be sure and tell me?”
+
+“Yes, my dear.”
+
+“I think I'd better put another shawl over your limbs?”
+
+“Oh no, indeed!”
+
+“Are you _sure_ you don't feel a draught?”
+
+“No, Mary; and it wouldn't hurt me if I did!”
+
+“I was only trying to make you comfortable,--”
+
+“I know that, my dear; you are a very good daughter. Mary, I think it
+would be nice if I made a cake. So many people call, and--”
+
+“I'll make it to-morrow.”
+
+“Oh, I'll make it myself,” Mrs. North protested, eagerly; “I'd really
+enjoy--”
+
+“_Mother!_ Tire yourself out in the kitchen? No, indeed! Flora and I
+will see to it.”
+
+Mrs. North sighed.
+
+Her daughter sighed too; then suddenly burst out: “Old Captain Price
+comes here pretty often.”
+
+Mrs. North nodded, pleasantly. “That daughter-in-law doesn't half take
+care of him. His clothes are dreadfully shabby. There was a button off
+his coat to-day. And she's a foolish creature.”
+
+“Foolish? she's an unladylike person!” cried Miss North, with so much
+feeling that her mother looked at her in mild astonishment. “And coarse,
+too,” said Mary North; “I think married ladies are apt to be coarse.
+From association with men, I suppose.”
+
+“What has she done?” demanded Mrs. North, much interested.
+
+“She hinted that he--that you--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“That he came here to--to see you.”
+
+“Well, who else would he come to see? Not you!” said her mother.
+
+“She hinted that he might want to--to marry you.”
+
+“Well,--upon my word! I knew she was a ridiculous creature, but
+really--!”
+
+Mary's face softened with relief. “Of course she is foolish; but--”
+
+“Poor Alfred! What has he ever done to have such a daughter-in-law?
+Mary, the Lord gives us our children; but _Somebody Else_ gives us our
+in-laws!”
+
+“Mother!” said Mary North, horrified, “you do say such things! But
+really he oughtn't to come so often. I'll--I'll take you away from Old
+Chester rather than have him bother you.”
+
+“Mary, you are just as foolish as his daughter-in-law,” said Mrs. North,
+impatiently.
+
+And, somehow, poor Mary North's heart sank.
+
+Nor was she the only perturbed person in town that night. Mrs. Cyrus had
+a headache, so it was necessary for Cyrus to hold her hand and assure
+her that Willy King said a headache did not mean brain fever.
+
+“Willy King doesn't know everything. If he had headaches like mine, he
+wouldn't be so sure. I am always worrying about things, and I believe my
+brain can't stand it. And now I've got your father to worry about!”
+
+“Better try and sleep, Gussie. I'll put some Kaliston on your head.”
+
+“Kaliston! Kaliston won't keep me from worrying.--Oh, listen to that
+harmonicon!”
+
+“Gussie, I'm sure he isn't thinking of Mrs. North.”
+
+“Mrs. North is thinking of him, which is a great deal more dangerous.
+Cyrus, you _must_ ask Dr. Lavendar to interfere.”
+
+As this was at least the twentieth assault upon poor Cyrus's common
+sense, the citadel trembled.
+
+“Do you wish me to go into brain fever before your eyes, just from
+worry?” Gussie demanded. “You _must_ go!”
+
+“Well, maybe, perhaps, to-morrow--”
+
+“To-night--to-night,” said Augusta, faintly.
+
+And Cyrus surrendered.
+
+“Look under the bed before you go,” Gussie murmured.
+
+Cyrus looked. “Nobody there,” he said, reassuringly; and went on tiptoe
+out of the darkened, cologne-scented room. But as he passed along the
+hall, and saw his father in his little cabin of a room, smoking
+placidly, and polishing his sextant with loving hands, Cyrus's heart
+reproached him.
+
+“How's her head, Cy?” the Captain called out.
+
+“Oh, better, I guess,” Cyrus said.--(“I'll be hanged if I speak to Dr.
+Lavendar!”)
+
+“That's good,” said the Captain, beginning to hoist himself up out of
+his chair. “Going out? Hold hard, and I'll go 'long. I want to call on
+Mrs. North.”
+
+Cyrus stiffened. “Cold night, sir,” he remonstrated.
+
+“'Your granny was Murray, and wore a black nightcap!'” said the Captain;
+“you are getting delicate in your old age, Cy.” He got up, and plunged
+into his coat, and tramped out, slamming the door heartily behind him;
+for which, later, poor Cyrus got the credit. “Where you bound?”
+
+“Oh--down-street,” said Cyrus, vaguely.
+
+“Sealed orders?” said the Captain, with never a bit of curiosity in his
+big, kind voice; and Cyrus felt as small as he was. But when he left the
+old man at Mrs. North's door, he was uneasy again. Maybe Gussie was
+right! Women are keener about those things than men. And his uneasiness
+actually carried him to Dr. Lavendar's study, where he tried to appear
+at ease by patting Danny.
+
+“What's the matter with you, Cyrus?” said Dr. Lavendar, looking at him
+over his spectacles. (Dr. Lavendar, in his wicked old heart, always
+wanted to call this young man Cipher; but, so far, grace had been given
+him to withstand temptation.) “What's wrong?” he said.
+
+And Cyrus, somehow, told his troubles.
+
+At first Dr. Lavendar chuckled; then he frowned. “Gussie put you up to
+this, Cy--_rus_?” he said.
+
+“Well, my wife's a woman,” Cyrus began, “and they're keener on such
+matters than men; and she said perhaps you would--would--”
+
+_“What?”_ Dr. Lavendar rapped on the table with the bowl of his pipe, so
+loudly that Danny opened one eye. “Would what?”
+
+“Well,” Cyrus stammered, “you know, Dr. Lavendar, as Gussie says,
+'there's no fo--'”
+
+“You needn't finish it,” Dr. Lavendar interrupted, dryly; “I've heard it
+before. Gussie didn't say anything about a young fool, did she?” Then he
+eyed Cyrus. “Or a middle-aged one? I've seen middle-aged fools that
+could beat us old fellows hollow.”
+
+“Oh, but Mrs. North is far beyond middle age,” said Cyrus, earnestly.
+
+Dr. Lavendar shook his head. “Well, well!” he said. “To think that
+Alfred Price should have such a--And yet he is as sensible a man as I
+know!”
+
+“Until now,” Cyrus amended. “But Gussie thought you'd better caution
+him. We don't want him, at his time of life, to make a mistake.”
+
+“It's much more to the point that I should caution you not to make a
+mistake,” said Dr. Lavendar; and then he rapped on the table again,
+sharply. “The Captain has no such idea--unless Gussie has given it to
+him. Cyrus, my advice to you is to go home and tell your wife not to be
+a goose. I'll tell her, if you want me to?”
+
+“Oh no, no!” said Cyrus, very much frightened. “I'm afraid you'd hurt
+her feelings.”
+
+“I'm afraid I should,” said Dr. Lavendar.
+
+He was so plainly out of temper that Cyrus finally slunk off,
+uncomforted and afraid to meet Gussie's eye, even under its bandage of a
+cologne-scented handkerchief.
+
+However, he had to meet it, and he tried to make the best of his own
+humiliation by saying that Dr. Lavendar was shocked at such an idea. “He
+said father had always been so sensible; he didn't believe he would
+think of such a dreadful thing. And neither do I, Gussie, honestly,”
+ Cyrus said.
+
+“But Mrs. North isn't sensible,” Gussie protested, “and she'll--”
+
+“Dr. Lavendar said 'there was no fool like a middle-aged fool,'” Cyrus
+agreed.
+
+“Middle-aged! She's as old as Methuselah!”
+
+“That's what I told him,” said Cyrus.
+
+
+By the end of April Old Chester smiled. How could it help it? Gussie
+worried so that she took frequent occasion to point out possibilities;
+and after the first gasp of incredulity, one could hear a faint echo of
+the giggles of forty-eight years before. Mary North heard it, and her
+heart burned within her.
+
+“It's got to stop,” she said to herself, passionately; “I must speak to
+his son.”
+
+But her throat was dry at the thought. It seemed as if it would kill her
+to speak to a man on such a subject--even to such a man as Cyrus. But,
+poor, shy tigress! to save her mother, what would she not do? In her
+pain and fright she said to Mrs. North that if that old man kept on
+making her uncomfortable and conspicuous, they would leave Old Chester!
+
+Mrs. North twinkled with amusement when Mary, in her strained and
+quivering voice, began, but her jaw dropped at those last words; Mary
+was capable of carrying her off at a day's notice! The little old lady
+trembled with distressed reassurances; but Captain Price continued to
+call.
+
+And that was how it came about that this devoted daughter, after days of
+exasperation and nights of anxiety, reached a point of tense
+determination. She would go and see the man's son, and say ... that
+afternoon, as she stood before the swinging glass on her high bureau,
+tying her bonnet-strings, she tried to think what she would say. She
+hoped God would give her words--polite words; “for I _must_ be polite,”
+ she reminded herself desperately. When she started across the street her
+paisley shawl had slipped from one shoulder, so that the point dragged
+on the flagstones; she had split her right glove up the back, and her
+bonnet was jolted over sidewise; but the thick Chantilly veil hid the
+quiver of her chin.
+
+Gussie met her with effusion, and Mary, striving to be polite, smiled
+painfully, and said,
+
+“I don't want to see you; I want to see your husband.”
+
+Gussie tossed her head; but she made haste to call Cyrus, who came
+shambling along the hall from the cabin. The parlor was dark; for though
+it was a day of sunshine and merry May wind, Gussie kept the shutters
+bowed, but Cyrus could see the pale intensity of his visitor's face.
+There was a moment's silence, broken by a distant harmonicon.
+
+“Mr. Price,” said Mary North, with pale, courageous lips, “you must stop
+your father.”
+
+Cyrus opened his weak mouth to ask an explanation, but Gussie rushed in.
+
+“You are quite right, ma'am. Cyrus worries so about it (of course we
+know what you refer to). And Cyrus says it ought to be checked
+immediately, to save the old gentleman!”
+
+“You must stop him,” said Mary North, “for my mother's sake.”
+
+“Well--” Cyrus began.
+
+“Have you cautioned your mother?” Gussie demanded.
+
+“Yes,” Miss North said, briefly. To talk to this woman of her mother
+made her wince, but it had to be done. “Will you speak to your father,
+Mr. Price?”
+
+“Well, I--”
+
+“Of course he will!” Gussie broke in; “Cyrus, he is in the cabin now.”
+
+“Well, to-morrow I--” Cyrus got up and sidled towards the door. “Anyhow,
+I don't believe he's thinking of such a thing.”
+
+“Miss North,” said Gussie, rising “_I_ will do it.”
+
+“What, _now?_” faltered Mary North.
+
+“Now,” said Mrs. Cyrus, firmly.
+
+“Oh,” said Miss North, “I--I think I will go home. Gentlemen, when they
+are crossed, speak so--so earnestly.”
+
+Gussie nodded. The joy of action and of combat entered suddenly into her
+little soul; she never looked less vulgar than at that moment. Cyrus had
+disappeared.
+
+Mary North, white and trembling, hurried out. A wheezing strain from the
+harmonicon followed her into the May sunshine, then ended,
+abruptly;--Mrs. Price had begun! On her own door-step Miss North stopped
+and listened, holding her breath for an outburst.... It came. A roar of
+laughter. Then silence. Mary North stood, motionless, in her own parlor;
+her shawl, hanging from one elbow, trailed behind her; her other glove
+had split; her bonnet was blown back and over one ear; her heart was
+pounding in her throat. She was perfectly aware that she had done an
+unheard-of thing. “But,” she said, aloud, “I'd do it again. I'd do
+anything to protect her. But I hope I was polite?” Then she thought how
+courageous Mrs. Cyrus was. “She's as brave as a lion!” said Mary North.
+Yet had Miss North been able to stand at the Captain's door, she would
+have witnessed cowardice.
+
+“Gussie, I wouldn't cry. Confound that female, coming over and stirring
+you up! Now don't, Gussie! Why, I never thought of--Gussie, I wouldn't
+cry--”
+
+“I have worried almost to death. Pro-promise!”
+
+“Oh, your granny was Mur--Gussie, my dear, now _don't_.”
+
+“Dr. Lavendar said you'd always been so sensible; he said he didn't see
+how you could think of such a dreadful thing.”
+
+“What! Lavendar? I'll thank Lavendar to mind his business!” Captain
+Price forgot Gussie; he spoke “earnestly.” “Dog-gone these people that
+pry into--Oh, now, Gussie, _don't!_”
+
+“I've worried so awfully,” said Mrs. Cyrus. “Everybody is talking about
+you. And Dr. Lavendar is so--so angry about it; and now the daughter has
+charged on me as though it is my fault!--Of course, she is queer, but--”
+
+“Queer? she's queer as Dick's hatband! Why do you listen to her? Gussie,
+such an idea never entered my head,--or Mrs. North's either.”
+
+“Oh yes, it has! Her daughter said that she had had to speak to her--”
+
+Captain Price, dumbfounded, forgot his fear and burst out: “You're a
+pack of fools, the whole caboodle! I swear I--”
+
+“Oh, _don't_ blaspheme!” said Gussie, faintly, and staggered a little,
+so that all the Captain's terror returned. _If she fainted!_
+
+“Hi, there, Cyrus! Come aft, will you? Gussie's getting white around the
+gills--Cyrus!”
+
+Cyrus came, running, and between them they get the swooning Gussie to
+her room. Afterwards, when Cyrus tiptoed down-stairs, he found the
+Captain at the cabin door. The old man beckoned mysteriously.
+
+“Cy, my boy, come in here;”--he hunted about in his pocket for the key
+of the cupboard;--“Cyrus, I'll tell you what happened: that female
+across the street came in, and told poor Gussie some cock-and-bull story
+about her mother and me!” The Captain chuckled, and picked up his
+harmonicon. “It scared the life out of Gussie,” he said; then, with
+sudden angry gravity,--“These people that poke their noses into other
+people's business ought to be thrashed. Well, I'm going over to see Mrs.
+North.” And off he stumped, leaving Cyrus staring after him,
+open-mouthed.
+
+If Mary North had been at home, she would have met him with all the
+agonized courage of shyness and a good conscience. But she had fled out
+of the house, and down along the River Road, to be alone and regain her
+self-control.
+
+The Captain, however, was not seeking Miss North. He opened the front
+door, and advancing to the foot of the stairs, called up: “Ahoy, there!
+Mrs. North!”
+
+Mrs. North came trotting out to answer the summons. “Why, Alfred!” she
+exclaimed, looking over the banisters, “when did you come in? I didn't
+hear the bell ring. I'll come right down.”
+
+“It didn't ring; I walked in,” said the Captain. And Mrs. North came
+downstairs, perhaps a little stiffly, but as pretty an old lady as you
+ever saw. Her white curls lay against faintly pink cheeks, and her lace
+cap had a pink bow on it. But she looked anxious and uncomfortable.
+
+(“Oh,” she was saying to herself, “I do hope Mary's out!)--Well,
+Alfred?” she said; but her voice was frightened.
+
+The Captain stumped along in front of her into the parlor, and motioned
+her to a seat. “Mrs. North,” he said, his face red, his eye hard, “some
+jack-donkeys have been poking their noses (of course they're females)
+into our affairs; and--”
+
+“Oh, Alfred, isn't it horrid in them?”
+
+“Darn 'em!” said the Captain.
+
+“It makes me mad!” cried Mrs. North; then her spirit wavered. “Mary is
+so foolish; she says she'll--she'll take me away from Old Chester. I
+laughed at first, it was so foolish. But when she said that-oh _dear!_”
+
+“Well, but, my dear madam, say you won't go. Ain't you skipper?”
+
+“No, I'm not,” she said, dolefully. “Mary brought me here, and she'll
+take me away, if she thinks it best. Best for _me_, you know. Mary is a
+good daughter, Alfred. I don't want you to think she isn't. But she's
+foolish. Unmarried women are apt to be foolish.”
+
+The Captain thought of Gussie, and sighed. “Well,” he said, with the
+simple candor of the sea, “I guess there ain't much difference in 'em,
+married or unmarried.”
+
+“It's the interference makes me mad,” Mrs. North declared, hotly.
+
+“Damn the whole crew!” said the Captain; and the old lady laughed
+delightedly.
+
+“Thank you, Alfred!”
+
+“My daughter-in-law is crying her eyes out,” the Captain sighed.
+
+“Tck!” said Mrs. North; “Alfred, you have no sense. Let her cry. It's
+good for her!”
+
+“Oh no,” said the Captain, shocked.
+
+“You're a perfect slave to her,” cried Mrs. North.
+
+“No more than you are to your daughter,” Captain Price defended himself;
+and Mrs. North sighed.
+
+“We are just real foolish, Alfred, to listen to 'em. As if we didn't
+know what was good for us.”
+
+“People have interfered with us a good deal, first and last,” the
+Captain said, grimly.
+
+The faint color in Mrs. North's cheeks suddenly deepened. “So they
+have,” she said.
+
+The Captain shook his head in a discouraged way; he took his pipe out of
+his pocket and looked at it absent-mindedly. “I suppose I can stay at
+home, and let 'em get over it?”
+
+“Stay at home? Why, you'd far better--”
+
+“What?” said the Captain, dolefully.
+
+“Come oftener!” cried the old lady. “Let 'em get over it by getting used
+to it.”
+
+Captain Price looked doubtful. “But how about your daughter?”
+
+Mrs. North quailed. “I forgot Mary,” she admitted.
+
+“I don't bother you, coming to see you, do I?” the Captain said,
+anxiously.
+
+“Why, Alfred, I love to see you. If our children would just let us
+alone!”
+
+“First it was our parents,” said Captain Price. He frowned heavily.
+“According to other people, first we were too young to have sense; and
+now we're too old.” He took out his worn old pouch, plugged some shag
+into his pipe, and struck a match under the mantelpiece. He sighed, with
+deep discouragement.
+
+Mrs. North sighed too. Neither of them spoke for a moment; then the
+little old lady drew a quick breath and flashed a look at him; opened
+her lips; closed them with a snap; then regarded the toe of her slipper
+fixedly.
+
+The Captain, staring hopelessly, suddenly blinked; then his honest red
+face slowly broadened into beaming astonishment and satisfaction. _“Mrs.
+North--“_
+
+“Captain Price!” she parried, breathlessly.
+
+“So long as our affectionate children have suggested it!”
+
+“Suggested--what?”
+
+“Let's give 'em something to cry about!”
+
+“_Alfred!_”
+
+“Look here: we are two old fools; so they say, anyway. Let's live up to
+their opinion. I'll get a house for Cyrus and Gussie,--and your girl can
+live with 'em, if she wants to!” The Captain's bitterness showed then.
+
+“She could live here,” murmured Mrs. North.
+
+“What do you say?”
+
+The little old lady laughed excitedly, and shook her head; the tears
+stood in her eyes.
+
+“Do you want to leave Old Chester?” the Captain demanded.
+
+“You know I don't,” she said, sighing.
+
+“She'd take you away _to-morrow_,” he threatened, “if she knew I had--I
+had--”
+
+“She sha'n't know it.”
+
+“Well, then, we've got to get spliced to-morrow.”
+
+“Oh, Alfred, no! I don't believe Dr. Lavendar would--”
+
+“I'll have no dealings with Lavendar,” the Captain said, with sudden
+stiffness; “he's like all the rest of 'em. I'll get a license in Upper
+Chester, and we'll go to some parson there.”
+
+Mrs. North's eyes snapped; “Oh, no, no!” she protested; but in another
+minute they were shaking hands on it.
+
+“Cyrus and Gussie can live by themselves,” said the Captain, joyously,
+“and I'll get that hold cleaned out; she's kept the ports shut ever
+since she married Cyrus.”
+
+“And I'll make a cake! And I'll take care of your clothes; you really
+are dreadfully shabby;” she turned him round to the light, and brushed
+off some ashes. The Captain beamed. “Poor Alfred! and there's a button
+off! that daughter-in-law of yours can't sew any more than a cat (and
+she _is_ a cat!). But I love to mend. Mary has saved me all that. She's
+such a good daughter--poor Mary. But she's unmarried, poor child.”
+
+However, it was not to-morrow. It was two or three days later that Dr.
+Lavendar and Danny, jogging along behind Goliath under the buttonwoods
+on the road to Upper Chester, were somewhat inconvenienced by the dust
+of a buggy that crawled up and down the hills just a little ahead. The
+hood of this buggy was up, upon which fact--it being a May morning of
+rollicking wind and sunshine--Dr. Lavendar speculated to his companion:
+“Daniel, the man in that vehicle is either blind and deaf, or else he
+has something on his conscience; in either case he won't mind our dust,
+so we'll cut in ahead at the watering-trough. G'on, Goliath!”
+
+But Goliath had views of his own about the watering-trough, and instead
+of passing the hooded buggy, which had stopped there, he insisted upon
+drawing up beside it. “Now, look here,” Dr. Lavendar remonstrated, “you
+know you're not thirsty.” But Goliath plunged his nose down into the
+cool depths of the great iron caldron, into which, from a hollow log,
+ran a musical drip of water. Dr. Lavendar and Danny, awaiting his
+pleasure, could hear a murmur of voices from the depths of the eccentric
+vehicle which put up a hood on such a day; when suddenly Dr. Lavendar's
+eye fell on the hind legs of the other horse. “That's Cipher's trotter,”
+ he said to himself, and leaning out, cried: “Hi! Cy?” At which the other
+horse was drawn in with a jerk, and Captain Price's agitated face peered
+out from under the hood.
+
+“Where! Where's Cyrus?” Then he caught sight of Dr. Lavendar. “'_The
+devil and Tom Walker!_'” said the Captain with a groan. The buggy backed
+erratically.
+
+“Look out!” said Dr. Lavendar,--but the wheels locked.
+
+Of course there was nothing for Dr. Lavendar to do but get out and take
+Goliath by the head, grumbling, as he did so, that Cyrus “shouldn't own
+such a spirited beast.”
+
+“I am somewhat hurried,” said Captain Price, stiffly.
+
+The old minister looked at him over his spectacles; then he glanced at
+the small, embarrassed figure shrinking into the depths of the buggy.
+
+(“Hullo, hullo, hullo!” he said, softly. “Well, Gussie's done it.) You'd
+better back a little, Captain,” he advised.
+
+“I can manage,” said the Captain.
+
+“I didn't say 'go back,'” Dr. Lavendar said, mildly.
+
+“Oh!” murmured a small voice from within the buggy.
+
+“I expect you need me, don't you, Alfred?” said Dr. Lavendar.
+
+“What?” said the Captain, frowning.
+
+“Captain,” said Dr. Lavendar, simply, “if I can be of any service to you
+and Mrs. North, I shall be glad.”
+
+Captain Price looked at him. “Now, look here, Lavendar, we're going to
+do it this time, if all the parsons in--well, in the church, try to stop
+us!”
+
+“I'm not going to try to stop you.”
+
+“But Gussie said you said--”
+
+“Alfred, at your time of life, are you beginning to quote Gussie?”
+
+“But she said you said it would be--”
+
+“Captain Price, I do not express my opinion of your conduct to your
+daughter-in-law. You ought to have sense enough to know that.”
+
+“Well, why did you talk to her about it?”
+
+“I didn't talk to her about it. But,” said Dr. Lavendar, thrusting out
+his lower lip, “I should like to.”
+
+“We were going to hunt up a parson in Upper Chester,” said the Captain,
+sheepishly.
+
+Dr. Lavendar looked about, up and down the silent, shady road, then
+through the bordering elderberries into an orchard. “If you have your
+license,” he said, “I have my prayer-book. Let's go into the orchard.
+There are two men working there we can get for witnesses,--Danny isn't
+quite enough, I suppose.”
+
+The Captain turned to Mrs. North. “What do you say, ma'am?” he said. She
+nodded, and gathered up her skirts to get out of the buggy. The two old
+men led their horses to the side of the road and hitched them to the
+rail fence; then the Captain helped Mrs. North through the elder-bushes,
+and shouted out to the men ploughing at the other side of the orchard.
+They came,--big, kindly young fellows, and stood gaping at the three old
+people standing under the apple-tree in the sunshine. Dr. Lavendar
+explained that they were to be witnesses, and the boys took off their
+hats.
+
+There was a little silence, and then, in the white shadows and perfume
+of the orchard, with its sunshine, and drift of petals falling in the
+gay wind, Dr. Lavendar began.... When he came to “Let no man put
+asunder--” Captain Price growled in his grizzled red beard, “Nor woman,
+either!” But only Mrs. North smiled.
+
+When it was over, Captain Price drew a deep breath of relief. “Well,
+this time we made a sure thing of it, Mrs. North!”
+
+“_Mrs. North?_” said Dr. Lavendar; and then he did chuckle.
+
+“Oh--” said Captain Price, and roared at the joke.
+
+“You'll have to call me Letty,” said the pretty old lady, smiling and
+blushing.
+
+“Oh,” said the Captain; then he hesitated. “Well, now, if you don't
+mind, I--I guess I won't call you Lefty; I'll call you Letitia?”
+
+“Call me anything you want to,” said Mrs. Price, gayly.
+
+Then they all shook hands with each other, and with the witnesses, who
+found something left in their palms that gave them great satisfaction,
+and went back to climb into their respective buggies.
+
+“We have shore leave,” the Captain explained; “we won't go back to Old
+Chester for a few days. You may tell 'em, Lavendar.”
+
+“Oh, may I?” said Dr. Lavendar, blankly. “Well, good-by, and good luck!”
+
+He watched the other buggy tug on ahead, and then he leaned down to
+catch Danny by the scruff of the neck.
+
+“Well, Daniel,” he said, “'_if at first you don't succeed_'--”
+
+And Danny was pulled into the buggy.
+
+
+
+
+A ROMANCE OF WHOOPING HARBOR
+
+BY NORMAN DUNCAN
+
+
+The trader _Good Samaritan_--they called her the _Cheap and Nasty_ on
+the Shore; God knows why! for she was dealing fairly for the fish, if
+something smartly--was wind-bound at Heart's Ease Cove, riding safe in
+the lee of the Giant's Hand: champing her anchor chain; nodding to the
+swell, which swept through the tickle and spent itself in the landlocked
+water, collapsing to quiet. It was late of a dirty night, but the
+schooner lay in shelter from the roaring wind; and the forecastle lamp
+was alight, the bogie snoring, the crew sprawling at case, purring in
+the light and warmth and security of the hour.... By and by, when the
+skipper's allowance of tea and hard biscuit had fulfilled its destiny,
+Tumm, the clerk, told the tale of Whooping Harbor, wherein the maid met
+Fate in the person of the fool from Thunder Arm; and I came down from
+the deck--from the black, wet wind of the open, changed to a wrathful
+flutter by the eternal barrier--in time to hear. And I was glad, for we
+know little enough of love, being blind of soul, perverse and proud; and
+love is strange past all things: wayward, accounting not, of infinite
+aspects--radiant to our vision, colorless; sombre, black as hell; but of
+unfailing beauty, we may be sure, had we but the eyes to see, the heart
+to interpret....
+
+“We was reachin' up t' Whoopin' Harbor,” said Tumm, “t' give the _White
+Lily_ a night's lodgin', it bein' a wonderful windish night; clear
+enough, the moon sailin' a cloudy sky, but with a bank o' fog sneakin'
+round Cape Muggy like a fish-thief. An' we wasn't in no haste, anyhow,
+t' make Sinners' Tickle, for we was the first schooner down the Labrador
+that season, an' 'twas pick an' choose your berth for we, with a clean
+bill t' every head from Starvation Cove t' the Settin' Hen, so quick as
+the fish struck. So the skipper he says we'll hang the ol girl up t'
+Whoopin' Harbor 'til dawn; an' we'll all have a watch below, says he,
+with a cup o' tea, says he, if the cook can bile the water 'ithout
+burnin' it. Which was wonderful hard for the cook t' manage, look you!
+as the skipper, which knowed nothin' about feelin's, would never stop
+tellin' un: the cook bein' from Thunder Arm, a half-witted, glossy-eyed
+lumpfish o' the name o' Moses Shoos, born by chance and brung up
+likewise, as desperate a cook as ever tartured a stummick, but meanin'
+so wonderful well that we loved un, though he were like t' finish us
+off, every man jack, by the slow p'ison o' dirt.
+
+“'Cook, you dunderhead!' says the skipper, with a wink t' the crew. 'You
+been an' scarched the water agin.'
+
+“Shoos he looked like he'd give up for good on the spot--just like he
+_knowed_ he was a fool, an' _had_ knowed it for a long, long time,--sort
+o' like he was sorry for we an' sick of hisself.
+
+“'Cook,' says the skipper, 'you went an' done it agin. Yes, you did!
+Don't you go denyin' of it. You'll kill us, cook,' says he, 'if you goes
+on like this. They isn't nothin' worse for the system,' says he, 'than
+this here burned water. The alamnacs,' says he, shakin' his finger at
+the poor cook, ''ll tell you _that!_'
+
+“'I 'low I did burn that water, skipper,' says the cook, 'if you says
+so. But I isn't got all my wits,' says he, the cry-baby; 'an' God knows
+I'm doin' my best!'
+
+“'I always did allow, cook,' says the skipper, 'that God knowed more'n I
+ever thunk.'
+
+“'An' I never _did_ burn no water,' blubbers the cook, 'afore I shipped
+along o' you in this here dam' ol' flour-sieve of a _White Lily_.'
+
+“'This here _what_?' snaps the skipper.
+
+“'This here dam' ol' basket.'
+
+“'Basket!' says the skipper. Then he hummed a bit o' 'Fishin' for the
+Maid I Loves,' 'ithout thinkin' much about the toon. 'Cook,' says he, 'I
+loves you. You is on'y a half-witted chance-child,' says he, 'but I
+loves you like a brother.'
+
+“'Does you, skipper?' says the cook, with a grin, like the fool he was.
+'I isn't by no means hatin' you, skipper,' says he. 'But I can't _help_
+burnin' the water,' says he, 'an' I 'low I don't want no blame for it.
+I'm sorry for you an' the crew,' says he, 'an' I wisht I hadn't took the
+berth. But when I shipped along o' you,' says he, 'I 'lowed I _could_
+cook. I knows I isn't able for it now,' says he, 'for you says so,
+skipper; but I'm doin' my best, an' I 'low if the water gets scarched,'
+says he, 'the galley fire's bewitched.'
+
+“'Basket!' says the skipper. 'Ay, ay, cook,' says he. 'I just _loves_
+you.'
+
+“They wasn't a man o' the crew liked t' hear the skipper say that; for,
+look you! the skipper didn't know nothin' about feelin's, an' the cook
+had more feelin's 'n a fool can make handy use of aboard a Labrador
+fishin'-craft. No, zur; the skipper didn't know nothin' about feelin's.
+I'm not wantin' t' say it about that there man, nor about no other man;
+for they isn't nothin' harder t' be spoke. But he _didn't;_ an' they's
+nothin' else _to_ it. There sits the ol' man, smoothin' his big red
+beard, singin', 'I'm Fishin' for the Maid I Loves,' while he looks at
+the poor cook, which was washin' up the dishes, for we was through with
+the mug-up. An' the devil was in his eyes--the devil was fair grinnin'
+in them little blue eyes. Lord! it made me sad t' see it; for I knowed
+the cook was in for bad weather, an' he wasn't no sort o' craft t' be
+out o' harbor in a gale o' wind like that.
+
+“'Cook,' says the skipper.
+
+“'Ay, zur?' says the cook.
+
+“'Cook,' says the skipper, 'you ought t' get married.'
+
+“'I on'y wisht I could,' says the cook.
+
+“'You ought t' try, cook,' says the skipper, 'for the sake o' the crew.
+We'll all die,' says he, 'afore we sights of Bully Dick agin,' says he,
+'if you keeps on burnin' the water. You _got_ t' get married, cook, t'
+the first likely maid you sees on the Labrador,' says he, 't' save the
+crew. She'd do the cookin' for you. It 'll be the loss o' all hands,'
+says he, 'an you don't, This here burned water,' says he, 'will be the
+end of us, cook, an you keeps it up.'
+
+“'I'd be wonderful glad t' 'blige you, skipper,' says the cook, 'an' I'd
+like t' 'blige all hands. 'Twon't be by my wish,' says he, 'that
+anybody'll die o' the grub they gets.'
+
+“'Cook,' says the skipper, 'shake! I knows a _man_,' says he, 'when I
+sees one. Any man,' says he, 'that would put on the irons o' matrimony,'
+says he, 't' 'blige a shipmate,' says he, 'is a better man 'n me, an' I
+loves un like a brother.'
+
+“Which cheered the cook up considerable.
+
+“'Cook,' says the skipper, 'I 'pologize. Yes, I do, cook,' says he, 'I
+'pologize.'
+
+“'I isn't got no feelin' agin' matrimony,' says the cook. 'But I isn't
+able t' get took. I been tryin' every maid t' Thunder Arm,' says he,
+'an' they isn't one,' says he, 'will wed a fool.'
+
+“'Not one?' says the skipper.
+
+“'Nar a one,' says the cook.
+
+“'I'm s'prised,' says the skipper.
+
+“'Nar a maid t' Thunder Arm,' says the cook, 'will wed a fool, an' I
+'low they isn't one,' says he, 'on the Labrador.'
+
+“'It's been done afore, cook,' says the skipper, 'an' I 'low 'twill be
+done agin, if the world don't come to an end t' oncet. Cook,' says he,
+'I _knows_ the maid t' do it.'
+
+“The poor cook begun t' grin. 'Does you, skipper?' says he. 'Ah,
+skipper, no, you doesn't!' And he sort o' chuckled, like the fool he
+was. 'Ah, now, skipper,' says he, '_you_ doesn't know no maid would
+marry me!”
+
+“'Ay, b'y,' says the skipper, 'I got the girl for _you_. An' she isn't a
+thousand miles,' says he, 'from where that dam' ol' basket of a _White
+Lily_ lies at anchor,' says he, 'in Whoopin' Harbor. She isn't what
+you'd call handsome an' tell no lie,' says he, 'but--'
+
+“'Never you mind about that, skipper.'
+
+“'No,' says the skipper, 'she isn't handsome, as handsome goes, even in
+these parts, but--'
+
+“'Never you mind, skipper,' says the cook. 'If 'tis anything in the
+shape o' woman,' says he, ''twill do.'
+
+“'I 'low that Liz Jones would take you, cook,' says the skipper. 'You
+ain't much on wits, but you got a good-lookin' hull; an' I 'low she'd be
+more'n willin' t' skipper a craft like you. You better go ashore, cook,
+when you gets cleaned up, an' see what she says. Tumm,' says he, 'is
+sort o' shipmates with Liz,' says he, 'an' I 'low he'll see you through
+the worst of it.'
+
+“'Will you, Tumm?' says the cook.
+
+“'Well,' says I, 'I'll see.
+
+“I knowed Liz Jones from the time I fished Whoopin' Harbor with Skipper
+Bill Topsail in the _Love the Wind_, bein' cotched by the measles
+thereabouts, which she nursed me through; an' I 'lowed she _would_ wed
+the cook if he asked her, so, thinks I, I'll go ashore with the fool t'
+see that she don't. No; she wasn't handsome--not Liz. I'm wonderful fond
+o' yarnin' o' good-lookin' maids; but I can't say much o' Liz; for Liz
+was so far t' l'eward o' beauty that many a time, lyin' sick there in
+the fo'c's'le o' the _Love the Wind_, I wished the poor girl would turn
+inside out, for, thinks I, the pattern might be a sight better on the
+other side. I _will_ say she was big and well-muscled; an' muscles, t'
+my mind, courts enough t' make up for black eyes, but not for
+cross-eyes, much less for fuzzy whiskers. It ain't in my heart t' make
+sport o' Liz, lads; but I _will_ say she had a club foot, for she was
+born in a gale, I'm told, when the _Preacher_ was hangin' on off a lee
+shore 'long about Cape Harrigan, an' the sea was raisin' the devil.
+An', well--I hates t' say it, but--well, they called her 'Walrus Liz.'
+No; she wasn't handsome, she didn't have no good looks; but once you got
+a look into whichever one o' them cross-eyes you was able to cotch, you
+seen a deal more'n your own face; an' she _was_ well-muscled, an' I 'low
+I'm goin' t' tell you so, for I wants t' name her good p'ints so well as
+her bad. Whatever--
+
+“'Cook,' says I, 'I'll go along o' you.'
+
+“With that the cook fell to on the dishes, an' 'twasn't long afore he
+was ready to clean hisself; which done, he was ready for the courtin'.
+But first he got out his dunny-bag, an' he fished in there 'til he
+pulled out a blue stockin', tied in a hard knot; an' from the toe o'
+that there blue stockin' he took a brass ring. 'I 'low,' says he,
+talkin' to hisself, in the half-witted way he had, 'it won't do no hurt
+t' give her mother's ring.' Then he begun t' cry. “Moses,” says mother,
+“you better take the ring off my finger. It isn't no weddin'-ring,” says
+she, “for I never was what you might call wed,” says she, “but I got it
+from the Jew t' make believe I was; for it didn't do nobody no hurt, an'
+it sort o' pleased me. You better take it, Moses, b'y,” says she, “for
+the dirt o' the grave would only spile it,” says she, “an' I'm not
+wantin' it no more. Don't wear it at the fishin', dear,” says she, “for
+the fishin' is wonderful hard,” says she, “an' joolery don't stand much
+wear an' tear.” 'Oh, mother!' says the cook, 'I done what you wanted!'
+Then the poor fool sighed an' looked up at the skipper. 'I 'low,
+skipper,' says he, ''t wouldn't do no hurt t' give the ring to a man's
+wife, would it? For mother wouldn't mind, would she?'
+
+“The skipper didn't answer that.
+
+“'Come, cook,' says I, 'leave us get under way,' for I couldn't stand it
+no longer.
+
+“So the cook an' me put out in the punt t' land at Whoopin' Harbor, with
+the crew wishin' the poor cook well with their lips, but thinkin', God
+knows what! in their hearts. An' he was in a wonderful state o' fright.
+I never _seed_ a man so took by scare afore. For, look you! he thunk she
+wouldn't have un, an' he thunk she would, an' he wisht she would, an' he
+wisht she wouldn't; an' by an' by he 'lowed he'd stand by, whatever come
+of it, 'for,' says he, 'the crew's g-g-got t' have better c-c-cookin' if
+I c-c-can g-g-get it. Lord! Tumm,' says he, ''tis a c-c-cold night,'
+says he, 'but I'm sweatin' like a p-p-porp-us!' I cheered un up so well
+as I could; an' by an' by we was on the path t' Liz Jones's house, up on
+Gray Hill, where she lived alone, her mother bein' dead an' her father
+shipped on a barque from St. Johns t' the West Indies. An' we found Liz
+sittin' on a rock at the turn o' the road, lookin' down from the hill at
+the _White Lily:_ all alone--sittin' there in the moonlight, all
+alone--thinkin' o' God knows what!
+
+“'Hello, Liz!' says I.
+
+“'Hello, Tumm!' says she. 'What vethel'th that?'
+
+“'That's the _White Lily,_ Liz,' says I. An' here's the cook o' that
+there craft,' says I, 'come up the hill t' speak t' you.'
+
+“'That's right,' says the cook. 'Tumm, you're right.'
+
+“'T' thpeak t' _me!_' says she.
+
+“I wisht she hadn't spoke quite that way. Lord! it wasn't nice. It makes
+a man feel bad t' see a woman hit her buzzom for a little thing like
+that.
+
+“'Ay, Liz,' says I, 't' speak t' you. An' I'm thinkin', Liz,' says I,
+'he'll say things no man ever said afore--t' you.'
+
+“'That's right, Tumm,' says the cook. 'I wants t' speak as man t' man,'
+says he, 't' stand by what I says,' says he, meanin' it afore G-g-god!'
+
+“Liz got off the rock. Then she begun t' kick at the path; an' she was
+lookin' down, but I 'lowed she had an eye on the cook all the time.
+'For,' thinks I, 'she's sensed the thing out, like all the women.'
+
+“'I'm thinkin',' says I, 'I'll go up the road a bit.'
+
+“'Oh no, you won't, Tumm,' says she. 'You thtay right here. Whath the
+cook wantin' o' me?'
+
+“'Well,' says the cook, 'I 'low I wants t' get married.'
+
+“'T' get married!' says she.
+
+“'That's right,' says he. 'Damme! Tumm,' says he, 'she got it right. T'
+get married,' says he, 'an' I 'low you'll do.'
+
+“'Me?' says she.
+
+“'You, Liz,' says he. 'I got t' get me a wife right away,' says he, 'an'
+they isn't nothin' else I've heared tell of in the neighborhood.'
+
+“She begun to blow like a whale; an' she hit her buzzom with her fists,
+an' shivered. I 'lowed she was goin' t' fall in a fit. But she looked
+away t' the moon, an' somehow that righted her.
+
+“'You better thee me in daylight,' says she.
+
+“'Don't you mind about that,' says he. 'You're a woman, an' a big one,'
+says he, 'an' that's all I'm askin' for.'
+
+“She put a finger under his chin an' tipped his face t' the light.
+
+“'You ithn't got all your thentheth, ith you?' says she.
+
+“'Well,' says he, 'bein' born on Hollow eve,' says he, 'I isn't quite
+all there. But,' says he, 'I wisht I was. An' I can't do no more.'
+
+“'An' you wanth t' wed me?' says she. 'Ith you sure you doth?'
+
+“'I got mother's ring,' says the cook, 't' prove it.'
+
+“'Tumm,' says Liz t' me, '_you_ ithn't wantin' t' get married, ith you?'
+
+“'No, Liz,' says I. 'Not,' says I, 't' you.'
+
+“'No,' says she. 'Not--t' me' She took me round the turn in the road.
+'Tumm,' says she, 'I 'low I'll wed that man. I wanth t' get away from
+here,' says she, lookin' over the hills. 'I wanth t' get t' the
+Thouthern outporth, where there'th life. They ithn't no life here. An'
+I'm tho wonderful tired o' all thith! Tumm,' says she, 'no man ever
+afore athked me t' marry un, an' I 'low I better take thith one. He'th
+on'y a fool,' says she, 'but not even a fool ever come courtin' me, an'
+I 'low nobody but a fool would. On'y a fool, Tumm!' says she. 'But _I_
+ithn't got nothin' t' boatht of. God made me,' says she, 'an' I ithn't
+mad that He done it. I 'low He meant me t' take the firth man that come,
+an' be content. I 'low _I_ ithn't got no right t' thtick up my nothe at
+a fool. For, Tumm,' says she, 'God made that fool, too. An', Tumm,' says
+she, 'I wanth thomethin' elthe. Oh, I wanth thomethin' elthe! I hateth
+t' tell you, Tumm,' says she, 'what it ith. But all the other maidth
+hath un, Tumm, an' I wanth one, too. I 'low they ithn't no woman happy
+without one, Tumm. An' I ithn't never had no chanth afore. No chanth,
+Tumm, though God knowth they ithn't nothin' I wouldn't do,' says she,
+'t' get what I wanth! I'll wed the fool,' says she. 'It ithn't a man I
+wanth tho much; no, it ithn't a man. Ith--'
+
+“'What you wantin', Liz?' says I.
+
+“'It ithn't a man, Tumm,' says she.
+
+“'No?' says I. 'What is it, Liz?'
+
+“'Ith a baby,' says she.
+
+“God! I felt bad when she told me that....”
+
+Tumm stopped, sighed, picked at a knot in the table. There was silence
+in the forecastle. The _Good Samaritan_ was still nodding to the
+swell--lying safe at anchor in Heart's Ease Cove. We heard the gusts
+scamper over the deck and shake the rigging; we caught, in the
+intervals, the deep-throated roar of breakers, far off--all the noises
+of the gale. And Tumm picked at the knot with his clasp-knife; and we
+sat watching, silent, all.... And I felt bad, too, because of the maid
+at Whooping Harbor--a rolling waste of rock, with the moonlight lying on
+it, stretching from the whispering mystery of the sea to the greater
+desolation beyond; and an uncomely maid, wishing, without hope, for that
+which the hearts of women must ever desire....
+
+“Ay,” Tumm drawled, “it made me feel bad t' think o' what she'd been
+wantin' all them years; an' then I wished I'd been kinder t' Liz....
+An', 'Tumm,' thinks I, 'you went an' come ashore t' stop this here
+thing; but you better let the skipper have his little joke, for t'will
+on'y s'prise him, an' it won't do nobody else no hurt. Here's this
+fool,' thinks I, 'wantin' a wife; an' he won't never have another
+chance. An' here's this maid,' thinks I, 'wantin' a baby; an' _she_
+won't never have another chance. 'Tis plain t' see,' thinks I, 'that God
+A'mighty, who made un, crossed their courses; an' I 'low, ecod!' thinks
+I, 'that 'twasn't a bad idea He had. If He's got to get out of it
+somehow,' thinks I, 'why, _I_ don't know no better way. Tumm,' thinks I,
+'you sheer off. Let Nature,' thinks I, 'have doo course an' be
+glorified.' So I looks Liz in the eye--an' says nothin'.
+
+“'Tumm,' says she, 'doth you think he--'
+
+“'Don't you be scared o' nothin',' says I. 'He's a lad o' good
+feelin's,' says I, 'an' he'll treat you the best he knows how. Is you
+goin' t' take un?'
+
+“'I wathn't thinkin' o' that,' says she. 'I wathn't thinkin' o' _not_. I
+wath jutht,' says she, 'wonderin'.'
+
+“'They isn't no sense in that, Liz,' says I. 'You just wait an' find
+out.'
+
+“'What'th hith name?' says she.
+
+“'Shoos,' says I. 'Moses Shoos.'
+
+“With that she up with her pinny an' begun t' cry like a young swile.
+
+“'What you cryin' for, Liz?' says I.
+
+“I 'low I couldn't tell what 'twas all about. But she was like all the
+women. Lord! 'tis the little things that makes un weep when it comes t'
+the weddin'.
+
+“'Come, Liz,' says I, 'what you cryin' about?'
+
+“'I lithp,' says she.
+
+“'I knows you does, Liz,' says I; 'but it ain't nothin' t' cry about.'
+
+“'I can't thay Joneth,' says she.
+
+“'No,' says I; 'but you'll be changin' your name,' says I, 'an' it won't
+matter no more.'
+
+“'An' if I can't say Joneth,' says she, 'I can't thay--'
+
+“'Can't say what?' says I.
+
+“'Can't thay Thooth!' says she.
+
+“Lord! No more she could. An' t' say Moses Shoos! An' t' say M'issus
+Moses Shoos! Lord! It give me a pain in the tongue, t' think of it.
+
+“'Jutht my luck,' says she; 'but I'll do my betht.'
+
+“So we went back an' told the cook that he didn't have t' worry no more
+about gettin' a wife; an' he said he was more glad than sorry, an', says
+he, she'd better get her bonnet, t' go aboard an' get married right
+away. An' she 'lowed she didn't want no bonnet, but _would_ like to
+change her pinny. So we said we'd as lief wait a spell, though a clean
+pinny wasn't _needed_. An' when she got back, the cook said he 'lowed
+the skipper could marry un well enough 'til we over-hauled a real
+parson; an' she thought so, too, for, says she, 'twouldn't be longer
+than fall, an' any sort of a weddin', says she, would do 'til then. An'
+aboard we went, the cook an' me pullin' the punt, an' she steerin'; an'
+the cook he crowed an' cackled all the way, like a half-witted rooster;
+but the maid didn't even cluck, for she was too wonderful solemn t' do
+anything but look at the moon.
+
+“'Skipper,' said the cook, when we got in the fo'c's'le, 'here she is.
+_I_ isn't afeared,' says he, 'and _she_ isn't afeared; an' now I 'low
+we'll have you marry us.'
+
+“Up jumps the skipper; but he was too much s'prised t' say a word.
+
+“'An' I'm thinkin',' says the cook, with a nasty little wink, 'that they
+isn't a man in this here fo'c's'le,' says he, 'will _say_ I'm afeared.'
+
+“'Cook,' says the skipper, takin' the cook's hand, 'shake! I never
+knowed a man like you afore,' says he. 'T' my knowledge, you're the on'y
+man in the Labrador fleet would do it. I'm proud,' says he, 't' take the
+hand o' the man with nerve enough t' marry Walrus Liz o' Whoopin'
+Harbor.'
+
+“The devil got in the eyes o' the cook--a jumpin' little brimstone
+devil, ecod!
+
+“'Ay, lad,' says the skipper, 'I'm proud t' know the man that isn't
+afeared o' Walrus--'
+
+“'Don't you call her that!' says the cook. 'Don't you do it, skipper!'
+
+“I was lookin' at Liz. She was grinnin' in a holy sort o' way. Never
+seed nothin' like that afore--no, lads, not in all my life.
+
+“'An' why not, cook?' says the skipper.
+
+“'It ain't her name,' says the cook.
+
+“'It ain't?' says the skipper. 'But I been sailin' the Labrador for
+twenty year,' says he, 'an' I ain't never heared her called nothin' but
+Walrus--'
+
+“The devil got into the cook's hands then. I seed his fingers clawin'
+the air in a hungry sort o' way. An' it looked t' me like squally
+weather for the skipper.
+
+“'Don't you do it no more, skipper,' says the cook. 'I isn't got no
+wits,' says he, 'an' I'm feelin' wonderful queer!'
+
+“The skipper took a look ahead into the cook's eyes. 'Well, cook,' says
+he, I 'low,' says he, 'I won't.'
+
+“Liz laughed--an' got close t' the fool from Thunder Arm. An' I seed her
+touch his coat-tail, like as if she loved it, but didn't dast do no
+more.
+
+“'What you two goin' t' do?' says the skipper.
+
+“'We 'lowed you'd marry us,' says the cook, ''til we come across a
+parson.'
+
+“'I will,' says the skipper. 'Stand up here,' says he. 'All hands stand
+up!' says he. 'Tumm,' says he, 'get me the first Book you comes across.'
+
+“I got un a Book.
+
+“'Now, Liz,' says he, 'can you cook?'
+
+“'Fair t' middlin',' says she. 'I won't lie.'
+
+“''Twill do,' says he. 'An' does you want t' get married t' this here
+dam' fool?'
+
+“'An it pleathe you,' says she.
+
+“'Shoos,' says the skipper, 'will you let this woman do the cookin'?'
+
+“'Well, skipper,' says the cook, 'I will; for I don't want nobody t' die
+o' my cookin' on this here v'y'ge.'
+
+“'An' will you keep out o' the galley?' “'I 'low I'll _have_ to.'
+
+“'An', look you! cook, is you sure--is you _sure_,' says the skipper,
+with a shudder, lookin' at the roof, 'that you wants t' marry this
+here--'
+
+“'Don't you do it, skipper!' says the cook. 'Don't you say that no more!
+By God!' says he, 'I'll kill you if you does!'
+
+“'Is you sure,' says the skipper, 'that you wants t' marry this
+here--woman?'
+
+“'I will.'
+
+“'Well,' says the skipper, kissin' the Book, 'I'low me an' the crew
+don't care; an' we can't help it, anyhow.'
+
+“'What about mother's ring?' says the cook. 'She might's well have
+that,' says he, 'if she's careful about the wear an' tear. For joolery,'
+says he t' Liz, 'don't stand it.'
+
+“'It can't do no harm,' says the skipper.
+
+“'Ith we married, thkipper?' says Liz, when she got the ring on.
+
+“'Well,' says the skipper, 'I 'low that knot 'll hold 'til fall. For,'
+says he, 'I got a rope's end an' a belayin'-pin t' make it hold,' says
+he, 'til we gets long-side of a parson that knows more about matrimonial
+knots 'n me. We'll pick up your goods. Liz,' says he, 'on the s'uthard
+v'y'ge. An' I hopes, ol girl,' says he, 'that you'll be able t' boil the
+water 'ithout burnin' it.'
+
+“'Ay, Liz. I been makin' a awful fist o' b'ilin' the water o' late.'
+
+“She gave him one look--an' put her clean pinny to her eyes.
+
+“'What you cryin' about?' says the cook.
+
+“'I don't know,' says she; 'but I 'low 'tith becauthe now I knowth you
+_ith_ a fool!'
+
+“'She's right, Tumm,' says the cook. 'She's got it right! Bein' born on
+Hollow eve,' says he, 'I couldn't be nothin' else. But, Liz,' says he,
+'I'm glad I got you, fool or no fool.'
+
+“So she wiped her eyes, an' blowed her nose, an' give a little sniff,
+an' looked up, an' smiled.
+
+“'I isn't good enough for you,' says the poor cook. 'But, Liz,' says he,
+'if you kissed me,' says he, 'I wouldn't mind a bit. An' they isn't a
+man in this here fo'c's'le,' says he, lookin' around, 'that'll _say_ I'd
+mind. Not one,' says he, with the little devil jumpin' in his eyes.
+
+“Then she stopped cryin' for good.
+
+“'Go ahead, Liz!' says he. 'I ain't afeared. Come on! Give us a kiss!'
+
+“'Motheth Thooth,' says she, 'you're the firtht man ever athked me t'
+give un a kith!'
+
+“She kissed un. 'Twas like a pistol-shot. An', Lord! her poor face was
+shinin'....”
+
+In the forecastle of the _Good Samaritan_ we listened to the wind as it
+scampered over the deck; and we watched Tumm pick at the knot in the
+table.
+
+“Was she happy?” I asked, at last.
+
+“Well,” he answered, with a laugh, “she sort o' got what she was
+wantin'. More'n she was lookin' for, I 'low. Seven o' them. An' all
+straight an' hearty. Ecod! sir, you never _seed_ such a likely litter o'
+young uns. Spick an' span, ecod! from stem t' stern. Smellin' clean an'
+sweet; decks as white as snow; an' every nail an' knob polished 'til it
+made you blink t' see it. An' when I was down Thunder Arm way, last
+season, they was some talk _o' one o' them bein' raised for a parson!_”
+
+I went on deck. The night was still black; but beyond--high over the
+open sea, hung in the depths of the mystery of night and space--there
+was a star.
+
+
+
+
+HYACINTHUS
+
+
+
+BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN
+
+The group was seated on the flat door-stone and the gravel walk in front
+of it, which crossed the green square of the Lynn front yard. On the
+wide flat stone, in two chairs, sat Mrs. Rufus Lynn and her opposite
+neighbor, Mrs. Wilford Biggs. On a chair on the gravel walk sat Mr. John
+Mangam, Mrs. Biggs's brother--an elderly unmarried man who lived in the
+village. On the step itself sat Mrs. Samson, an old lady of eighty-five,
+as straight as if she were sixteen, and by her side, her long body bent
+gracefully, her elbows resting on her knees, her chin resting in the cup
+of her two hands, Sarah Lynn, her great-granddaughter. Sarah Lynn was
+often spoken of as “pretty if she wasn't so slouchy,” in Adams, the
+village in which she had been born and bred. Adams people were not,
+generally speaking, of the kind who understand the grace which may exist
+in utter freedom of attitude and motion.
+
+It was a very hot evening of one of the hottest days of July, and Mrs.
+Rufus Lynn wore in deference to the climate a gown of white cambric with
+a little black sprig thereon, but nothing could excel the smoothly boned
+fit of it. And she did not lean back in her chair, but was as erect as
+the very old lady on the door-step, who was her grandmother, and who was
+also stiffly gowned, in a black cashmere as straightly made as if it had
+been armor. The influence of heredity showed strongly in the two, but in
+Sarah showed the intervening generation.
+
+Sarah was a great beauty with no honor in her own country. Her long
+softly curved figure was surmounted by a head wound with braids of the
+purest flax color, and a face like a cameo. She was very fair, with the
+fairness of alabaster. Her mother's face had a hard blondness, pink and
+white, but fixed, and her great-grandmother had the same.
+
+Mrs. Samson often glanced disapprovingly at her great-granddaughter,
+seated by her side in her utterly lax attitude. “Don't set so hunched
+up,” she whispered to her in a sharp hiss. She did not want Mr. John
+Mangam, whom she regarded as a suitor of Sarah's, to have his attention
+called to the girl's defects.
+
+But Sarah had laughed softly, and replied, quite aloud, in a languid,
+sweet voice, “Oh, it is so hot, grandma!”
+
+“What if it is hot?” said the old woman. “You ain't no hotter settin' up
+than you be slouchin'.” She still spoke in a whisper, and Sarah had only
+laughed and said nothing more.
+
+As for Mrs. Wilford Biggs and her brother, Mr. John Mangam, they
+maintained, as always, silence. Neither of the two ever spoke, as a
+rule, unless spoken to. John was called a very rich man in Adams. He had
+gone to the far West in his youth and made money in cattle.
+
+“And how in creation he ever made any money in cattle, a man that don't
+talk no more than he does, beats me,” Mrs. Samson often said to her
+granddaughter, Mrs. Lynn. She was quite out-spoken to her about John
+Mangam, although never to Sarah. “It does seem as if a man would have to
+say somethin', to manage critters,” said the old woman.
+
+Mr. John Mangam and Mrs. Wilford Biggs grated on her nerves. She
+privately considered it an outrage for Mrs. Biggs to come over nearly
+every evening and sit and rock and say nothing, and often fall asleep,
+and for Mr. Mangam to do the same. It was not so much the silence as the
+attitude of almost injured expectancy which irritated. Both gave the
+effect of waiting for other people to talk to them, to tell them
+interesting bits of news, to ask them questions--to set them going, as
+it were.
+
+Mrs. Lynn and her grandmother tried to fulfil their duty in this
+direction, but Sarah did not trouble herself in the least. She continued
+to sit bent over like a lily limp with the heat, and she stared with her
+two great blue eyes in her cameo face forth at the wonders of the summer
+night, and she had apparently very little consciousness of the people
+around her. Her loose white gown fell loosely around her; her white
+elbows were quite visible from the position in which she held her arms.
+Her lovely hair hung in soft loops over her ears. She was the only one
+who paid the slightest attention to the beauty of the night. She was
+filling her whole soul with it.
+
+It was a wonderful night, and Adams was a village in which to see a
+wonderful night. It was flanked by a river, upon the opposite bank of
+which rose a gentle mountain. Above the mountain the moon was appearing
+with the beauty of revelation, and the tall trees made superb shadow
+effects. The night also was not without its voices and its fragrances.
+Katydids were shrilling from every thicket, and over somewhere near the
+river a whippoorwill was persistently calling. As for the fragrances,
+they were those of the dark, damp skirts and wings of the night, the
+evidences as loud as voices of green shrubs and flowers blooming in low
+wet places; but dominant above all was the scent of the lilies. One
+breathed in lilies to that extent that one's thought seemed fairly
+scented with them. It was easy enough, by looking toward the left, to
+see where the fragrance came from. There was evident, on the other side
+of a low hedge, a pale florescence of the flowers. Beyond them rose,
+pale likewise, the great Ware house, the largest in the village, and the
+oldest. Hyacinthus Ware was the sole representative of the old family
+known to be living. Presently the group on the Lynn door-step began to
+talk about him, leading up to the subject from the fragrance of the
+lilies.
+
+“Them lilies is so sweet they are sickish,” said the old grandmother.
+
+“Yes, they be dreadful sickish,” said Mrs. Lynn. Mrs. Wilford Biggs and
+Mr. Mangam, as usual, said nothing.
+
+“Hyacinthus is home, I see,” said Mrs. Lynn.
+
+“Yes, I see him on the street t'other day,” said the old woman, in her
+thick dialect. She sat straighter than ever as she gazed across at the
+garden of lilies and the great Ware house, and the cold step-stone
+seemed to pierce her old spinal column like a rod of steel; but she
+never flinched.
+
+Mrs. Wilford Biggs and Mr. John Mangam said nothing.
+
+“He is the handsomest man I ever saw,” said Sarah Lynn, unexpectedly, in
+an odd, shamed, almost awed voice, as if she were speaking of a
+divinity.
+
+Then for the first time Mr. John Mangam gave evidence of life. He did
+not speak, but he made an inarticulate noise between a grunt and a
+sniff.
+
+“Well, if you call that man good-lookin',” said Mrs. Lynn, “you don't
+see the way I do, that's all.” She looked straight at Mr. John Mangam as
+she spoke.
+
+“I don't call him good-looking at all,” said the old woman; “dreadful
+white-livered.”
+
+Sarah said nothing at all, but the face of the man, Hyacinthus Ware, was
+before her eyes still, as beautiful and grand as the face of a god.
+
+“Never heerd such a name, either,” said the old woman. “His mother was
+dreadful flowery. She had some outlandish blood. I don't know whether
+she was Eyetalian or Dutch.”
+
+“Her mother was Greek, I always heard,” said Mrs. Lynn. “I dun'no' as I
+ever heard of any other Greek round these parts. I guess they don't
+emigrate much.”
+
+“I guess it was Greek, now you speak of it,” said the old woman. “I knew
+she was outlandish on one side, anyhow. An' as fur callin' him
+good-lookin'--” She looked aggressively at her great-granddaughter,
+whose beautiful face was turned toward the moonlit night.
+
+It was a long time that they sat there. It had been a very hot day, and
+the cool was grateful. Hardly a remark was made, except one from Mrs.
+Lynn that it was a blessing there were so few mosquitoes and they could
+sit outdoors such a night.
+
+“I ain't heerd but one all the time I've been settin' here,” said the
+old woman, “and I ketched him.”
+
+Sarah, the girl, continued to drink, to eat, to imbibe, to assimilate,
+toward her spiritual growth, the beauty of the night, the gentle slope
+of the mountain, the wavering wings of the shadows, the song of the
+river, the calls of the whippoorwill and the katydids, the perfume of
+the unseen green things in the wet places, and the overmastering
+sweetness of the lilies.
+
+At last Mrs. Wilford Biggs arose to go, and also John Mangam. Both said
+they must be goin', they guessed, and that was the first remark that had
+been made by either of them. Mrs. Biggs moved with loose flops down the
+front walk, and John Mangam walked stiffly behind her. She had merely to
+cross the road; he had half a mile to walk to his bachelor abode.
+
+“I should think he must be lonesome, poor man, with only that no-account
+housekeeper to home,” said the old woman, as she also rose, with pain,
+of which she resolutely gave no evidence. Her poor old joints seemed to
+stab her, but she fought off the pain angrily. Instead she pitied with
+meaning John Mangam.
+
+“It must be pretty hard for him,” assented Mrs. Lynn. She also thought
+it would be a very good thing for her daughter to marry John Mangam.
+
+Sarah said nothing. The old woman, after saying, like the others, that
+she guessed she must be goin', crept off alone across the field to her
+little house. She would have resented any offer to accompany her, and
+Mrs. Lynn arose to enter the house.
+
+“Well, be you goin' to set there all night?” she asked, rather sharply,
+of Sarah. It had seemed to her that Sarah might have made a little
+effort to entertain Mr. John Mangam.
+
+“No. I am coming in, mother,” Sarah said. Sarah spoke differently from
+the others. She had had, as they expressed it in Adams, “advantages.”
+ She had, in fact, graduated from a girls' school of considerable repute.
+Her father had insisted upon it. Mrs. Lynn had rather rebelled against
+the outlay on Sarah's education. She had John Mangam in mind, and she
+thought that a course at the high school in Adams would fit her
+admirably for her life. However, she deferred to Rufus Lynn, and Sarah
+had her education.
+
+The Lynn house was a large story-and-a-half cottage, the prevalent type
+of house in Adams. Mrs. Lynn slept in the room she had always occupied
+on the second floor. In hot weather Sarah slept in the bedroom opening
+out of the best parlor, because the other second-floor room was hot.
+Mrs. Lynn went up-stairs with her lamp and left Sarah to go to bed in
+the bedroom out of the parlor. Sarah went in there with her own little
+lamp, but even that room seemed stuffy. The heat of the day seemed to
+have become confined in the house. Sarah stood irresolute for a moment.
+She looked at the high mound of feather bed, at the small window at the
+foot, whence came scarcely a whiff of the blessed night air. Them she
+went back out on the door-step and again seated herself. As she sat
+there the scent of the lilies came more strongly than ever, and now with
+a curious effect. It was to the girl as if the fragrance were twining
+and winding about her and impelling her like leashes. All at once an
+impulse of yielding which was really freedom came to her. Why in the
+world should she not cross the little north yard, step over the low
+hedge, and go into that lily-garden? She knew that it would be beautiful
+there. She looked forth into the crystalline light and the soft plumy
+shade,--she would go over into the Ware garden. With all this, there was
+no ulterior motive. She had seen the man who lived in the house, and she
+admired him as one from afar, but she was a girl innocent not only in
+fact, but in dreams. Of course she had thought of a possible lover and
+husband, and that some day he might come, and she resented the
+supposition that John Mangam might be he, but she held even her
+imagination in a curious respect. While she dreamed of love, she
+worshipped at the same time.
+
+When she had stepped lightly over the hedge and was moving among the
+lilies in the strange garden where she had no right, she was beautiful
+as any nymph. Now that she was in the midst of the lilies, it was as if
+their fragrance were a chorus sung with a violence of sweet breath in
+her very face. She felt exhilarated, even intoxicated, by it. She felt
+as if she were drawing the lilies so into herself that her own
+personality waned. She seemed to realize what it would be to bloom with
+that pale glory and exhale such sweetness for a few days. There were
+other flowers than lilies in the garden, but the lilies were very
+plentiful. There were white day-lilies, and tiger-lilies which were not
+sweet at all, and marvellous pink freckled ones which glistened as with
+drops of silver and were very fragrant. There were also low-growing
+spider-lilies, but those were not evident at this time of night, and the
+lilies-of-the-valley, of course, were all gone. There were, however,
+many other flowers of the old-fashioned varieties--verbenas
+sweet-williams, phlox, hollyhocks, mignonette, and the like. There was
+also a quantity of box. The garden was divided into rooms by the box,
+and in each room bloomed the flowers.
+
+Sarah moved along at her will through the garden. Moving from enclosure
+to enclosure of box, she came, before she knew it, to the house itself.
+It loomed up before her a pale massiveness, with no lights in any of the
+windows, but on the back porch sat the owner. He sat in a high-back
+chair, with his head tilted back, and his eyes were closed and he seemed
+to be asleep, but Sarah was not quite sure. She stopped short. She
+became all at once horribly ashamed and shocked at what she was doing.
+What would he think of a girl roaming around his garden so late at
+night--a girl to whom he had never spoken? She was standing against a
+background of blooming hollyhocks. Her slender height shrank delicately
+away; she was like a nymph poised for flight, but she dared not even fly
+lest she wake the man on the porch if he were asleep, or arouse his
+attention were he awake.
+
+She dared do nothing but remain perfectly still--as still as one of the
+tall hollyhocks behind her which were crowded with white and yellow
+rosettes of bloom. She had her long dress wound around her, holding it
+up with one hand, and the other hand and arm hung whitely at her side in
+the folds. She stood perfectly still and looked at the man in the porch,
+on whose face the moon was shining. He looked more than ever to her like
+something wonderful beyond common. The man had really a wonderful
+beauty. He was not very young, but no years could affect the classic
+outlines of his face, and his colorless skin was as clear and smooth as
+a boys. And more than anything to be remarked was the majestic serenity
+of his expression. He looked like a man who all his life had dominated
+not only other men, but himself. And there was, besides the appearance
+of the man, a certain fascination of mystery attached to him. Nobody in
+Adams knew just how or where he had spent his life. The old Ware house
+had been occupied for many years only by an old caretaker, who still
+remained. This caretaker was a man, but with all the housekeeping
+ability of a woman. He was never seen by Adams people except when he
+made his marketing expeditions. He was said to keep the house in
+immaculate order, and he also took care of the garden. He had always
+been in the Ware household, and there was a tradition that in his youth
+he had been a very handsome man. “As handsome as any handsome woman you
+ever saw,” the old inhabitants said. He had come not very long before
+Joseph Ware, the father of Hyacinthus, had died. Joseph's wife had
+survived him several years. She died quite suddenly of pneumonia when
+still a comparatively young woman and when Hyacinthus was a boy. Then a
+maternal uncle had come and taken the boy away with him, to live nobody
+knew where nor how, until his return a few months since.
+
+There was, of course, much curiosity in Adams concerning him, and the
+curiosity was not, generally speaking, of a complimentary tendency. Some
+young and marriageable girls esteemed him very handsome, but the
+majority of the people said that he was odd and stuck up, as his mother
+had been before him. He led a quiet life with his books, and he had a
+room on the ground-floor fitted up as a studio. In there he made things
+of clay and plaster, as the Adams people said, and curious-looking boxes
+were sent away by express. It was rumored that a statue by him had been
+exhibited in New York.
+
+Some faces show more plainly in the moonlight, or one imagines so.
+Hyacinthus Ware's showed as clearly as if carved in marble. He in
+reality looked so like a statue that the girl standing in the enclosure
+of box with the background of hollyhocks had for a moment imagined that
+he might be one of his own statues. The eyes, either closed in sleep or
+appearing to be, heightened the effect.
+
+But the girl was not now in a position to do more than tremble at the
+plight into which she had gotten herself. It seemed to her that no girl,
+certainly no girl in Adams, had ever done such a thing. Her freedom of
+mind now failed her. Another heredity asserted itself. She felt very
+much as her mother or her great-grandmother might have felt in a similar
+predicament. It was as horrible as dreams she had sometimes had of
+walking into church in her nightgear. She was sure that she must not
+move, and the more so because at a very slight motion of hers there had
+been a motion as if in response from the man on the porch. Then there
+was another drawback. Some roses grew behind the hollyhocks, and her
+skirt was caught. She had felt a little pull at her skirt when she
+essayed a slight tentative motion. Therefore, in order to fly she could
+not merely slip away; she would have to make extra motions to
+disentangle her dress. She therefore remained perfectly still in the
+attitude of shrinking and flight. She thought that her only course until
+the man should wake and enter the house; then she could slip away. She
+had not much fear of being discovered unless by motion; she stood in
+shadow. Besides, the man had no reason whatever to apprehend the
+presence of a girl in his garden at that hour, and would not be looking
+for her. She had an intuitive feeling that unless she moved he would not
+perceive her. Cramps began to assail even her untrammelled limbs. To
+maintain one pose so long was almost an impossible feat. She kept hoping
+that he would wake, that he must wake. It did not seem possible that he
+could sit there much longer and not wake; and yet the night was so
+hot--hot, probably, even in the great square rooms of the old Ware
+house. It was quite natural that he should prefer sleeping there in the
+cool out-of-door if he could, but an unreasoning rage seized upon her
+that he should. She rebelled against the very freedom in another which
+she had always coveted for herself.
+
+And still he sat there, as white and beautiful and motionless as a
+statue, and still she kept her enforced attitude. She suffered tortures,
+but she said to herself that she would not yield, that she would not
+move. Rather than have that man discover her at that hour in his garden,
+she would suffer everything. It did not occur to her that possibly this
+suffering might have consequences which she did not foresee. All that
+she considered was a simple question of endurance; but all at once her
+head swam, and she sank down at the feet of the hollyhocks like a broken
+flower herself. She had completely lost consciousness.
+
+When she came to herself she was lying on the back porch of the old Ware
+house and a pile of pillows was under her head, and she had a confused
+impression of vanishing woman draperies, which later on she thought she
+must have been mistaken about, as she knew, of course, that there was no
+woman there. Hyacinthus Ware himself was bending over her and fanning
+her with a great fan of peacock feathers, and the old caretaker had a
+little glass of wine on a tray. The first thing Sarah heard was
+Hyacinthus's voice, evenly modulated, with a curious stillness about it.
+
+“I think if you can drink a little of this wine,” he said, “you will
+feel better.”
+
+Sarah looked up at the face looking down at her, and all at once a
+conviction seized upon her that he had not been asleep at all; that he
+had pretended to be so, and had been enjoying himself at her expense,
+simply waiting to see how long she would stand there. He probably
+thought that she--she, Sarah Lynn--had come into his garden at midnight
+to see him. A sudden fury seized upon her, but when she tried to raise
+herself she found that she could not. Then she reached out her hand for
+the wine, and drank it with a fierce gulp, spilling some of it over her
+dress. It affected her almost instantly. She raised herself, the wine
+giving her strength, and she looked with a haughty anger at the man,
+whose expression seemed something between compassion and mocking.
+
+“You saw me all the time,” she said. “You did, I know you did, and you
+let me think you were asleep to see how long I would stand still there,
+and you think--you think--I was sitting on my door-step--I live in the
+next house--and it was very warm in the house, so I came out again and I
+smelled the lilies over the hedge, and--and--I did not think of you at
+all.” She was quite on her feet then, and she looked at him with her
+head thrown back with an air of challenge. “I thought I would like to
+come over here in the garden,” she continued, in the same angrily
+excusing tone, “and I did not dream of seeing any one. It was so late, I
+thought the house would be closed, and when I saw you I thought you were
+asleep.”
+
+The man began to look genuinely compassionate; the half-smile faded from
+his lips. “I understand,” he said.
+
+“And I thought if I moved you would wake and see me, and you were awake
+all the time. You knew all the time, and you waited for me to stand
+there and feel as I did. I never dreamed a man could be so cruel.”
+
+“I beg your pardon with all my heart,” began Hyacinthus Ware.
+
+But the girl was gone. She staggered a little as she ran, leaping over
+the box borders. When she was at last in her own home, with the door
+softly closed and locked behind her, and she was in the parlor bedroom,
+she could not believe that she was herself. She began to look at things
+differently. The influence of the intergeneration waned. She thought how
+her mother would never have done such a thing when she was a girl, how
+shocked she would be if she knew, and she herself was as shocked as her
+mother would have been.
+
+It was only a week from the night of the garden episode that Mr. Ware
+came to make a call, and he came with the minister, who had been an old
+friend of his father's.
+
+She lay awake a long time that night, thinking with angry humiliation
+how her mother wanted her to marry John Mangam, and she thought of Mr.
+Hyacinthus Ware and his polished, gentle manner, which was yet strong.
+Then all at once a feeling which she had never known before came over
+her. She saw quite plainly before her, in the moonlit dusk of the room,
+Hyacinthus Ware's face, and she felt that she could go down on her knees
+before him and worship him.
+
+“Never was such a man,” she said to herself. “Never was a man so
+beautiful and so good. He is not like other men.”
+
+It was not so much love as devotion which possessed her. She looked out
+of her little window opposite the bed, at the moonlit night, for the
+storm had cleared the air. She had the window open and a cool wind was
+blowing through the room. She looked out at the silver-lit immensity of
+the sky, and a feeling of exaltation came over her. She thought of
+Hyacinthus as she might have thought of a divinity. Love and marriage
+were hardly within her imagination in connection with him. But they came
+later.
+
+Ware quite often called at the Lynn house. He often joined the group on
+the door-step in the summer nights. He often came when John Mangam
+occupied his usual chair in his usual place, and his graceful urbanity
+on such occasions seemed to make more evident the other man's stolid or
+stupid silence. Hyacinthus and Sarah usually had the most of the
+conversation to themselves, as even Mrs. Lynn and the old woman, who
+were not backward in speech, were at a loss to discuss many of the
+topics introduced. One evening, after they had all gone home, Mrs. Lynn
+looked fiercely at her daughter as she turned, holding her little lamp,
+which cast a glorifying reflection upon her face, into the parlor whence
+led her little bedroom.
+
+“You are a good-for-nothin' girl,” she said. “You ought to be ashamed of
+yourself.”
+
+“What do you mean, mother?” asked Sarah. She stood fair and white,
+confronting her mother, who was burning and coarse with wrath.
+
+“You talk about things you and him know that the rest of us can't talk
+about. You take advantage because your father and me sent you to school
+where you could learn more than we could. It wasn't my fault I didn't go
+to school, and 'twa'n't his fault, poor man. He had to go to work and
+get all that money he has.” By the last masculine pronoun Mrs. Lynn
+meant John Mangam.
+
+Sarah had a spirit of her own, and she turned upon her mother, and for
+the time the two faces looked alike, being swayed with one emotion.
+“If,” she said, “Mr. Ware and I had to regulate our conversation in
+order to enable Mr. Mangam to talk with us, I am sure I don't know what
+we could say. Mr. Mangam never talks, anyway.”
+
+“It ain't always the folks that talks that knows the most and is the
+best,” said Mrs. Lynn. Then her face upon her daughter's turned
+malevolent, triumphant, and cruel. “I wa'n't goin' to tell you what I
+heard when I was in Mis' Ketchum's this afternoon,” she said. “I thought
+at first I wouldn't, but now I'm goin' to.”
+
+“What do you mean, mother?” asked Sarah, in an angry voice; but she
+quailed.
+
+“I thought at first I wouldn't,” her mother continued, pitilessly, “but
+I see to-night how things are goin'.”
+
+“What do you mean by that, mother?”
+
+“I see that you are fool enough to get to likin' a man that has got the
+gift of the gab, and that you think is good-lookin', and that wears
+clothes made in the city, better than a good honest feller that we have
+all known about ever since he was born, and that ain't got no outlandish
+blood in him, neither.”
+
+“Mother!”
+
+“You needn't say mother that way. I ain't a fool, if I haven't been to
+school like some folks, and I see the way you two looked at each other
+to-night right before that poor man that has been comin' here steady and
+means honorable.”
+
+“Nobody asked or wanted him to come,” said Sarah.
+
+“Maybe you'll change your mind when you hear what I've got to tell you.
+And I'm goin' to tell you. _Hyacinthus Ware has got a woman livin' over
+there in that house._” Sarah turned ghastly pale, but she spoke firmly.
+“You mean he is married?” she said.
+
+“I dun'no' whether he is married or not, but there is a woman livin'
+there.”
+
+“I don't believe a word of it.”
+
+“It don't make no odds whether you believe it or not, she's there.”
+
+“I don't believe it.”
+
+“She's been seed.”
+
+“Who has seen her.”
+
+“Abby Jane Ketchum herself, when she went round to the back door day
+before yesterday afternoon to ask if Mr. Ware would buy some of her
+soap. You know she's sellin' soap to get a prize.”
+
+“Where was the woman?”
+
+“She was sittin' on the back porch with Mr. Ware, and she up and run
+when she see Abby Jane, and Mr. Ware turned as white as a sheet, and he
+bought all the soap Abby Jane had left to git out of it, so she's got
+enough to get a sideboard for a prize. And Abby Jane she kept her eyes
+open and she see a blind close in the southwest chamber, and that's
+where the woman sleeps.”
+
+“What kind of a looking woman was she?” asked Sarah, in a strange voice.
+
+“As handsome as a picture, Abby Jane said, and she had on an awful
+stylish dress. Now if you want to have men like that comin' here to see
+you, and want to make more of them than you do of a man that you know is
+all right and is good and honest, you can.”
+
+There was something about the girl's face, as she turned away without a
+word, that smote her mother's heart. “I felt as if I had to tell you,
+Sarah,” she said, in a voice which was suddenly changed to pity and
+apology.
+
+“You did perfectly right to tell me, mother,” said Sarah. When at last
+she got in her little bedroom she scarcely knew her own face in the
+glass. Hyacinthus Ware had kissed that face the night before, and ever
+since the memory of it had seemed like a lamp in her heart. She had met
+him when she was coming home from the post-office after dark, and he had
+kissed her at the gate and told her he loved her, and she expected, of
+course, to marry him. Even now she could not bring herself to entirely
+doubt him. “Suppose there is a woman there,” she said to herself, “what
+does it prove?” But she felt in her inmost heart that it did prove a
+good deal.
+
+She remembered just how Hyacinthus looked when he spoke to her; there
+had been something almost childlike in his face. She could not believe,
+and yet in the face of all this evidence! If there was a woman living in
+the house with him, why had he kept it secret? Suddenly it occurred to
+her that she could go over in the garden and see for herself. It was a
+bright moonlight night and not yet late. If the woman was there, if she
+inhabited the southwest chamber, there might be some sign of her. Sarah
+placed her lamp on her bureau, gathered her skirts around her, and ran
+swiftly out into the night. She hurried stealthily through the garden.
+The lilies were gone, but there was still a strong breath of sweetness,
+a bouquet, as it were, of mignonette and verbena and sweet thyme and
+other fragrant blossoms, and the hollyhocks still bloomed. She went very
+carefully when she reached the last enclosure of box; she peeped through
+the tall file of hollyhocks, and there was Hyacinthus on the porch and
+there was a woman beside him. In fact, the woman was sitting in the old
+chair and Hyacinthus was at her feet, on the step, with his head in her
+lap. The moon shone on them; they looked as if they were carved with
+marble.
+
+Sarah never knew how she got home, but she was back there in her little
+room and nobody knew that she had been in the Ware garden except
+herself. The next morning she had a talk with her mother. “Mother,” said
+she, “if Mr. John Mangam wants to marry me why doesn't he say so?” She
+was fairly brutal in her manner of putting the question. She did not
+change color in the least. She was very pale that morning, and she stood
+more like her mother and her great-grandmother than herself.
+
+Mrs. Lynn looked at her, and she was almost shocked. “Why, Sarah Lynn!”
+ she gasped.
+
+“I mean just what I say,” said Sarah, firmly. “I want to know. John
+Mangam has been coming here steadily for nearly two years, and he never
+even says a word, much less asks me to marry him. Does he expect me to
+do it?”
+
+“I suppose he thinks you might at least meet him half-way,” said her
+mother, confusedly.
+
+That afternoon she went over to Mrs. Wilford Biggs's, and the next
+night, it being John Mangam's night to call, Mrs. Biggs waylaid him as
+he was just about to cross the street to the Lynn house.
+
+After a short conversation Mrs. Biggs and her brother crossed the street
+together, and it was not long before Mrs. Lynn asked Mrs. Biggs and the
+old grandmother, who had also come over, to go in the house and see her
+new black silk dress. Then it was that John Mangam mumbled something
+inarticulate, which Sarah translated into an offer of marriage. “Very
+well, I will marry you if you want me to, Mr. Mangam,” she said. “I
+don't love you at all, but if you don't mind about that--”
+
+John Mangam said nothing at all.
+
+“If you don't mind that, I will marry you,” said Sarah, and nobody would
+have known her voice. It was a voice to be ashamed of, full of despair
+and shame and pride, so wronged and mangled that her very spirit seemed
+violated. John Mangam said nothing then. She and the man sat there quite
+still, when Hyacinthus came stepping over the hedge.
+
+Sarah found a voice when she saw him. She turned to him. “Good evening,
+Mr. Ware,” she said, clearly. “I would like to announce my engagement to
+Mr. Mangam.”
+
+Hyacinthus stood staring at her. Sarah repeated her announcement. Then
+Hyacinthus Ware disregarded John Mangam as much as if he had been a post
+of the white fence that enclosed the Lynn yard. “What does it mean?” he
+cried.
+
+“You have no right to ask,” said she, also disregarding John Mangam, who
+sat perfectly still in his chair.
+
+“No right to ask after--Sarah, what do you mean? Why have I no right to
+ask, after what we told each other?--and I intended to see your mother
+to-night. I only waited because--”
+
+“Because you had a guest in the house,” said Sarah, in a cold, low
+voice. Then John Mangam looked up with some show of animation. He had
+heard the gossip.
+
+Hyacinthus looked at her a moment, speechless, then he left her without
+another word and went home across the hedge.
+
+It was soon told in Adams that Sarah Lynn and John Mangam were to be
+married. Everybody agreed that it was a good match and that Sarah was a
+lucky girl. She went on with her wedding preparations. John Mangam came
+as usual and sat silently. Sometimes when Sarah looked at him and
+reflected that she would have to pass her life with this automaton a
+sort of madness seized her.
+
+Hyacinthus she almost never saw. Once in a great while she met him on
+the street, and he bowed, raising his hat silently. He never made the
+slightest attempt at explanation.
+
+One night, after supper, Sarah and her mother sat on the front
+door-step, and by and by the old grandmother came across the fields, and
+Mrs. Wilford Biggs across the street, and Mr. John Mangam from his own
+house farther down. He looked preoccupied and worried that night, and
+while he was as silent as ever, yet his silence had the effect of
+speech.
+
+They sat in their customary places: Mrs. Lynn and Mrs. Biggs in the
+chairs on the broad step-stone, Sarah and the old woman on the step, and
+Mr. John Mangam in his chair on the gravel path,--when a strange lady
+came stepping across the hedge from the Ware garden. She was not so very
+young, although she was undeniably very handsome, and her clothes were
+of a fashion never seen in Adams. She went straight up to the group on
+the door-step, and although she had too much poise of manner to appear
+agitated, it was evident that she was very eager and very much in
+earnest. Mrs. Lynn half arose, with an idea of giving her a chair, but
+there was no time, the lady began talking so at once.
+
+“You are Miss Sarah Lynn, are you not?” she asked of Sarah, and she did
+not wait for a reply, “and you are going to be married to him?” and
+there was an unmistakable emphasis of scorn.
+
+“I have just returned,” said the lady; “I have not been in the house
+half an hour, and my father told me. You do not know, but the gentleman
+who has lived so long in the Ware house, the caretaker, is my father,
+and--and my mother was Hyacinthus's mother; her second marriage was
+secret, and he would never tell. My father and my mother were cousins.
+Hyacinthus never told.” She turned to Sarah. “He would not even tell
+you, when he knew that you must have seen or heard something that made
+you believe otherwise, because--because of our mother. No, he would not
+even tell you.”
+
+She spoke again with a great impetuosity which made her seem very young,
+although she was not so very young. “I have been kept away all my life,”
+ she said, “all my life from here, that the memory of our mother should
+not suffer, and now I come to tell, myself, and you will marry my
+brother, whom you must love better than that gentleman. You must. Will
+you not? Tell me that you will,” said she, “for Hyacinthus is breaking
+his heart, and he loves you.”
+
+Before anything further could be said John Mangam rose, and walked
+rapidly down the gravel walk out of the yard and down the street.
+
+Sarah felt dizzy. She bent lower as she sat and held her head in her two
+hands, and the strange lady came on the other side of her, and she was
+enveloped in a fragrance of some foreign perfume.
+
+“My brother has been almost mad,” she whispered in her ear, “and I have
+just found out what the trouble was. He would not tell on account of our
+mother, but poor mother is dead and gone.”
+
+Then the old woman on the other side raised her voice unexpectedly, and
+she spoke to her granddaughter, Mrs. Lynn. “You are a fool,” said she,
+“if you wouldn't rather hev Serrah merry a man like Hyacinthus Ware,
+with all his money and livin' in the biggest house in Adams, than a man
+like John Mangam, who sets an' sets an' sets the hull evenin' and never
+opens his mouth to say boo to a goose, and beside bein' threatened with
+a suit for breach.”
+
+“I don't care who she marries, as long as she is happy,” said Sarah's
+mother.
+
+“Well, I'm goin',” said the old woman. “I left my winders open, and I
+think there's a shower comin' up.”
+
+She rose, and Mrs. Wilford Biggs at the same time. Sarah's mother went
+into the house.
+
+“Won't you?” whispered the strange lady, and it was as if a rose
+whispered in Sarah's ear.
+
+“I didn't know that he--I thought--” stammered Sarah.
+
+Sarah did not exactly know when the lady left and when Hyacinthus came,
+but after a while they were sitting side by side on the door-step, and
+the moon was rising over the mountain, and the wonderful shadows were
+gathering about them like a company of wedding-guests.
+
+
+
+
+JANE'S GRAY EYES
+
+
+BY SEWELL FORD
+
+
+When _The Insurgent_ took its place among the “best six sellers,”
+ Decatur Brown formed several good resolutions. He would not have himself
+photographed in a literary pose, holding a book on his knee, or propping
+his forehead up with one hand and gazing dreamily into space; he would
+not accept the praise of newspaper reviewers as laurel dropped from
+Olympus; and he would not tell “how he wrote it.”
+
+Firmly he held to this commendable programme, despite frequent urgings
+to depart from it. Yet observe what pitfalls beset the path of the
+popular fictionist. There came a breezy, shrewd-eyed young woman of
+beguiling tongue who announced herself as a “lady journalist.”
+
+“Now for goodness' sake don't shy,” she pleaded. “I'm not going to ask
+about your literary methods, or do a kodak write-up of the way you brush
+your hair, or any of that rot. I merely want you to say something about
+Sunday Weeks. That's legitimate, isn't it? Sunday's a public character
+now, you know. Every one talks about her. So why shouldn't you, who know
+her best?”
+
+It was the voice of the siren. Decatur Brown should have recognized it
+as such. But the breezy young person was so plausible, she bubbled with
+such enthusiasm for his heroine, that in the end he yielded. He talked
+of Sunday Weeks. And such talk!
+
+Obviously the “lady journalist” had come all primed with the rather
+shop-worn theory that the Sunday Weeks who figured as the heroine of
+_The Insurgent_ must be a real personage, a young woman in whom Decatur
+Brown took more than a literary interest. Possibly the cards were ready
+to be sent out.
+
+Had she put these queries point-blank, he would have denied them
+definitely and emphatically, and there would have been an end. But she
+was far too clever for that. She plied him with sly hints and deft
+insinuation. Then, when he began to scent her purpose, she took another
+tack. “Did he really admire women of the Sunday Weeks type? Did he
+honestly think that the unconventional, wilful, whimsical Sunday, while
+perfectly charming in the unmarried state, could be tamed to matrimony?
+Was he willing to have his ideal of womanhood judged by this
+disturbingly fascinating creature of the 'sober gray eyes and piquant
+chin'?”
+
+Naturally he felt called upon to endorse his heroine, to defend her.
+Loyalty to his art demanded that much. Then, too, there recurred to him
+thoughts of Jane Temple. He could truthfully say that Sunday was a
+wholly imaginative character, that she had no “original.” And yet
+subconsciously he knew that all the time he was creating her there had
+been before him a vision of Jane. Not a very distinct vision, to be
+sure. It had been some years since he had seen her. But that bit about
+the sober gray eyes and the piquant chin Jane was responsible for. He
+could never forget those eyes of Jane's. He was not so certain about the
+chin. It might have been piquant; and then again, it might not. At any
+rate, it had been adorable, for it was Jane's.
+
+So, while some of his enthusiasm in the defence of Sunday Weeks was due
+to artistic fervor, more of it was prompted by thoughts of Jane Temple.
+He did not pretend, he declared, to speak for other men; but as for
+himself, he liked Sunday--he liked her very much.
+
+The shrewd eyes of the “lady journalist” glistened. She knew her cue
+when she heard it. Throwing her first theory to the four winds, she
+eagerly gripped this new and tangible fact.
+
+“Then she really is your ideal?”
+
+He had not thought much about it, but he presumed that in a sense she
+was.
+
+“But suppose now, Mr. Brown, just suppose you should some day run across
+a young woman exactly like the Sunday Weeks you have described: would
+you marry her?”
+
+Decatur Brown laughed--a light, irresponsible, bachelor laugh. “I should
+probably ask her if I might first.”
+
+“But you _would_ ask her?”
+
+“Oh, assuredly.”
+
+“And would you like to find such a girl?”
+
+Decatur gazed sentimentally over the smart little polo-hat of the “lady
+journalist” and out of the window at a sky--a sky as gray as Jane's eyes
+had been that last night when they had parted, she to travel abroad with
+her aunt, he to become a cub reporter on a city daily.
+
+“Yes, I would like very much to find her,” he replied.
+
+Do you think, after this, that the interviewer waited for more? Not she.
+Leaving him mixed up with his daydream, she took herself off before he
+could retract, or modify, or in any way spoil the story.
+
+Still, considering what she might have printed, she was really quite
+decent about it. Leaving out the startling head-lines, hers was a nice,
+readable, chatty article. It contained no bald announcement that the
+author of _The Insurgent_ was hunting, with matrimonial intent, for a
+gray-eyed prototype of Sunday Weeks. Yet that was the impression
+conveyed. Where was there a girl with sober gray eyes and a piquant chin
+who could answer to certain other specifications, duly set forth in one
+of the most popular novels of the day? Whoever she might be, wherever
+she was, she might know what to expect should she be discovered.
+
+Having survived the first shock to his reticence, Decatur Brown was
+inclined to dismiss the matter with a laugh. He had been cleverly
+exploited, but he could not see that any great harm had been done. He
+supposed that he must become used to such things. Anyway, he was
+altogether too busy to give much thought to the incident, for he was in
+the middle of another novel that must be ready for the public before
+_The Insurgent_ was forgotten.
+
+He was yet to learn the real meaning of publicity. First there appeared
+an old friend, one who should have understood him too well to put faith
+in such an absurdity.
+
+“Say, Deck, you've simply got to dine with us Thursday night. My wife
+insists. She wants you to meet a cousin of hers--Denver girl, mighty
+bright, and”--this impressively--“she has gray eyes, you know.”
+
+Decatur grinned appreciatively, but he begged off. He was really very
+sorry to miss a gray-eyed girl, of course, but there was his work.
+
+One by one his other friends had their little shy at him. Mayhew sent by
+messenger a huge placard reading, “Wanted, A Wife.” Trevors called him
+up by telephone to advise him to see _Jupiter Belles_ at once.
+
+“Get a seat in A,” he chuckled, “and take a good look at the third from
+the left, first row. She has gray eyes.”
+
+By the time he received Tiddler's atrocious sketch, representing the
+author of _The Insurgent_ as a Diogenes looking for gray-eyed girls, he
+had ceased to smile over the thing. The joke was becoming a trifle
+stale.
+
+Then the letters began to come in, post-marked from all over the
+country. They were all from young persons who had read _The Insurgent_,
+and evidently the interview; for, no matter what else was said, each
+missive contained the information that the writer of it possessed gray
+eyes. All save one. That was accompanied by a photograph on which an
+arrow had been drawn pointing towards the eyes. Under the arrow was
+naively inscribed, “Gray.”
+
+Decatur was not flattered. His dignity suffered. He felt cheapened,
+humiliated. The fact that the waning boom of his novel had received new
+impetus did not console him. His mildly serious expression gave place to
+a worried, injured look.
+
+And then Mrs. Wheeler Upton swooped down on him with a demand for his
+appearance at one of her Saturday nights. For Decatur there was no
+choice. He was her debtor for so many helpful favors in the past that he
+could not refuse so simple a request. Yet he groaned in spirit as he
+viewed the prospect. Once it would have been different. Was it not in
+her pleasant drawing-rooms that he had been boosted from obscurity to
+shine among the other literary stars? Mrs. Upton knew them all. She made
+it her business to do so, bless the kindly heart of her, and to see that
+they knew each other. No wonder her library table groaned under the
+weight of autographed volumes.
+
+But to face that crowd at Mrs. Wheeler Upton's meant to run a rapid-fire
+gauntlet of jokes about gray-eyed girls. However, go he must, and go he
+did.
+
+He was not a little relieved to find so few there, and that most of them
+were young women. A girl often hesitates at voicing a witticism, because
+she is afraid, after all, that it may not be really funny. A man never
+doubts the excellence of his own humor. So, when a quarter of an hour
+had passed without hint of that threadbare topic, he gradually threw off
+his restraint and began to enjoy himself. He was talking Meredith to a
+tall girl in soft-blue China silk, when suddenly he became aware that
+they had been left entirely to themselves. Every one else seemed to have
+drifted into an adjoining room. Through the doorway he could see them
+about Mrs. Upton, who was evidently holding their attention.
+
+“Why, what's up, I wonder? Why do they leave us out, I'd like to know?”
+ and he glanced inquiringly at the girl in soft blue. She flushed
+consciously and dropped her lashes. When she looked at him again, and
+rather appealingly, he saw that she had gray eyes.
+
+It was Decatur's turn to flush. Could Mrs. Upton have done this
+deliberately? He was loath to think so. The situation was awkward, and
+awkwardly he got himself out of it.
+
+“I say, let's see what they're up to in there,” he suggested, and
+marched her into the other room, wondering if he showed his
+embarrassment as much as she did. As he sidled away from her he
+determined to pick out a girl whose eyes were not gray, and to stick to
+her for the remainder of the evening. Accordingly he began his
+inspection. A moment later and the whole truth blazed enlighteningly
+upon him. They were all gray-eyed girls, every last one of them.
+
+If he had been waiting for a climax, he was entirely satisfied. Of
+course it was rather silly of him to take it all so seriously, but,
+sitting safely in his rooms long after his panicky retreat from Mrs.
+Upton's collection, he could not make light of the situation. It _was_
+serious. He was losing sleep, appetite, and self-respect over it.
+
+Not that he was vain enough to imagine that every gray-eyed girl in the
+country, or any one of them, wished to marry him. No; he was fairly
+modest, as men go. He suspected that the chief emotions he inspired were
+curiosity and mischievousness. It was the thought of what those
+uncounted thousands of gray-eyed girls must conceive as his attitude
+towards them that hurt. Why, it was almost as though he had put a
+matrimonial advertisement in the newspapers. When he pictured himself
+looked upon as assuming to be a connoisseur of a certain type of
+femininity he felt as keenly disgraced as if he had set himself up for
+an Apollo.
+
+In next morning's mail he noted an increased number of letters from
+unknown gray-eyed correspondents. That settled it. Hurriedly packing a
+capacious kit-bag, with the uncompleted manuscript on top, he took the
+first train for Ocean Park. Where else could he find a more habitable
+solitude than Ocean Park in early June? Once previously he had gone
+there before the season opened, and he knew. Later on the popular big
+seashore resort would seethe with vacationists. They would crowd the
+hotels, over-flow the board walk, cover the sands, and polka-dot the
+ocean. But in June the sands would be deserted, the board walk untrod,
+the hotels empty.
+
+And so it was. The landlord of The Empress welcomed him effusively, not
+as Decatur Brown, author of _The Insurgent_ and seeker of an ideal girl
+with gray eyes, but as plain, every-day Mr. Brown, whom Providence had
+sent as a June guest. Decatur was thankful for it. The barren verandas
+were grateful in his sight. When he had been installed in a corner
+suite, spread out his writing things on a flat-topped table that faced
+the sea, filled his ink-well, and lighted his pipe, he seemed to have
+escaped from a threatening presence.
+
+He could breathe freely here, thank goodness, and work. He was just
+settling down to it when through the open transom behind him came the
+sound of rustling skirts and a voice which demanded:
+
+“But how do you suppose he found that we were here? You're certain that
+it was Decatur Brown, are you?”
+
+“Oh yes, quite certain. He has changed very little. Besides, there was
+the name on the register.”
+
+Decatur thrilled at the music of that answering voice. There was a
+little quaver in it, a faint but fascinating breaking on the low notes,
+such as he had never heard in any voice save Jane Temple's.
+
+“Then Mabel must not come down to dinner to-night. She must--” The rest
+was lost around the corner of a corridor.
+
+What Mabel must do remained a mystery. Must she go without her dinner
+altogether? He hoped not, for evidently his arrival had something to do
+with it. Why? Decatur gave it up. Who was Mabel, anyway? The owner of
+the other voice he could guess at. That must be Mrs. Philo Allen, Jane's
+aunt Judith, the one who had carried her off to Europe and forbidden
+them to write to each other. But Mabel? Oh yes! He had almost forgotten
+that elaborately gowned miss who at sixteen had assumed such
+young-ladyfied airs. Mabel was Jane's young cousin, of course, the one
+to whom he used to take expensive bonbons, his intent being to
+propitiate Aunt Judith.
+
+So they were guests at The Empress, too--Jane and her aunt and the
+pampered Mabel? Chiefly, however, there was Jane. The others did not
+matter much. Ah, here was a gray-eyed girl that he did not dread to
+meet. And she had not forgotten him!
+
+An hour later he was waiting for her in the lower hallway. Luckily she
+came down alone, so they had the hall seat to themselves for those first
+few minutes. She was the same charming Jane that he had known of old.
+There was an added dignity in the way she carried her shapely little
+head, a deeper sweetness in the curve of her thin lips. Perhaps her
+manner was a little subdued, too; but, after all those years with Mrs.
+Philo Allen, why not?
+
+“How nice of you,” she was saying, “to hunt us up and surprise us in
+this fashion. Auntie has been expecting you at home for weeks, you know,
+but when Mabel's rose-cold developed she decided that we must go to the
+seashore, even though we did die of lonesomeness. And here we find
+you--or you find us. The sea air will make Mabel presentable in a day or
+so, we hope.”
+
+“I'm sure I hope so, too,” he assented, without enthusiasm. Really, he
+did not see the necessity of dragging in Mabel. Nor did he understand
+why Mrs. Allen had expected him, or why Jane should assume that he had
+hunted them up. Now that she had assumed it, though, he could hardly
+explain that it was an accident. He asked how long they had remained
+abroad.
+
+“Oh, ages! There was an age in France, while Mabel was perfecting her
+accent; then there was another age in Italy, where Mabel took
+voice-culture and the old masters; and yet another age in Germany, while
+Mabel struggled with the theory of music. Our year in Devon was not
+quite an age; we went there for the good of Mabel's complexion.”
+
+“Indeed! Has she kept those peaches-and-cream checks?”
+
+“Ah, you must wait and see,” and Jane nodded mysteriously.
+
+“But I--” protested Decatur.
+
+“Oh, it will be only for a day or so. Rose-colds are so hard on the
+eyes, you know. In the mean time perhaps you will tell us how you
+happened to develop into a famous author. We are immensely proud of you,
+of course. Aunt Judith goes hardly anywhere without a copy of _The
+Insurgent_ in her hand. If the persons she meets have not read it, she
+scolds them good. And you must hear Mabel render that chapter in which
+Sunday runs away from the man she loves with the man she doesn't.”
+
+There they were, back to Mabel again.
+
+“But what about yourself, Jane?” suggested Decatur.
+
+“About me! Why, I only--Oh, here is Aunt Judith.”
+
+Yes, there was no mistaking her, nor overlooking her. She was just as
+colossally commanding as ever, just as imperious. At sight of her,
+Decatur understood Jane's position clearly. She was still the dependent
+niece, the obscure satellite of a star of the first magnitude. Very
+distinctly had Mrs. Philo Allen once explained to him this dependence of
+Jane's, incidentally touching on his own unlikely prospects. That had
+been just before she had swept Jane off to Europe with her.
+
+All this Aunt Judith now seemed to have forgotten. In her own imperial
+way she greeted him graciously, inspecting him with critical but
+favorable eyes.
+
+“Really, you do look quite distinguished,” was her verdict, as she took
+his arm in her progress towards her dinner. “I am sure Mabel will say
+so, too.”
+
+Whereupon they reverted once more to Mabel. The maid was bathing Mabel's
+eyes with witch-hazel and trying to persuade her to eat a little hot
+soup. Such details about Mabel seemed to be regarded as of first
+importance. By some mysterious reasoning, too, Mrs. Allen appeared to
+connect them with Decatur Brown and his presence at Ocean Park.
+
+“To-morrow night, if all goes well, you shall see her,” she whispered,
+exultantly, in his ear, as they left the dining-hall.
+
+Decatur was puzzled. What if he _could_ see Mabel the next night? Or
+what if he could not? He should survive, even if the event were
+indefinitely postponed. What he desired just then was that Jane should
+accompany him on an early-evening tramp down the board walk.
+
+“Wouldn't it be better to wait until to-morrow evening?” asked Jane.
+“Perhaps Mabel can go then.”
+
+“The deuce take Mabel!” He half smothered the exclamation, and Jane
+appeared not to hear, yielding at last to his insistence that they start
+at once. But it was not the kind of a talk he had hoped to have with
+Jane Temple. The intimate and personal ground of conversation towards
+which he sought to draw her she avoided as carefully as if it had been
+stuck with the “No Trespassing” notices. When they returned to the
+hotel, Decatur felt scarcely better acquainted with her than before he
+had found her again.
+
+Next evening, according to schedule, Mabel appeared. She was an
+exquisite young woman, there was no doubt about that. She carried
+herself with an almost royal air which impressed even the head waiter.
+Her perfect figure, perfectly encased, was graceful in every long curve.
+Her Devon-repaired complexion was of dazzling purity, all snowy white
+and sea-shell pink. One could hardly imagine how even so aristocratic a
+malady as a rose-cold could have dared to redden slightly the tip of
+that classic nose.
+
+Turning to Decatur with languid interest she murmured:
+
+“Ah, you see I have not forgotten you, although I often do forget faces.
+You may sit here, if you please, and talk to me.”
+
+It was quite like being received by a sovereign, Decatur imagined. He
+did his best to talk, and talk entertainingly, for no other reason than
+that it was expected of him. At last he said something which struck the
+right chord. The perfect Mabel smiled approvingly at him, and he noticed
+for the first time that her eyes were gray. Suspiciously he glanced
+across the table at Jane. Was that a mocking smile on her thinly curved
+lips, or was it meant for kindly encouragement?
+
+Little by little during the succeeding two days he pieced out the
+situation. It was not a plot exactly, unless you could dignify Mrs.
+Philo Allen's confident plans by such a name. But, starting with what
+basis Heaven only knew, she had reached the conclusion that when the
+author of _The Insurgent_ had described Sunday Weeks he could have had
+in mind but one person, the one gray-eyed girl worthy of such
+distinction, the girl to whom he had shown such devotion but a few years
+before--her daughter Mabel. Then she had begun expecting him to appear.
+And when he had seemingly followed them to the seaside--well, what would
+any one naturally think? Flutteringly she had doubtless put the question
+to Jane, who had probably replied as she was expected to reply.
+
+The peerless Mabel, of course, was the only one not in the secret.
+Anyway, she would have taken no interest in it. Her amazing egoism would
+have prevented that. Nothing interested Mabel acutely unless it
+pertained to some attribute of her own loveliness.
+
+As for Jane Temple's view of this business, that remained an enigma. Had
+she grown so accustomed to her aunt Judith's estimate of Mabel that she
+could accept it? That was hardly possible, for Jane had a keen sense of
+humor. Then why should she help to throw Mabel at his head, or him at
+Mabel's?
+
+Meanwhile he walked at Mabel's side, carrying her wraps, while her
+mother and Jane trailed judiciously in the rear. He drove out with
+Mabel, Mabel's mother sitting opposite and smiling at him with an air of
+complacent proprietorship. He stood by the piano and turned the music
+while Mabel executed sonatas and other things for which he had not the
+least appreciation. He listened to solos from _Lucia_, which Mabel sang
+at Jane's suggestion. Also, Jane brought forth Mabel's sketch-books and
+then ostentatiously left them alone with each other.
+
+There was much meekness in Decatur. When handled just right he was
+wonderfully complaisant. But after a whole week of Mabel he decided that
+the limit had been reached. Seizing an occasion when Mabel was in the
+hands of the hairdresser and manicurist, he led her mother to a secluded
+veranda corner and boldly plunged into an explanation.
+
+“I have no doubt you thought it a little strange, Mrs. Allen,” he began,
+“my appearing to follow you down here, but really--”
+
+“There, there, Decatur, it isn't at all necessary. It was all perfectly
+natural and entirely proper. In fact, I quite understood.”
+
+“But I'm afraid that you--”
+
+“Oh, but I do comprehend. We old folks are not blind. When it was a
+matter of those foreign gentlemen, German barons, Italian counts,
+Austrian princes, and so on, I was extremely particular, perhaps
+overparticular. Their titles are so often shoddy. But I know all about
+you. You come from almost as good New England stock as we do. You are
+talented, almost famous. Besides, your attachment is of no sudden
+growth. It has stood the test of years. Yes, my dear Decatur, I heartily
+approve of you. However”--here she rested a plump forefinger simperingly
+on the first of her two chins, “your fate rests with Mabel, you know.”
+
+Once or twice he had gaspingly tried to stop her, but smilingly she had
+waved him aside. When she ended he was speechless. Could he tell her,
+after all that, what a precious bore her exquisite Mabel was to him? It
+had been difficult enough when the situation was only a tacit one, but
+now that it had been definitely expressed--well, it was proving to be a
+good deal like those net snares which hunters of circus animals use, the
+more he struggled to free himself the more he became entangled.
+
+Abruptly, silently, he took his leave of Mrs. Allen. He feared that if
+he said more she might construe it as a request, that she should
+immediately lay his proposal before Mabel. With a despairing, haunted
+look he sought the board walk.
+
+Carpenters were hammering and sawing, painters were busy in the booths,
+a few old ladies sat about in the sun, here and there a happy youngster
+dug in the sand with a tin shovel. Decatur envied them all. They were
+sane, rational persons, who were not likely to be interviewed and
+trapped into saying fool things. Their acts were not liable to be
+misconstrued.
+
+Seeing a pier jutting out, he heedlessly followed it to the very end.
+And there, on one of the seats built for summer guests, he found Jane.
+
+“Where is Mabel?” she asked, anxiously.
+
+“She is having her hair done and her nails polished, I believe,” said
+Decatur, gloomily, dropping down beside Jane. “She is being prepared, as
+nearly as I can gather, to receive a proposal of marriage.”
+
+“Ah! Then you--” She turned to him inquiringly.
+
+“It appears so now,” he admitted. “I have been talking to her mother.”
+
+“Oh, I see.” She said it quietly, gently, in a tone of submission.
+
+“But you don't see,” he protested. “No one sees; that is, no one sees
+things as they really are. Do you think, Jane, that you could listen to
+me for a few moments without jumping at conclusions, without assuming
+that you know exactly what I am going to say before I have said it?”
+
+She said that she would try.
+
+“Then I would like to make a confession to you.”
+
+“Wouldn't it be better to--to make it first to Mabel?”
+
+“No, it would not,” he declared, doggedly. “It concerns that interview
+in which I was quoted as saying things about gray-eyed girls.”
+
+“Yes, I read it. We all read it.”
+
+“I guessed that much. Well, I said those things, just as I was quoted as
+saying them, but I did not mean all that I was credited with meaning. I
+want you to believe, Jane, that when I admitted my preference for gray
+eyes and--and all that, I was thinking of one gray-eyed girl in
+particular. Can you believe that?”
+
+“Oh, I did from the very first; that is, I did as soon as Aunt Judith--”
+
+“Never mind about Aunt Judith,” interrupted Decatur, firmly. “We will
+get to her in time. We are talking now about that interview. You must
+admit, Jane, that there are many gray-eyed girls in the country; I don't
+know just how many, thank Heaven, but there are a lot of them. And most
+of them seem not only to have read that interview, but to have made a
+personal application of my remarks. Have you any idea what that means to
+me?”
+
+“Then you think that they are all in--”
+
+“No, no! I don't imagine there's a single one that cares a bone button
+for me. But each and every one of them thinks that I am in love with
+her, or willing to be. If she doesn't think so, her friends do. They
+expect me to propose on sight, simply because of what I have said about
+gray eyes. You doubt that? Let me tell you what occurred just before I
+left town: A person whom I had counted as a friend got together a whole
+houseful of gray-eyed girls, and then sent for me to come and make my
+choice. That is what drove me from the city. That is why I came to Ocean
+Park in June.”
+
+“But the one particular gray-eyed girl that you mentioned? How was it
+that you happened to--”
+
+“It was sheer good fortune, Jane, that I found you here.”
+
+Decatur had slipped a tentative arm along the seat-back. He was leaning
+towards Jane, regarding her with melancholy tenderness.
+
+“That you found me?” she said, wonderingly. “Oh, you mean that it was
+fortunate you found _us_ here?”
+
+“No, I don't. I mean you--y-o-u, second person singular. Haven't you
+guessed by this time who was the particular gray-eyed girl I had in
+mind?”
+
+“Of course I have; it was Mabel, wasn't it?”
+
+“Mabel! Oh, hang Mabel! Jane, it was you.”
+
+“Me! Why, Decatur Brown!” Either surprise or indignation rang in her
+tone. He concluded that it must be the latter.
+
+“Oh, well,” he said, dejectedly, “I had no right to suppose that you'd
+like it. It's the truth, though, and after so much misunderstanding I am
+glad you know it. I want you to know that it was you who inspired Sunday
+Weeks, if any one did. I have never mentioned this before, have not
+admitted it, even to myself, until now. But I realize that it is true.
+We have been a long time apart, but the memory of you has never faded
+for a day, for an hour. So, when I tried to describe the most charming
+girl of whom I could think, I was describing you. As I wrote, there was
+constantly before me the vision of your dear gray eyes, and--”
+
+“Decatur! Look at me. Look me straight in the eyes and tell me if they
+are gray.”
+
+He looked. As a matter of fact, he had been looking into her eyes for
+several moments. Now there was something so compelling about her tone
+that he bent all his faculties to the task. This time he looked not with
+that blindness peculiar to those who love, but, for the moment,
+discerningly, seeingly. And they were not gray eyes at all. They were a
+clear, brilliant hazel.
+
+“Why--why!” he gasped out, chokingly. “I--I have always thought of them
+as gray eyes.”
+
+“If that isn't just like a man!” she exclaimed, shrugging away from him.
+Her quarter profile revealed those thinly curved lips pursed into a most
+delicious pout. “You acknowledge, don't you, that they're _not_ gray?”
+ she flung at him over her shoulder--an adorable shoulder, Decatur
+thought.
+
+“Oh, I admit it,” he groaned.
+
+“Then--then why don't you go away?” It was just that trembling little
+quaver on the low notes which spurred him on to cast the die.
+
+“Jane,” he whispered, “I don't want to go away, and I don't want you to
+send me. It isn't gray eyes that I care for, or ever have cared for.
+It's been just you, your own dear, charming self.”
+
+“No, it hasn't been. I haven't even a piquant chin.”
+
+“That doesn't matter. What is a piquant chin, anyway?”
+
+“You ought to know; you wrote it.”
+
+“So I did, but I didn't know what it meant. I just knew that it ought to
+mean something charming, which you are.”
+
+“I'm not. And I am not accomplished. I don't sing, I don't play, I don't
+draw.”
+
+“Thanks be for that! I don't, either. But I think you are the dearest
+girl in the world.”
+
+At that she turned to him and smiled a little as only Jane could smile.
+
+“You told me that once before, a long time ago, you know.”
+
+“And you have not forgotten?”
+
+“No. I--you see--I didn't want to forget.”
+
+Had it been August, or even July, doubtless a great number of
+vacationists would have been somewhat shocked at what Decatur did then.
+But it was early June, you remember, and on the far end of the Ocean
+Park fishing-pier were only these two, with just the dancing blue ocean
+in front.
+
+“But,” she said at length, after many other and more important things
+had been said between them, “what will Aunt Judith say?”
+
+“I suppose she'll think me a lucky dog--and slightly color-blind,”
+ chuckled Decatur, joyously. “But come,” he went on, helping her to rise
+and retaining both her hands, swaying them back and forth clasped in
+his, as children do in the game of London Bridge,--“come,” he repeated,
+impulsively, “while my courage is high let us go and break the news to
+your aunt Judith.”
+
+There was, however, no need. Looming ponderously in the middle distance
+of the pier's vista, a lorgnette held to her eyes, and a frozen look of
+horror on her ample features, was Aunt Judith herself.
+
+
+
+
+A STIFF CONDITION
+
+
+BY HERMAN WHITAKER
+
+
+An Ontario sun shed a pleasant warmth into the clearing where Elder
+Hector McCakeron sat smoking. His gratified consciousness was pleasantly
+titillated by sights and sounds of worldly comfort. From the sty behind
+the house came fat gruntings; in the barn-yard hens were shrilly
+announcing that eggs would be served with the bacon; moreover, Janet was
+vigorously agitating a hoe among the potatoes to his left, while his
+wife performed similarly in the cabbage-garden. And what better could a
+man wish than to see his women profitably employed?
+
+It was a pause in Janet's labors that gave the elder first warning of an
+intruder on his peace. A man was coming across the clearing--a short
+fellow, thick-set and bow-legged in figure, slow and heavy of face. The
+elder observed him with stony eyes.
+
+“It's the Englisher,” he muttered. “What'll he be wanting wi' me?”
+
+His accent was hostile as his glance. Since, thirty years before, a wave
+of red-haired Scots inundated western Ontario, no man of Saxon birth had
+settled in Zorra, the elder's township. That in peculiar had been held
+sealed as a heritage to the Scot, and when Joshua Timmins bought out
+Sandy Cruikshanks the township boiled and burned throughout its length
+and breadth.
+
+Not that it had expected to suffer the contamination. It was simply
+astounded at the man's impudence. “We'll soon drum him oot!” Elder
+McCakeron snorted, when he heard of the invasion; to which, on learning
+that Timmins was also guilty of Methodism, he added, “Wait till the
+meenister lays claws on the beast.”
+
+It was confidently expected that he would be made into a notable
+example, a warning to all intruders from beyond the pale; and the first
+Sunday after his arrival a full congregation turned out to see the
+minister do the trick. Interest was heightened by the presence of the
+victim, who, lacking a chapel of his own faith, attended kirk. His
+entrance caused a sensation. Forgetting its Sabbath manners, the
+congregation turned bodily and stared till recalled to its duty by the
+minister's cough. Then it shifted its gaze to him. What thunders were
+brewing behind that confident front? What lightnings lurked in the
+depths of those steel-gray eyes? Breathlessly Zorra had waited for the
+anathema which should wither the hardy intruder and drive him as chaff
+from a burning wind.
+
+But it waited in vain. By the most liberal interpretation no phrase of
+his could be construed as a reflection on the stranger. Worse! After
+kirk-letting the minister hailed Timmins in the door, shook hands in the
+scandalized face of the congregation, and hoped that he might see him
+regularly at service.
+
+Scandalous? It was irreligious! But if disappointed in its minister,
+Zorra had no intention of neglecting its own duty in the premises: the
+Englisher was not to be let off while memories of Bruce and Bannockburn
+lived in Scottish hearts. Which way he turned that day and in the months
+that followed he met dour faces. Excepting Cap'en Donald McKay, a
+retired mariner, whose native granite had been somewhat disintegrated by
+exposure to other climates, no man gave him a word;--this, of course,
+without counting Neil McNab, who called on Timmins three times a week to
+offer half-price for the farm.
+
+With one exception, too, the women looked askance upon him, wondering,
+doubtless, how he dared to oppose their men-folks' wishes. Calling the
+cows of evenings, Janet McCakeron sometimes came on Timmins, whose farm
+cornered on her father's, and thus a nodding acquaintance arose between
+them. That she should have so demeaned herself is a matter of reproach
+with many, but the fair-minded who have sufficiently weighed the merits
+of her case are slower with their blames. For though Zorra can boast
+maidens who have hung in the wind till fifty and still, as the
+vernacular has it, “married on a man,” a girl was counted well on the
+way to the shelf at forty-five. Janet, be it remembered, lacked but two
+years of the fatal age. Already chits of thirty-five or seven were
+generously alluding to her as the prop of her father's age; so small
+wonder if she simpered instead of passing with a nifty air when Timmins
+spoke one evening.
+
+His remark was simple in tenor--in effect that her bell-cow was “a wee
+cat-ham'ed”; but Janet scented its underlying tenderness as a hungry
+traveller noses a dinner on a wind, and after that drove her cows round
+by the corner which was conveniently veiled by heavy maple-bush. Indeed,
+it was to the friendly shadows which shrouded it, day or dark, that
+Cap'en McKay--a man wise in affairs of the heart by reason of much
+sailing in and out of foreign ports--afterward attributed the record
+which Timmins set Zorra in courting.
+
+“He couldna see her bones, nor her his bow-legs,” the mariner phrased
+it. But be this as it may, whether or no each made love to a voice,
+Cupid ran a swift course with them, steeplechasing over obstacles that
+would have taken years for a Zorra lad to plod around. In less than six
+months they passed from a bare goodnight to the exchange of soul
+thoughts on butter-making, the raising of calves, fattening of swine,
+and methods of feeding swedes that they might not taint cow's milk, and
+so had progressed by such tender paths through gentle dusks to the point
+where Timmins was ready to declare himself in the light of this present
+morning.
+
+Assured by one glance that Timmins's courage still hung at the point to
+which she had screwed it the preceding evening, Janet drooped again to
+her work.
+
+To his remark that the potatoes were looking fine, however, the elder
+made no response--unless a gout of tobacco smoke could be so counted.
+With eyes screwed up and mouth drawn down, he gazed off into space--a
+Highland sphinx, a Gaelic Rhadamanthus.
+
+His manner, however, made no impression on Timmins's stolidity. The
+latter's eye followed the elder's in its peregrinations till it came to
+rest, when, without further preliminaries, he began to unfold his suit,
+which in matter and essence was such as are usually put forward by those
+whom love has blinded.
+
+It was really an able plea, lacking perhaps those subtilities of detail
+with which a Zorra man would have trimmed it, but good enough for a man
+who labored under the disadvantages which accrue to birth south of the
+Tweed and Tyne. But it did not stir the elder's sphinxlike calm. “Ha' ye
+done?” he inquired, without removing his gaze from the clouds; and when
+Timmins assented, he delivered judgment in a cloud of tobacco smoke.
+“Weel--ye canna ha' her.” After which he resumed his pipe and smoked
+placidly, wearing the air of one who has settled a difficult question
+forever.
+
+But if stolid, Timmins had his fair share of a certain slow pugnacity.
+
+“Why?” he demanded.
+
+The elder smoked on.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Weel,”--the elder spoke slowly to the clouds,--“I'm no obliged to quote
+chapter an' verse, but for the sake of argyment--forbye should Janet
+marry on an Englisher when there's good Scotchmen running loose?”
+
+This was a “poser.” Born to a full realization of the vast gulf which
+providence has fixed between the Highlands and the rest of the world,
+Janet recognized it as such. Pausing, she leaned on her hoe, anxiously
+waiting, while Timmins chewed a straw and the cud of reflection.
+
+“Yes,” he slowly answered, “they've been runnin' from 'er this twenty
+year.” Nodding confirmation to the brilliant rejoinder, Janet fell again
+to work.
+
+But the elder was in no wise discomposed. Withdrawing one eye from the
+clouds, he turned it approvingly upon her hoe practice. “She's young
+yet,” he said, “an' a lass o' her pairts wull no go til the shelf.”
+
+“Call three-an'-forty young?”
+
+“Christy McDonald,” the elder sententiously replied, “marrit on Neil
+McNab at fifty. Janet's labor's no going to waste. An' if you were the
+on'y man i' Zorra, it wad behoove me to conseeder the lassie's prospects
+i' the next world. Ye're a Methodist.”
+
+“Meanin',” said Timmins, when his mind had grappled with the charge, “as
+there's no Methodists there?”
+
+Questions of delicacy and certain theological difficulties involved
+called for reflection, and the elder smoked a full minute on the
+question before he replied: “No, I wadna go so far as that. It stan's to
+reason as there's some of 'em there; on'y--I'm no so sure o' their
+whereaboots.”
+
+Timmins thoughtfully scratched his head ere he came back to the charge.
+“Meanin' as there's none in 'eaven?”
+
+Again the elder blew a reflective cloud over the merits of the question.
+“Weel,” he said, delivering himself with slow caution, “if so--it's no
+on record.”
+
+Again Janet looked up, with defeat perching amid her freckles. “He's got
+ye this time,” her face said, and the elder's expression of placid
+satisfaction affirmed the same opinion. But Timmins rose to a sudden
+inspiration.
+
+“In 'eaven,” he answered, “there's neither marriage nor givin' in
+marriage.”
+
+“Pish, mon!” the elder snorted. “It's no a question o' marrying; it's a
+question o' getting theer, an' Janet's no going to do it wi' a Methodist
+hanging til her skirts.”
+
+Silence fell in the clearing--silence that was broken only by the crash
+and tinkle of Janet's hoe as she buried Timmins under the clod. A Scotch
+daughter, she would bide by her father's word. Unaware of his funeral,
+Timmins himself stood scratching his poll.
+
+“So you'll not give her to me?” he futilely repeated.
+
+For the first time the elder looked toward him. “Mon, canna ye see the
+impossibility o' it? No, ye canna ha' her till--till”--he cast about for
+the limit of inconceivability--“till ye're an elder i' the Presbyterian
+Kirk.” He almost cracked a laugh at Timmins's sudden brightening. He had
+evolved the condition to drive home and clinch the ridiculous
+impossibility of the other's suit, and here he was, the doddered fule,
+taking hope! It was difficult to comprehend the workings of such a mind,
+and though the elder smoked upon it for half an hour after Timmins left
+the clearing, he failed of realization.
+
+“Yon's a gay fule,” he said to Janet, when she answered his call to
+hitch the log farther into the cabin. “He was wanting to marry on you.”
+
+“Ay?” she indifferently returned,--adding, without change of feature,
+“There's no lack o' fules round here.”
+
+Meanwhile Timmins was making his way through the woods to his own place.
+As he walked along, the brightness gradually faded from his face, and by
+the time he reached the trysting-corner his mood was more in harmony
+with his case. His face would have graced a funeral.
+
+Now Cap'en McKay's farm lay cheek by jowl with the elder's, and as the
+mariner happened to be fixing his fence at the corner, he noted
+Timmins's signals of distress. “Man!” he greeted, “ye're looking
+hipped.” Then, alluding to a heifer of Timmins's which had _bloated_ on
+marsh-grass the day before, he added, “The beastie didna die?” Assured
+that it was only a wife that Timmins lacked, he sighed relief. “Ah,
+weel, that's no so bad; they come cheaper. But tell us o't.”
+
+“Hecks, lad!” he commented, on Timmins's dole, “I'd advise ye to drive
+your pigs til anither market.”
+
+“Were?” Timmins asked--“w'ere'll I find one?”
+
+“That's so.” The mariner thoughtfully shaved his jaw with a red
+forefinger, while his comprehensive glance took in the other's bow-legs.
+“There isna anither lass i' Zorra that wad touch ye with a ten-foot
+pole.”
+
+Reddening, Timmins breathed hard, but the mariner met his stare with the
+serene gaze of one who deals in undiluted truth; so Timmins gulped and
+went on: “Say! I 'ear that you're mighty clever in these 'ere affairs.
+Can't you 'elp a feller out?”
+
+The cap'en modestly bowed to reputation, admitting that he had assisted
+“a sight of couples over the broomstick,” adding, however, that the
+knack had its drawbacks. There were many door-stones in Zorra that he
+dared not cross. And he wagged his head over Timmins's case, wisely, as
+a lawyer ponders over the acceptance of a hopeless brief. Finally he
+suggested that if Timmins was “no stuck on his Methodisticals,” he might
+join the kirk.
+
+“You think that would 'elp?”
+
+The cap'en thought that, but he was not prepared to endorse Timmins's
+following generalization that it didn't much matter what name a man
+worshipped under. It penetrated down through the aforesaid rubble of
+disintegration and touched native granite. Stiffly enough he returned
+that Presbyterianism was good enough for him, but it rested on Timmins
+to follow the dictates of his own conscience.
+
+Now when bathed in love's elixir conscience becomes very pliable indeed,
+and as the promptings of Timmins's inner self were all toward Janet, his
+outer man was not long in making up his mind. But though, following the
+cap'en's advice, he joined himself to the elect of Zorra, his change of
+faith brought him only a change of name.
+
+Elder McCakeron officiated at the “christening” which took place in the
+crowded market the day after Timmins's name had been spread on the kirk
+register. “An' how is the apoos-tate the morning?” the elder inquired,
+meeting Timmins. And the name stuck, and he was no more known as the
+“Englisher.”
+
+“Any letters for the Apoos-tate?” The postmaster would mouth the
+question, repeating it after Timmins when he called for his mail. Small
+boys yelled the obnoxious title as he passed the log school on the
+corner; wee girls gazed after him, fascinated, as upon one destined for
+a headlong plunge into the lake of fire and brimstone. Summing the
+situation at the close of his second month's fellowship in the kirk,
+Timmins confessed to himself that it had brought him only a full
+realization of the “stiffness” of Elder McCakeron's “condition.” He was
+no nearer to Janet, and never would have been but for the sudden decease
+of Elder Tammas Duncan.
+
+In view of what followed, many hold that Elder Tammas made a vital
+mistake in dying, while a few, less charitable, maintain that his
+decease was positively sinful.
+
+But if Elder Tammas be not held altogether blameless in the premises,
+what must be said of Saunders McClellan, who loaded himself with
+corn-juice and thereby sold himself to the fates? Saunders was a
+bachelor of fifty and a misogynist by repute. Twenty years back he had
+paid a compliment to Jean Ross, who afterward married on Rab Murray. It
+was not a flowery effort; simply to the effect that he, Saunders, would
+rather sit by her, Jean, than sup oatmeal brose. But though he did not
+soar into the realms of metaphor, the compliment seems to have been a
+strain on Saunders's intellect, to have sapped his being of tenderness;
+for after paying it he reached for his hat and fled, and never again
+placed himself in such jeopardy.
+
+“Man!” he would exclaim, when, at threshing or logging bees, hairbreadth
+escapes from matrimony cropped up in the conversation,--“man! but I was
+near done for yon time!” And yet, all told, Saunders's dry bachelorhood
+seems to have been caused by an interruption in the flow rather than a
+drying up of his wells of feeling, as was proven by his conduct coming
+home from market the evening he overloaded with “corn-juice.”
+
+For as he drove by Elder McCakeron's milk-yard, which lay within easy
+hailing distance of the gravel road, Saunders bellowed to Janet: “Hoots,
+there! Come awa, my bonnie bride! Come awa to the meenister!” In front
+of her mother and Sib Sanderson, the cattle-buyer--who was pricing a fat
+cow,--Saunders thus committed himself, then drove on, chuckling over his
+own daring.
+
+“Ye're a deevil! man, ye're a deevil!” he told himself, giving his hat a
+rakish cock. “Ye're a deevil wi' the weemen, a sair deceever.”
+
+He did feel that way--just then. But when, next morning, memory
+disentangled itself from a splitting headache, Saunders's red hair
+bristled at the thought of his indiscretion. It was terrible! He,
+Saunders, the despair of the girls for thirty years, had fallen into a
+pit of his own digging! He could but hope it a nightmare; but as doubt
+was more horrible than certainty, he dressed and walked down the line to
+McCakeron's.
+
+Once again he found Janet at the milking; or rather, she had just turned
+the cows into the pasture, and as she waited for him by the bars,
+Saunders thought he had never seen her at worse advantage. The sharp
+morning air had blued her nose, and he was dimly conscious that the
+color did not suit her freckles.
+
+“Why, no!” she said, answering his question as to whether or no he had
+not acted a bit foolish the night before. “You just speired me to marry
+on you. Said I'd been in your eye this thirty years.”
+
+In a sense this was true. He had cleared from her path like a bolting
+rabbit, but gallantry forbade that manifest explanation. “'Twas the
+whuskey talking,” he pleaded. “Ye'll no hold me til a drunken promise?”
+
+But he saw, even before she spoke, that she would.
+
+“'Deed but I will!” she exclaimed, tossing her head. “An' them says ye
+were drunken will ha' to deal wi' me. Ye were sober as a sermon.”
+
+Though disheartened, Saunders tried another tack. “Janet,” he said,
+solemnly, “I dinna think as a well-brought lass like you wad care to
+marry on a man like me. I'm terrible i' the drink. I might beat ye.”
+
+Janet complacently surveyed an arm that was thick as a club from heavy
+choring. “I'll tak chances o' that.”
+
+Saunders's heart sank into his boots; but, wiping the sweat from his
+brow, he made one last desperate effort: “But ye're promised to
+the--the--Apoos-tate.”
+
+“I am no. Father broke that off.”
+
+Saunders shot his last bolt. “I believe I'm fickle, Janet. There'll be a
+sair heart for the lass that marries me. I wouldna wonder if I jilted
+ye.”
+
+“Then,” she calmly replied, “I'll haul ye into the justice coort for
+breach o' promise.”
+
+With this terrible ultimatum dinging in his ears Saunders fled. Zorra
+juries were notoriously tender with the woman in the case, and he saw
+himself stripped of his worldly goods or tied to the apron of the
+homeliest girl in Zorra. One single ray illumined the dark prospect.
+That evening he called on Timmins, whom he much astonished by the extent
+and quality of his advice and encouragement. He even went so far as to
+invite the Englisher to his own cabin, thereby greatly scandalizing his
+housekeeper--a maiden sister of fifty-two, who had forestalled fate by
+declaring for the shelf at forty-nine.
+
+“What'll he be doing here?” the maiden demanded, indicating Timmins with
+accusatory finger on the occasion of his first visit. But his meekness
+and the propitiatory manner in which he sat on the very edge of his
+chair, hat gripped between his knees, mollified her so much that she
+presently produced a bowl of red-cheeked apples for his refreshment.
+
+But her thawing did not save Saunders after the guest was gone. “There's
+always a fule in every family,” she cried, when he had explained his
+predicament, “an' you drained the pitcher.”
+
+“But you'll talk Janet to him,” Saunders urged, “an' him to her? She's
+that hard put to it for a man that wi' a bit steering she'll consent to
+an eelopement.”
+
+But, bridling, Jeannie tossed a high head. “'Deed, then, an' I'll no do
+ither folk's love-making.”
+
+“Then,” Saunders groaned, “I'll ha' the pair of ye in this hoose.”
+
+This uncomfortable truth gave Jeannie pause. The position of maiden
+sister carried with it more chores than easements, and Jeannie was not
+minded to relinquish her present powers. For a while she seriously
+studied the stove, then her face cleared; she started as one who
+suddenly sees her clear path, and giving Saunders a queer look, she
+said: “Ah, weel, you're my brother, after all. I'll do my best wi' both.
+Tell the Englisher as I'll be pleased to see him any time in the
+evening.”
+
+Matters were at this stage when Elder McCakeron's cows committed their
+dire trespass on Neil McNab's turnips.
+
+Who would imagine that such unlike events as Saunders McClellan's lapse
+from sobriety, the death of Elder Duncan, and the trespass of
+McCakeron's cows could have any bearing upon one another? Yet from their
+concurrence was born the most astounding hap in the Zorra chronicles.
+Even if Elder McCakeron had paid Neil's bill of damage instead of
+remarking that he “didna see as the turnips had hurt his cows,” the
+thing would have addled in the egg; and his recalcitrancy, so necessary
+to the hatching, has caused many a wise pow to shake over the
+inscrutability of Providence. But the elder did not pay, and in revenge
+Neil placed Peter Dunlop, the elder's ancient enemy, in nomination for
+Tammas Duncan's eldership.
+
+It was Saunders McClellan who carried the news to the McCakeron
+homestead. According to her promise, Jeannie had visited early and late
+with Janet; and dropping in one evening to check up her report of
+progress, Saunders found the elder perched on a stump.
+
+Saunders discharged him of his news, which dissipated the elder's calm
+as thunder shatters silence.
+
+“What?” he roared. “Yon scunner? Imph! I'd as lief ... as lief ...
+elect”--_the devil_ quivered back of his teeth, but as that savored of
+irreverence, he substituted “the Apoostate!”
+
+Right here a devil entered in unto Saunders McClellan--the mocking devil
+whose mission it was to abase Zorra to the dust. But it did not make its
+presence known until, next day, Saunders carried the news of Elder
+McCakeron's retaliation to Cap'en McKay's pig-killing.
+
+“He's going,” Saunders informed the cap'en and Neil McNab between
+pigs,--“he's going to run Sandy 'Twenty-One' against your candidate.”
+
+Now between Neil and Sandy lay a feud which had its beginnings what time
+the latter _doctored_ a spavined mare and sold her for a price to the
+former's cousin Rab.
+
+“Yon scunner?” Neil exclaimed, using the very form of the elder's words,
+“yon scunner? I'd as lief ... as lief ... elect ...”
+
+“... the Apoos-tate,” said the Devil, though Neil thought that Saunders
+was talking.
+
+“Ay, the Apoos-tate,” he agreed.
+
+“It wad be a fine joke,” the Devil went on by the mouth of Saunders, “to
+run the Apoos-tate agin' his candidate. McCakeron canna thole the man.”
+
+“But what if he was elected?” the mariner objected.
+
+The Devil was charged with glib argument. “We couldna very weel. It's to
+be a three-cornered fight, an' Robert Duncan, brother to Tammas, has it
+sure.”
+
+“'Twad be a good one on McCakeron,” Neil mused. “To talk up Dunlop, who
+doesna care a cent for the eldership, an' then spring the Apoos-tate on
+him.”
+
+“'Twould be bitter on 'Twenty-One,'” the cap'en added. He had been
+diddled by Sandy on a deal of seed-wheat.
+
+“It wad hit the pair of 'em,” McNab chuckled, and with that word the
+Devil conquered.
+
+So far, as aforesaid, Saunders had been unconscious of the Devil, but
+going home the latter revealed himself in a heart-to-heart talk. “Ye're
+no pretty to look at,” Saunders said. “I'm minded to throw ye oot!”
+
+The Devil chuckled. “Janet's so bonny. Fancy her on the pillow beside,
+ye--scraggy--bones--freckles. Hoots, man! a nightmare!”
+
+Shuddering, Saunders reconsidered proceedings of ejectment. “But the
+thing is no posseeble?”
+
+“You know your men,” the Devil answered. “Close in the mouth as they are
+in the fist. McCakeron will never get wind o' the business till they
+spring it on him in meeting.”
+
+“That is so,” Saunders acknowledged. “'Tis surely so-a.”
+
+“Then why,” the Devil urged,--“then why not rig the same game on him?”
+
+“Bosh! He wouldna think o't.”
+
+“Loving Dunlop as himself?” The Devil was apt at paraphrasing Scripture.
+“Imph!”
+
+“It _would_ let me out?” Saunders mused.
+
+“Ye can but fail,” argued the Devil. “Try it.”
+
+“I wull.”
+
+“This very night!” It is a wonder that the sparks did not fly, the Devil
+struck so hard on the hot iron. “To-night! Ye ken the election comes off
+next week.”
+
+“To-night,” Saunders agreed.
+
+Throughout that week the din of contending factions resounded beneath
+brazen harvest skies; for if there was a wink behind the clamor of any
+faction, it made no difference in the volume of its noise. Wherever two
+men foregathered, there the spirit of strife was in their midst; the
+burr of hot Scot's speech travelled like the murmur of robbed bees along
+the Side Lines, up the Concession roads, and even raised an echo in the
+hallowed seclusion of the minister's study. And harking back to certain
+eldership elections in which the breaking of heads had taken the place
+of “anointing with oil,” Elder McIntosh quietly evolved a plan whereby
+the turmoil should be left outside the kirk on election night.
+
+But while it lasted no voice rang louder than that of Saunders
+McClellan's devil. Not a bit particular in choice of candidates, he
+roared against Dunlop, Duncan, or “Twenty-One” according to the company
+which Saunders kept. “Ye havna the ghaist of a show!” he assured Cap'en
+McKay, chief of the Dunlopers. “McCakeron drew three mair to him last
+night.” While to the elder he exclaimed the same day: “Yon crazy
+sailorman's got all the Duncanites o' the run. He has ye spanked, Elder.
+Scunner the deil!” So the Devil blew, hot and cold, with Saunders's
+mouth, until the very night before the election.
+
+The morning of the election the sun heaved up on a brassy sky. It was
+intensely hot through the day, but towards evening gray clouds scudded
+out of the east, veiling the sun with their twisting masses; at twilight
+heavy rain-blots were splashing the dust. At eight o'clock,
+meeting-time, rain flew in glistening sheets against the kirk windows
+and forced its way under the floor. There was but a scant
+attendance--twoscore men, perhaps, and half a dozen women, who sat, in
+decent Scotch fashion, apart from the men--that is, apart from all but
+Joshua Timmins. Not having been raised in the decencies as observed in
+Zorra, he had drifted over to the woman's side and sat with Janet
+McCakeron and Jean McClellan, one on either side.
+
+But if few in number, the gathering was decidedly formidable in
+appearance. As the rain had weeded out the feeble, infirm, and
+pacifically inclined, it was distinctly belligerent in character. Grim,
+dour, silent, it waited for the beginning of hostilities.
+
+Nor did the service of praise which preceded the election induce a
+milder spirit. When the precentor led off, “Howl, ye Sinners, Howl! Let
+the Heathen Rage and Cry!” each man's look told that he knew well whom
+the psalmist was hitting at; and when the minister invoked the “blind,
+stubborn, and stony-hearted” to “depart from the midst,” one-half of his
+hearers looked their astonishment that the other half did not
+immediately step out in the rain. A heavy inspiration, a hard sigh, told
+that all were bracing for battle when the minister stepped down from the
+pulpit, and noting it, he congratulated himself on his precautions
+against disturbance.
+
+“For greater convenience in voting,” he said, reaching paper slips and a
+box of pencils from behind the communion rail, “we will depart from the
+oral method and elect by written ballot.”
+
+He had expected a protest against such a radical departure from
+ancestral precedent, but in some mysterious way the innovation seemed to
+jibe with the people's inclination.
+
+“Saunders McClellan,” the minister went on, “will distribute and collect
+balloting-papers on the other aisle.”
+
+“Give it to him, Cap'en!” Saunders whispered, as he handed him a slip.
+“He's glowering at ye.”
+
+The elder was indeed surveying the mariner, McNab, and Dunlop with a
+glance of comprehensive hostility over the top of his ballot. “See what
+I'm aboot!” his look said, as he folded the paper and tossed it into
+Saunders's hat.
+
+“The auld deevil!” McNab whispered, as the minister unfolded the first
+ballot. “He'll soon slacken his gills.”
+
+“That'll be one of oor ballots,” the cap'en hoarsely confided.
+
+The minister was vigorously rubbing his glasses for a second perusal of
+the ballot, but when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were added to
+the first, his face became a study in astonishment. And presently his
+surprise was reflected by the congregation. For whereas three candidates
+were in nomination, the ballots were forming but two piles.
+
+Whispers ran through the kirk; the cap'en nudged McNab.
+
+“McCakeron must ha' swung all the Duncanites?”
+
+“Ah,” Neil muttered. “An' that wad account for the stiff look o' the
+reptile. See the glare o't.”
+
+They would have stiffened in astonishment could they have translated the
+“glare.” “Got the Duncanites, did ye?” the elder was thinking. “Bide a
+wee, bide a wee! He laughs best that laughs last.”
+
+Saunders McClellan and his Devil alone sensed the inwardness of those
+two piles, and they held modest communion over it in the back of the
+kirk. “You may be ugly, but ye've served me well,” Saunders began.
+
+The Devil answered with extreme politeness: “You are welcome to all ye
+get through me. If no honored, ye are at least aboot to become famous in
+your ain country.”
+
+“Infamous, I doobt, ye mean,” Saunders corrected. Then, glancing
+uneasily toward the door, he added, “I think as we'd better be leaving.”
+
+“Pish!” the Devil snorted. “They are undone by their ain malignancy. See
+it oot.”
+
+“That's so,” Saunders agreed. “That is surely so-a. Hist! The
+meenister's risen. Man, but he's tickled to death over the result. His
+face is fair shining.”
+
+The minister did indeed look pleased. Stepping down to the floor that he
+might be closer to these his people, he beamed benevolently upon them
+while he made a little speech. “People of Scottish birth,” he said,
+closing, “are often accused of being hard and uncharitable to the
+stranger in their gates, but this can never be said of you who have
+extended the highest honor in your gift to a stranger; who have elected
+Brother Joshua Timmins elder in your kirk by a two-thirds majority.”
+
+The benediction dissolved the paralysis which held all but Saunders
+McClellan; but stupefaction remained. Astounding crises are generally
+attended with little fuss, from the inability of the human intellect to
+grasp their enormous significance. As John “Death” McKay afterward put
+it, “Man, 'twas so extraordin'ry as to seem ordin'ry.” Of course neither
+Dunlopers nor “Twenty-One's” were in a position to challenge the
+election, and if the Duncanites growled as they pawed over the ballots,
+their grumbling was presently silenced by a greater astonishment.
+
+For out of such evenings history is made. While the minister had held
+forth on the rights and duties of eldership, Saunders McClellan's gaze
+had wandered over to Margaret McDonald--a healthy, red-cheeked girl--and
+he had done a little moralizing on his own account. In the presence of
+such an enterprising spinsterhood, bachelorhood had become an
+exceedingly hazardous existence, and if a man must marry, he might as
+weel ha' something young an' fresh! Margaret, too, was reputed
+industrious as pretty! Of Janet's decision, Saunders had no doubts.
+Between himself and Jeannie, and Timmins--meek, mild, and
+unencumbered--there could be no choice. Still there was nothing like
+certainty; 'twas always best to be off wi' the old, an' so forth!
+
+Rising, he headed for Janet, who, with her father, Jeannie, Timmins, and
+the minister, stood talking at the vestry door. As he made his way
+forward, he reaped a portion of the Devil's promised fame. As they filed
+sheepishly down the aisle, the Dunlopers gave him the cold shoulder, and
+when he joined the group, Elder McCakeron returned a stony stare to his
+greeting.
+
+“But ye needna mind that,” the Devil encouraged. “He daurna tell, for
+his own share i' the business.”
+
+So Saunders brazened it out. “Ye ha' my congratulations, Mr. McCakeron.
+I hear you're to get a son-in-law oot o' this?”
+
+If Elder McCakeron had given Saunders the tempter the glare which he now
+bestowed on Saunders the successfully wicked, he had not been in such
+lamentable case.
+
+“Why, what is this?” the minister exclaimed. “Cause for further
+congratulation, Brother Timmins?”
+
+Saunders now shone as Cupid's assistant. “He was to ha' Janet on
+condeetion that he made the eldership,” he fulsomely explained.
+
+The minister's glance questioned the elder.
+
+“Well,” he growled, “I'm no going back on my word.”
+
+Saunders glowed all over, and in exuberance of spirit actually winked at
+Margaret McDonald across the kirk. Man, but she was pretty!
+
+“It's to your credit, Mr. McCakeron, that you should hold til a
+promise,” Jeannie was saying. “But ye'll no be held. A man may change
+his mind, and since you refused Joshua, he's decided to marry on me.”
+
+Saunders blenched. He half turned to flee, but Janet's strong fingers
+closed on his sleeve; and as her lips moved to claim him before minister
+and meeting, he thought that he heard the Devil chuckling, a great way
+off.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE INTERESTS OF CHRISTOPHER
+
+
+BY MAY HARRIS
+
+
+
+Mrs. Manstey's big country-house was temporarily empty of the guests she
+had gathered for a week-end in June when the two Eversley girls reached
+it, Saturday at noon. Their hostess met them at the door when the
+carriage wheels crunched on the gravelled curve of the drive before the
+house--a charming gray-haired woman of sixty, with a youthful face and a
+delicate girlish color.
+
+“I've sent everybody away to explore--to ravage the country,” she gayly
+explained the emptiness of the large hall, where the grouped chairs
+seemed recently vacated and pleasantly suggestive of suspended
+tête-à-tête. “I've had Rose before,” Mrs. Manstey pursued, taking them
+up the stairs to their rooms, “but not _you!_” She gave Edith's shoulder
+an affectionate little pat. She thought the younger girl extremely
+beautiful--which she was, with a vivid, piquant face and charming eyes.
+
+“I've had my day,” Rose Eversley acknowledged, with her usual air of
+jesting gravity, that, almost ironic, made one always a little unsure of
+her. “Dear Mrs. Manstey, you perfectly see--don't you?--that Edith is
+papa's image, and--”
+
+“And he was my old sweetheart!” Mrs. Manstey completed, with humorous
+appreciation of her own repetition of an old story.
+
+“Was he, really?” Edith wondered. “Mamma says you were _her_ friend.”
+
+Mrs. Manstey laughed. “Couldn't I have been--both?” she gayly put it.
+“Friends are better than sweethearts--they last longer. Though of course
+you won't agree, at your age, to such heresy.”
+
+“Sweethearts?” the girl pondered as she lifted her hands to take off her
+hat. “I--don't know. It's such a pretty word, but it doesn't mean much
+these days--there aren't any!” She shrugged her shoulders with a
+petulant pessimism her youth made amusing. “Papa was the last of the
+kind--he's a _love!_--and you let mamma have him!”
+
+“I didn't 'let.'” Mrs. Manstey enjoyed it. “When he met your mother he
+forgot all about me. Think of it! I haven't seen either him or your
+mother in years, years, years!”
+
+“_My_ years!” Edith said. “I was a baby, mamma says, when she saw you
+last.”
+
+“So you were.”
+
+A servant knocked, with a note for Mrs. Manstey. As she took it and
+turned to leave the room, her smile, caressingly including Rose, went
+past her and lingered a thought longer--as people's smiles had a way of
+doing--with Edith.
+
+“I know you're tired,” she added to her smile. “Five hours of train--Get
+into something cool and rest. Luncheon isn't until two.”
+
+She disappeared, and Rose looked at her sister, who, with her hat in her
+hand, was going into her room.
+
+“Well--?” Rose lifted her voice in its faint drawl of interrogation.
+
+Edith looked at her absently. “I don't know,” she said, drawing her
+straight brows into a puzzled frown. “I'm as far away as ever--I'm so
+perplexed.”
+
+“Well--you'll _have_ to decide, you know.”
+
+Edith shook her head impatiently and went into her room, closing the
+door. She hurried out of her dusty travelling things into cool
+freshness, and, settled in the most comfortable chair, gave herself up
+to an apparently endless fit of musing. She was so physically content
+that her mind refused to respond with any vigorous effort; to think at
+all was a crumpled rose-leaf.
+
+From the lower hall the clock chimed one with musical vibrations. Edith
+leaned forward with her chin on her hand, driving her thoughts into a
+definite path. The curtains stirred in a breeze from the out-of-doors
+whose domain swept with country greenness and adventitious care away
+from the window under the high brilliance of the sun.
+
+Close to the window a writing-table, with blotter, pens, and ink, made a
+focal-point for her gaze. At first a mere detail in her line of vision,
+it attained by degrees, it seemed, a definite relevancy to her train of
+thought. She looked in her portmanteau for her desk, and getting out
+some note-paper, went to the table and began to write a letter.
+
+What she had to say seemed difficult to decide. She wrote a line, stared
+out of the window with fixity, and then wrote again--a flurry of quick,
+decisive strokes as if at determinate pressure. But a sigh struck across
+her mood, and almost against her will the puzzled crinkle returned to
+her brow. The curtain blew against her face, disarranging her hair, and
+as she lifted her hand to put back a straggling lock, the wind tossed
+the sheet of the letter she was writing out of the window. Her eyes, as
+she sprang up, followed its flight, but it whirled around the corner of
+the house and was lost to her desperate gaze.
+
+Négligé, even of the most-becoming description, was not to be thought of
+in pursuing the loss, for the silence of the house had stirred to the
+sound of gay voices, the movement of feet.
+
+Rose, also in négligé, opened the door between them and found her madly
+tearing off her pale-blue kimono. “What's the matter?” She paused,
+staring.
+
+“Heavens! My shoes--please!--there by the table.” She kicked off her
+ridiculous blue slippers and pulled on the small colonials her sister in
+open wonder handed her. “If you had only been dressed,” she almost
+wailed, “you might have been able to get it.”
+
+“Get what?”
+
+“My letter!” Tragic, in spite of a mouthful of pins--which is a woman's
+undoubted preference, no matter how many befrilled pincushions entreat a
+division of spoils,--she turned her face with its import of sudden
+things to her sister in explanation. “I was writing a letter and it blew
+out of the window!”
+
+“Well, if it did--”
+
+“But, don't you see?--I was writing to _Christopher!_ I had been thinking
+and thinking, and at last I screwed up my courage to answer his letter.
+I had all but signed my name!”
+
+Rose Eversley began to laugh helplessly; heartlessly, her sister
+thought.
+
+“If you hadn't signed it--” she at last comforted her sister's indignant
+face that was reflected from the mirror, where she stood as she fastened
+the white stock at her throat and snapped the clasp of her belt.
+
+“Signed it!” She was almost in tears. “What difference will that make
+when I claim the letter? I _must_ find it! But of course some one who
+knows me will be sure to find it. And _that_ letter, of all letters!”
+
+“If I were you, Edith,” Rose advised, calmly, “I shouldn't--”
+
+“Well?”--with her hand on the door-knob.
+
+“--try to find it. It will be impossible to trace it to you, in that
+case.”
+
+“But _don't_ you see--”
+
+“Wait!” Rose caught and pulled her back. “How _could_ they know? You'll
+get in much deeper. What had you written?”
+
+“I said, 'Dear Christopher'--”
+
+Rose laughed. “I'm glad you didn't say 'Dear Mr. Brander.' In that case
+you'd have given _him_ away. But 'Christopher' is such an unusual name,
+they might--Sherlock Holmes could trace him by it alone.”
+
+“You _are_ a Job's comforter--a perfect Eliphaz the Temanite! Oh, oh!”
+ Her soft crescendo was again tragic.
+
+“In effect you said: 'Dear Christopher, as you have so often entreated,
+I have at last decided to be thine. The tinkle of thy shekels, now that
+I am so nearly shekelless myself, has done its fatal worst. I am
+thine--'”
+
+“Oh, let me go!” Edith cried, in a fury close to tears. “You haven't any
+feeling. You are not going to sacrifice _your_self!”
+
+“To a good-looking young man who loves me exceedingly, and to something
+over a million? No, I am not!” Rose said, dryly.
+
+“Oh, it's dreadful! Perfectly!” Edith cried, and on her indecision Rose
+hung another bit of wisdom:
+
+“Why don't you go down in a leisurely way and investigate? You know the
+direction it blew away; follow it. If you meet any one, be admiring the
+scenery!”
+
+Again Edith's look deserved the foot-lights, but Rose shrugged her
+shoulders and withdrew her detaining hand. Edith caught up her parasol
+and ran down the stairs. The big hall was empty. From a room on the
+right came a click of billiard-balls.
+
+“Perhaps they are all in the house!” she thought, and drew a small
+breath of relief.
+
+On the door-step she paused, with her parasol open, and considered. The
+house faced the west; her room was to the south, and the letter had
+disappeared to the east. She chose her line of advance carefully
+careless.
+
+The lawn on the eastern side of the house sloped to an artificial pond,
+and near it a vine-covered summer-house made a dim retreat from the June
+sun. Look as she would, though, no faintest glimpse of white paper
+rewarded her gaze.
+
+She strolled on--daunted, but still persistent, with the wind blowing
+her hair out of order--to the door of the summer-house. Within it a
+young man was standing, reading her letter. He looked up and took off
+his hat hastily, crumpling the letter in his hand. She saw he was quite
+ugly, with determined-looking eyes, and the redemption of a pleasant
+mouth.
+
+She hesitated, the words “That is my letter!” absolutely frozen on her
+lips. He had been reading it! It seemed impossible for her to claim it,
+and so for a moment's silence she stood, with the green vines of the
+doorway--
+
+          Half light, half shade--
+
+framing herself and her white umbrella.
+
+“You are looking for a cool spot?”--he deprecatingly took the
+initiative. “This is a good choice. There's a wind--”
+
+“Horrid!” she interrupted, so vehemently that she caught his involuntary
+surprise. “I don't like the wind,” she added.
+
+“'It's an ill wind,' you know, 'that doesn't blow some one good.'”
+
+“I assure you _this_ is an ill wind! It has blown me all of the ill it
+could.”
+
+“Do come out of it,” he begged. “The vines keep it off. It's a half-hour
+until luncheon,” he added, “unless they've changed since I was here
+last.” He put up his watch. “We're fellow guests. You came this morning,
+didn't you?--while we were out. I came last night.”
+
+She seated herself provisionally on the little bench by the door, and
+dug the point of her umbrella into the ground. Her mind was busy. He
+still held the letter. She had had a forlorn hope that he would throw
+down the sheet; but he did not. Was there any strategy, she wondered.
+But none suggested itself; and indeed, as if divining her thought, he
+put the crumpled sheet in his pocket. Her eyes followed despairingly the
+“Dear Christopher,” in her clear and, she felt, unfortunately individual
+writing, as it disappeared in his capacious blue serge pocket.
+
+Different ideas wildly presented themselves, but none would do. Could
+she ask him to climb a tree? Of course in that case he would have to
+take off his coat and put it down, and give her the opportunity to
+recover the horrible letter from his pocket. But one cannot ask a
+stranger to climb a tree simply to exhibit his acrobatic powers. And
+trees!--there were none save saplings in a radius of fifty yards! Could
+she tumble in the pond? It would be even less desirable, and he would
+simply wade in and pull her out, with no need to remove his coat.
+
+“Mrs. Manstey,” he was saying, a little tentatively, upholding the
+burden of conversation, “sent some of us out riding this morning, and
+Ralph Manstey raced us home by a short cut cross country. That is, he
+took the short cut. _We_ gave it the cut direct and looked for gaps.”
+
+“If I had been out, I'd have taken every fence,” she said, boastfully,
+and then laughed. He laughed too.
+
+“If I--if you were my sister, I shouldn't let you follow Ralph Manstey
+on horseback. He's utterly reckless.”
+
+“So am I,” she came in, with spirit. “At home I ride anything and jump
+everything.”
+
+“Well, you shouldn't if you were my sister,” he repeated, decisively.
+
+“I'm sorry for your sister,” she declared.
+
+“Well, you see, I haven't one,” he said, gayly, and smiled down at her
+lifted face. Remembering the letter, she corrected her expression to
+colder lines.
+
+“There's no one to introduce us,”--he broke the pause. “Mayn't I--” He
+colored and put his hand into his pocket, and taking out her letter,
+folded the blank sheet out and produced a pencil. “It's hard to call
+one's own name,” he continued. “Suppose we write our names?”
+
+As he was clumsy in finesse, she understood his idea, and her eyes
+flashed. But she said nothing as he scribbled and handed the paper to
+her. She read, “C.K. Farringdon,” and played with the pencil.
+
+“Mr. Farringdon,”--she said it over meditatively. “How plainly you
+write! My name's Edith Eversley,” she added, tranquilly, and, because
+she must, per force, returned the sheet to him. She had a wicked delight
+in the defeat of his strategy which she could cleverly conceal.
+
+“I wish,” he deprecated, gently, but with persistence, “that you would
+write your name here--won't you, as a souvenir?”
+
+But she shook her head and rose--angry, which she hid, but also amused
+at his pertinacity.
+
+“I can't write decently with a pencil,” she said, carelessly, and her
+eyes followed his hand putting the letter back into his pocket. That she
+should have actually had the letter in her hand, and had to give it
+back! But no quick-witted pretext had occurred to help her. Rose would
+think her stupid--utterly lacking in expedients.
+
+She left the summer-house, unfurling her umbrella, and Farringdon
+followed instantly, his failure apparently forgotten.
+
+They passed the tennis-court on their way to the house, and--
+
+“Do you play?” he asked.
+
+“A little.” Her intonation mocked the formula.
+
+“Might we, then, this afternoon--”
+
+She gave him a side glance. “If you don't mind losing,” she suggested.
+
+“But I play to win,” he modestly met it, and again they laughed.
+
+Rose Eversley looked with curiosity at her sister when she entered the
+dining-room for luncheon, followed by Farringdon, but Edith's face was
+non-committal. She was bright and vivacious, and made herself very
+pleasant to Farringdon, who sat by her. After luncheon they went to the
+tennis-court together.
+
+“A delightful young man,” Mrs. St. Cleve commented, putting up her
+lorgnette as she stood at the window with Rose, watching their
+disappearing figures, “but so far as money is concerned, a hopeless
+detrimental. Don't let your pretty sister get interested in him. He
+hasn't a cent except what he makes--he's an architect.”
+
+“Edith is to be depended upon,” Rose said, enigmatically. She was five
+years older than her sister, and had drawn the inference of her own
+plainness, comparatively, ever since Edith had put on long dresses.
+
+“Have you written to Christopher?” she asked, that night, invading
+Edith's room with her hair-brushes.
+
+“No, I haven't,” Edith said, thoughtfully. “I tried just now. It
+seems--I don't know how, exactly, but I just _can't_ write it over
+again! If I had the letter I wrote this morning, I suppose I would send
+it; but to write it all over again--it's too horrible!”
+
+“'Horrible'!” Rose repeated. “Very few people would think it that! He's
+rich, thoroughly good, and devoted to you.”
+
+“You put the least last,” Edith said, slowly, “and you're right. I'm not
+sure Christopher is so devoted to me, after all. He may only fancy that
+I like him, and from his high estate--”
+
+“Nonsense!” Rose said, warmly. “He isn't, as you know, that sort of a
+man. I've known him for years--” She paused.
+
+Edith said nothing; she brushed her hair with careful slowness.
+
+“He is so sincere--so straight-forward,” Rose went on, in an impersonal
+tone; “and as papa has had so much ill luck and our circumstances have
+changed--they _are_ changed, you know, though we are still able to keep
+up a certain appearance--he has been unchanged. You ought to consider--”
+
+“You consider Christopher's interests altogether,” Edith said. “I've
+some, too.”
+
+“Oh no! You needn't think of them with Christopher,” Rose said,
+seriously. “That's just it! He would so completely look after _yours!_
+It's _his_, in this regard, that need consideration.”
+
+“Well--I'll consider Christopher's interests,” Edith said, quietly.
+
+She remembered perfectly the letter she had written--which was in an
+ugly young man's pocket! It had been:
+
+“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--Do you think you really want me? If you are very
+sure, I am willing. I don't care for anybody else, so perhaps I can
+learn to care for you.
+
+“The only thing is, you will spoil me, and they've done that at home
+already! and Rose says I need a strong hand! So in your interests--” and
+then it had blown away!
+
+When Rose, after some desultory talk, went back to her room, Edith wrote
+another letter:
+
+“DEAR CHRISTOPHER,--I know you have made a mistake. I don't care for
+you--to marry you--a bit, but I like you, oh, a quantity! We have always
+been such friends, and we always will be, won't we? but not _that_ way.
+
+“Some day you will be very happy with some one else who will suit you
+better. Then you will know how right I am.
+
+“With kindest wishes,
+
+“EDITH EVERSLEY.”
+
+
+She took this letter down the next morning to put in the bag, but the
+postman had come and gone. As she stood in the hall holding the letter,
+Farringdon came up.
+
+“Good morning,” he said. “You've missed the postman? I will be very
+happy to post it for you on my way to church.”
+
+“Thank you. But if it's on the way to church, I'm going myself, so I
+needn't trouble you.”
+
+Farringdon merely bowed, without saying anything banal about the absence
+of trouble. She was demurely conscious beneath his courtesy of the
+effort he was making to see her handwriting, and she wondered if he
+thought her refusal rude and a confirmation of his suspicion, or simply
+casual.
+
+Whatever he thought, it did not prevent the steps as she came out a few
+hours later in the freshness of white muslin, with her umbrella,
+prayer-book, and an unobtrusive white envelope in her hands.
+
+They were going together down then drive--under his umbrella--before she
+quite grasped the situation.
+
+“We seem to be the only ones,” she hazarded.
+
+“We are,” he nodded.
+
+“Mrs. Manstey has a headache,” Edith said, “but the others--”
+
+“The sun is too hot!”--he smiled.
+
+“But you--I shouldn't have thought--” She paused, a little embarrassed.
+
+“Yes?” he helped her. “That I was one of those who go to church, you
+mean?”
+
+“Oh no!” she protested; but it was what she had meant.
+
+“You are right,” he said, without heeding the protest, and his ugly but
+compellingly attractive face was turned to hers. “I'm not in the least a
+scoffer, though; pray believe that. It's just that I--” he hesitated. “Do
+you remember a little verse:
+
+  'Although I enter not,
+  Yet round about the spot
+    Sometimes I hover,
+  And at the sacred gate
+  With longing eyes I wait,
+    Expectant of her.'”
+
+Her face flushed. “But,” she reverted, with naïveté, “you said you were
+going to church--”
+
+“But because I knew you were one of the women who would be sure to go!”
+ he said, positively.
+
+She rebelled. “I don't look devotional at all!”
+
+“But your eyes do,” he declared. “They're suggestive of cathedrals and
+beautiful dimness, and a voice going up and up, like the 'Lark' song of
+Schubert's, don't you know!”
+
+“No, I _don't!_” she said, wilfully; but she was conscious of his eyes
+on her face, and angry that her cheeks flushed.
+
+They both were silent for a little, and when they left Mrs. Manstey's
+grounds for the uneven country road, that became shortly, by courtesy,
+the village street, they had a view of the little church with its tiny
+tower.
+
+“The post-office,” Farringdon explained, “is at the other end of the
+street. Service is beginning, I dare say. Shall we wait until it is
+over, or post the letter now?”
+
+“No; after service,” she agreed, and inopportunely the letter slipped
+from her hand and fell, with the address down, on the grass. She stooped
+hurriedly, but he was before her, and picking it up, returned it
+scrupulously, with the right side down, as it had fallen. She slipped it
+quickly, almost guiltily, into her prayer-book.
+
+The church was small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a
+little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew
+were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind
+freshened to meet the interest of new hearers.
+
+But neither Edith nor Farringdon listened attentively to the sermon, for
+their minds were busy with other things. He was thinking of the girl
+beside him, whose hymnal he was sharing, and whose voice, very sweet and
+clear, if of no great compass, blended with his own fine tenor. Her
+thoughts could not stray far from the letter and--from other things!
+
+The benediction sent them from the cool dimness into the sunlight, and
+she looked down the street toward the post-office.
+
+“It's quite at the other end of the street,” Farringdon said, opening
+his umbrella and tentatively discouraging the effort. “By the way, your
+letter won't leave, I remember, until the seven-o'clock train. The
+Brathwaites are leaving by that train; you can send your letter down
+then.”
+
+She found herself accepting this proposition, for the blaze of the sun
+on the length of the dusty street was deterring. They walked back almost
+in silence the way they had come; but with his hand on Mrs. Manstey's
+gate and the house less than two hundred yards away, Farringdon paused.
+
+“You have been writing to 'Christopher,'” he said, quietly. “I don't
+want you to send the letter.” He was quite pale, but she did not notice
+it or the tensity of his face; his audacity made her for the moment
+dumb.
+
+“You don't want me to--!” She positively gasped. “I never heard of
+such--”
+
+“Impertinence,” he supplied, gravely. “It looks that way, I know, but it
+isn't. I can't stand on conventions--I've too much at stake. I don't
+mean to lose _you_--as you lost your letter!”
+
+She thought she was furious. “You knew it was my letter!” she accused.
+
+They had paused just within the gate, in the shade of a great
+mulberry-tree that stood sentinel.
+
+“Forgive me,” he said. “Not at first--but I guessed it. My name,” he
+added, “is Christopher, too.”
+
+He took a crumpled sheet, that had been smoothed and folded carefully,
+from his pocket. “Do you remember what you wrote?” he asked, in a low
+voice.
+
+Her face was crimson.
+
+“It blew to me. Such things don't happen every day.” He had taken off
+his hat, and, bareheaded, he bent and looked questioningly into her
+eyes. “My name is Christopher,” he repeated. “I can't--it isn't
+possible--that I can let another Christopher have that letter.”
+
+Her eyes fell before his.
+
+“I”--he paused--“I play tennis very well, you said. I play to win! What
+I give to the interest of a game--”
+
+“Is nothing to what you give to the interests of Christopher!”
+
+As she mockingly spoke, Farringdon caught a glimpse of one or two people
+strolling down from the house. “That letter,” he hastily said,--“you
+can't take it from me! Do you remember that wind? It blew _you_ to _me!_
+Dearest, _darling_, don't be angry. You _can't_ take yourself away.”
+
+A little smile touched her lips--mutinous, but tremulous, too, and
+something in her look made his heart beat fast.
+
+“I didn't--The last letter wasn't like the first,” she said,
+incoherently, but it seemed he understood.
+
+“I knew you were _you_ as soon as I saw you,” he said, idiotically.
+
+“And,” she murmured, as they walked perforce to meet the people coming
+toward them down the drive, “after all, you _were_ Christopher!”
+
+
+
+
+THE WRONG DOOR
+
+
+BY FRANCIS WILLING WHARTON
+
+
+The stairs were long and dark; they seemed to stretch an interminable
+length, and she was too tired to notice the soft carpet and wonder why
+Mrs. Wilson had departed from her iron-clad rules and for once
+considered the comfort of her lodgers. The rail of the banisters lay
+cold but supporting under the pressure of her weary hand, and, at her
+own door at last, she fitted the key in the lock. Something was wrong;
+it would not turn; she drew it out and tried the handle. The door
+opened, and entering, she stood rooted to the spot.
+
+Had her poor little room doubled its size and trebled its furniture? Her
+imagination, always active, for one wild moment suggested that old
+Grandaunt Crosbie from over the seas had remembered her poor relatives
+and worked the miracle; she always had Grandaunt Crosbie as a possible
+trump in the hand of fate. And then the dull reality shattered her
+foolish castle--she was in the wrong room. All this comfort had a
+legitimate possessor, whose Aunt Crosbie did her proper part in life.
+
+She walked mechanically to a window and looked down; yes, there was the
+bleak yard she usually found below her, four houses off; she had come
+into the wrong door, and now to retrace her useless steps.
+
+She paused a moment, and slowly revolving, made bitter inventory of the
+charming interior. Soft, bright stuffs at the windows, on the chairs;
+pictures; books; flowers even; a big bunch of holly on the mantelpiece.
+A sitting-room--no obnoxious bed behind an inadequate screen, no horrid
+white china pitcher in full view! What woman owned all this? She stared
+about for characteristic traces. No sewing! Pipes! It belonged to a man.
+
+She must go. She moved toward the door, and dropped her eyes on the
+little hard-coal fire in the grate; it tempted her, and, with a sort of
+defiance, she moved over to it and warmed her chilled fingers. A piano,
+too, and not to teach children on! To play upon, to enjoy! When was her
+time to come? Every dog has his day! Where was hers? Here some man was
+surrounded with comforts and pleasures, and she slaved all day at her
+teaching, and came home at night tired, cold, to a miserable little
+half-furnished room--alone.
+
+Resting her arms on the mantelpiece, she dropped her face a moment on
+them and rebelled, kicking hard against the pricks; and sunk in that
+profitless occupation, heard vaguely the sound of rapid steps and
+suddenly realized what they might mean.
+
+She straightened her young form and stared, fascinated, at the door.
+Good heavens! What should she do? What should she say? If she appeared
+confused, she would be thought a thief; she must have some excuse: she
+had come--to--find a lady--was waiting! She sank into a little chair and
+tried not to tremble visibly to the most unobservant eye, and the door
+opened, shut, and the owner of the room stood before her.
+
+“How do you do?” said Amory, and coming forward, he shook hands warmly.
+“Please forgive me for being late, but I could not get away a moment
+before. Where” he looked about the room--“where is Mrs. White?”
+
+The girl had risen nervously, and stood with her fingers clasped,
+looking at him; she answered, stammering, “She--I--she--couldn't come.”
+
+“Couldn't come?” repeated the young man. “I'm awfully sorry. Do sit
+down.”
+
+She still stood, holding to the back of her chair. “She said she would
+come if she could, and I was to--but I had better go.”
+
+Amory laughed. “Not a bit of it. Now I've got you, I sha'n't let you go.
+It was very brave of you to come alone. You know brothers-in-law are
+presumptuous sometimes.” He smiled down into the soft, shy, dark eyes
+raised to his, and looked at his watch. “You must have waited a
+half-hour; I said four o'clock. I'm so sorry.”
+
+Her eyes dropped. “I was late, too,” she answered, and felt a horrible
+weight lifted from her. (They surely could not be coming; she could go
+in a moment; he would never know until she was beyond his reach. But she
+reckoned without her host.)
+
+“Draw up to the fire,” he began, and wheeled up a big armchair, and
+gently made her sit in it. “Put your feet on the fender and let's have a
+long talk. You know I sha'n't see you before the wedding, and I'd like
+to know something of my brother's wife. Tom said I must see you once
+before you and he got off to Paris, and I may not be able to get West
+for the wedding; so this is the one chance I shall have.” He drew his
+chair near, and looked down at her with friendly, pleasant eyes.
+
+She must say something. She rested her head on the high back of her
+chair, and felt a sensation of bewildered happiness. It was dangerous;
+she must get away in a moment; but for a moment she might surely enjoy
+this extraordinary situation that fortune had thrust upon her--the
+charm of the room, the warmth, and something more wonderful
+still--companionship. She looked at him; she must say something.
+
+“You think you can't come to the wedding?” she said, and blushed.
+
+Amory shook his head. “I'm afraid not, though of course I shall try.
+Now”--he stared gravely at her--“now tell me how you came to know Tom
+and why you like him. I wonder if it is for my reasons or ones of your
+own.”
+
+He was surprised by the deep blush which answered his words. What a
+wonderful wild-rose color on her rather pale cheek!
+
+“Don't you think it very warm in here?” said the girl.
+
+Amory got up, and going to the window, opened it a little; then,
+stopping at his desk, picked up a note and brought it to the fire.
+
+“Why, here is a note from Mrs. White,” he said. “Why didn't you tell
+me?”
+
+She had risen, and laid her hand an instant on his arm. “Don't open
+it--yet,” she said. Her desperation lent her invention; just in this one
+way he must not find her out. She gave him a look, half arch, half
+pleading. “I'll explain later,” she said.
+
+Amory felt a stir of most unnecessary emotion; he understood Tom.
+
+“Of course,” he said, dropping it on the mantelpiece,--“just as you
+like. Now let's go back to Tom. You see,”--he sat down, and tipping his
+chair a little, gave her a rather curious smile,--“Tom and I have been
+enigmas to each other always, deeply attached and hopelessly
+incomprehensible, and I had my own ideas of what Tom would
+marry--and--you are not it;--not in the least!” He leant forward and
+brought his puzzled gaze to bear upon her.
+
+She settled deeply into her chair, half to get farther away from those
+searching gray eyes, half because she was taking terrible risks, and she
+might as well enjoy it; the chair was so comfortable, and the fire so
+cheerful, and Amory--it occurred to her with a sort of exhilaration what
+it would be to please him. She had pleased other people, why not him?
+Her lids drooped; she looked down at her shabby gloves.
+
+“What did you expect?” she said.
+
+He leant back and laughed. “What did I expect? Well, frankly, a silly
+little blond thing, all curls and furbelows!”
+
+She raised those heavy lids of hers and gazed straight at him. “Was that
+Tom's description?” she asked, and raised her eyebrows. They were
+delicately pencilled, and Amory watched her and noted them.
+
+“No,” he answered; “he didn't describe you, but I thought that was his
+taste. Now, you are neither silly nor little; no blonde; you have no
+curls and no furbelows. In fact”--he smiled with something delightfully
+intimate in his eyes--“in fact, you are much more the kind of girl _I_
+should like to marry.”
+
+It gave her an absurd little thrill. She sat up, rebellious. “If _I_
+would have liked you,” she returned.
+
+Amory laughed and put his hands in his pockets. “Of course,” he said;
+“but you would, you know!”
+
+“Why?” she demanded, opening her eyes very wide; and again he inwardly
+complimented her on her eyebrows, and above them her hair grew in a
+charming line on her forehead. The little points are all pretty, he
+thought, and it is the details that count in the long run. How much one
+could grow to dislike blurry eyebrows and ugly ears, even if a woman had
+rosy cheeks and golden hair!
+
+“Why? Because I should bully you into it. I'm an obstinate kind of
+creature, and get things by hanging on. Women give in if you worry them
+long enough. But tell me more about Tom,” he went on. “Did he dance and
+shoot his way into your heart? I wish I'd been there to see! You take a
+very bad tintype, by the way. Tom sent me that.” He got up, and taking a
+picture from the mantelpiece, tossed it into her lap, and leaning over
+the back of her chair, looked down on it. “Have you a sentiment about
+it?” he added, smiling. “It does look like Tom.”
+
+She held it and gravely studied it. She colored, and, still looking at
+the picture, felt her way suddenly open. “Yes, it does look like him,”
+ she said, and putting it down, leant forward and looked into the fire.
+“Do you want to know why I accepted Tom?” she added, slowly. She was
+fully launched on a career of deception now, and felt a desperate
+exultation.
+
+Amory stared at her and nodded.
+
+She kept her eyes on the fire. “I wanted--a home.”
+
+Amory sat motionless, then spoke. “Why--why, weren't you happy with your
+aunt and uncle?”
+
+She shook her head. “No; and Tom was good and kind and very--”
+
+Amory got up and shook himself. “Oh, but that's an awful mistake,” he
+said.
+
+“I know,” said the girl, and turning, looked at him a moment. “Well,
+I've come to tell you that I have--” She hesitated.
+
+Amory slid down into the chair beside her. “Changed your mind?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That note of your aunt's?”
+
+“Yes”
+
+He sat back and folded his arms. “I see,” he said, and there followed a
+long silence.
+
+The girl began buttoning and unbuttoning her glove. She must go; she was
+frightened, elated, amused. She did not want to go, but go she must.
+Would he ever forgive her?
+
+“Don't--don't hate me!” she said.
+
+Amory awoke from his stunned meditation. “My dear young lady, of course
+not,” he began; “only, Tom will be terribly broken up. It's the only
+thing to do now, I suppose, but why did you do the other?”
+
+She looked at him. As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, she thought.
+“I was unhappy and foolish.” She hesitated. “But you needn't be troubled
+about Tom. He--” Again she hesitated.
+
+“Not troubled about old Tom!” expostulated Amory.
+
+“Wait.” She put up her hand. “He made a mistake, too; he doesn't care so
+very much, and he has already flirted--”
+
+Amory laid his hand on her chair. “Tom!”
+
+“Yes,” she repeated; “he really is rather a flirt, and--”
+
+“Tom!”
+
+She nodded. “Yes; really, it did hurt me a little, only--”
+
+“Tom!”
+
+She faced him. “Yes, Tom. What do you think Tom is--blind and deaf and
+dumb? Any man worth his salt can flirt.”
+
+Amory stared at her. “Oh, he can, can he?”
+
+She nodded. “He was very good and kind, but I saw that he was changing;
+and then he met a little fair-haired, blue-eyed--”
+
+Amory interposed. “I told you.”
+
+She gave him a curious smile. “Yes, a silly little blond thing, just
+that.”
+
+But his satisfaction in his perspicacity was short-lived; he walked up
+and down the room in his perplexity. “I can't get over it,” he murmured.
+“I thought it a mad love-match, all done in a few weeks; and to have it
+turn out like this! You--”
+
+“Mercenary,” she interjected, with a sad little smile.
+
+He looked at her. “Yes; and Tom--”
+
+“Fickle,” she ended again.
+
+“Yes, and Tom fickle. Why, it shakes the foundations!”
+
+The girl felt a sudden wave of shame and weariness. She must go. She
+hadn't been fair, but it had been so sudden, so difficult. She looked at
+him, and getting up, wondered if she would ever see him again.
+
+“I must go,” she said. “I came--” She hesitated, and a sudden desire to
+have him know her as herself swept over her. It needed only another lie
+or two in the beginning, and then some truth would come through to
+sustain her. She went on: “I came because I wanted to know what you were
+like; Tom had talked so much of you, and I wanted some one to understand
+and perhaps explain; and now I must go and leave your warm, delightful
+room for the comfortless place I live in. Don't think too hardly of me.”
+
+Amory shook his head. “You don't leave me until you have had your tea.”
+ He rang the bell. “But what do you mean by a comfortless home? Does Mrs.
+White neglect you?”
+
+She looked at the fire. “I don't live with her--now; I live alone; I
+work for my living.”
+
+Amory got up as the maid brought in the tea-tray, and setting it beside
+them, he poured out her tea; as he handed her the cup, he brought his
+brows together sternly, as though making out her very mysterious words.
+
+“You work for your living?” he repeated. “I thought you lived with Mrs.
+White, and that they were well off.”
+
+“I did, but now I've come back to my real life, which I would have left
+had I married Tom.”
+
+He nodded. “I see. I had heard awfully little about it all; I was away,
+and then it was so quickly done.”
+
+“I know,” she went on, hurriedly; “but let me tell you, and you will
+understand me better later--that is, if you want to understand me.”
+
+“Most certainly I do.” Amory sustained the strange sad gaze of her
+charming, heavy-lidded eyes in a sort of maze. Her mat skin looked
+white, now that her blushes were gone, and her delicate, irregular
+features a little pinched. He drank his tea and watched her while she
+talked.
+
+“I teach music,” she began; “to do it I left my relations in the country
+and came to this horrible great city. I have one dreary, cold room, as
+unlike this as two rooms can be. I have tried to make it seem like a
+home, but when I saw this I knew how I had failed.”
+
+“Poor little girl!” said Amory.
+
+“I have the ordinary feelings of a girl,” she went on, “and yet I see
+before me the long stretch of a dreary life. I love music; I hear none
+but the strumming of children. I like pictures, books, people; I see
+none. I like to laugh, to talk; there is no one to laugh with, to talk
+to. I am very--unhappy.” The last words were spoken very low, but the
+misery in them touched Amory deeply.
+
+“Poor little girl!” he said again, and gently laid his hand on the arm
+of her chair. “But how can Tom know this and let you go? You are
+mistaken in Tom, I am sure, and--”
+
+The girl straightened her slender figure and rose. “Oh no! it is all
+right. He doesn't love me, your Tom; and so the world goes--I must go,
+too. I--”
+
+“Don't go,” said Amory. “Let me--” She shook her head. “You have no more
+to do; you have comforted and warmed and fed a hungry wanderer, and she
+must make haste home. Thank you for everything; thank you.”
+
+Amory felt a pang as she stood up. Not to see her again--why, that was
+absurd! Why should he not see her? She had quarrelled with Tom, yes, and
+perhaps the family might be hard on her; but he--he understood, and why
+should he shake off her acquaintance? She was not for Tom. Well, it was
+just as well. How could any one think this girl would suit
+Tom--big-bearded, clumsy, excellent fellow that he was?
+
+He put out his hand. “Mary,” he said. The girl stared at him with eyes
+suddenly wide open; he smiled into them.
+
+“I have a right to call you that,” he proceeded, “haven't I? I might
+have been your brother.” He took her hand, and then laughed a little. “I
+am almost glad I am not. You wouldn't have suited Tom, and as a sister,
+somehow, you wouldn't have suited me!” He laughed again. “But”--he
+hesitated; she still stared straight up at him with her soft, dark eyes,
+and he thought them very beautiful--“but why shouldn't I see you--not as
+a brother, but an acquaintance--friend? You say you need them. Tell me
+where you have this room of yours?”
+
+The vivid beauty of her blush startled him, and she drew her hand
+quickly from his.
+
+“Oh no!” she said, hurriedly. “Let things drop between us;
+here--forever.”
+
+Amory stood before her with an expression which reminded her of his
+description of himself--obstinate; yes, he looked it.
+
+“Why?” he urged. “Just because you are not to marry Tom, is there any
+reason why we should not like each other--is there? That is--if we do! I
+do,” he laughed. “Do you?”
+
+Her lids had dropped; she looked very slim, and young, and shy. “Yes,”
+ she said.
+
+It gave Amory a good deal of pleasure for a monosyllable.
+
+“Well, then, your number?” he said.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“I'll ask Tom,” he retorted. “He will tell me.”
+
+He was baffled and curiously charmed by the smile that touched her
+sharply curved young mouth.
+
+“Tom may,” she said.
+
+“I was ready to accept you as a sister,” he persisted, “and you won't
+even admit me as a casual visitor!”
+
+She took a step toward the door. “Wait till you hear Tom's story,” she
+said.
+
+Amory stared curiously at her. “Do you think he will be vindictive,
+after all?” he said. “Why should he be, if what you say is just?”
+
+She paused. “Wait till you see Tom and Mrs. White; then if you want to
+know me, why--” She was blushing again.
+
+“Well,” Amory demanded, “what shall I do?”
+
+She looked up with a sort of childish charm, curling her lip, lighting
+her eyes with something of laughter and mischief. “Why, look for me and
+you'll find me.”
+
+“Find you?” repeated Amory, bewildered.
+
+She nodded. “Yes, if you look. To-morrow will be Sunday; every one will
+be going to church, and I with them. Stand on the steps of this house at
+10.30 precisely, and look as far as you can, and you will see--me.
+Goodnight.”
+
+“Good night.” Amory took her hand. “Let me see you home; it's dark.”
+
+She laughed. “You don't lack persistency, do you?” she said, with a
+sweetness which gave the words a pleasant twist. “But don't come,
+please. I'm used to taking care of myself; but--before I go let me write
+my note also.” She went to the desk and scratched a line, and folding
+it, handed it to him. “There,” she said; “read Mrs. White's note and
+then that, but wait till you hear the house door bang. Promise not
+before.”
+
+“Please--” began Amory.
+
+“Promise,” she repeated.
+
+“I promise,” he said, and again they shook hands for good-by.
+
+“That's three times,” thought the girl as she went to the door, and
+turning an instant, she smiled at him. “Good-by.” The door closed softly
+behind her, and Amory waited a moment, then went to it, and opening it,
+listened; the house door shut lightly, and seizing his notes, he stood
+by the window in the twilight and read them. The first was as follows:
+
+“DEAR MR. AMORY,--Mary and I had to return unexpectedly to Cleveland.
+Forgive our missing this chance of meeting you, but Mr. White's note is
+urgent, as his sister is very ill. Mary regrets greatly not seeing you
+before the wedding.
+
+“Yours sincerely,
+
+“BARBARA WHITE.”
+
+
+Amory threw the paper down. “Do I see visions?” he cried, and hastily
+unfolded the second; it ran as follows:
+
+“Forgive me; I got into the wrong house, the wrong room. I was very
+tired, and my latch-key fitted, and I didn't know until I saw your fire,
+and then you came. Don't think me a very bold and horrid girl, and
+forgive me. Your fire was so warm and bright, and--you were kind.
+
+“M.”
+
+
+Amory stared at the paper a moment; then, catching his hat and flying
+down the stairs, opened the outer door.
+
+The night was bitter cold, with a white frost everywhere; but in the
+twilight no solitary figure was in view; the long street was empty. He
+ran the length of it, then back to his room, and throwing down his hat,
+he lit his pipe. It needed thought.
+
+
+
+
+BRAYBRIDGE'S OFFER
+
+
+WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+
+
+We had ordered our dinners and were sitting in the Turkish room at the
+club, waiting to be called, each in his turn, to the dining-room. With
+its mixture of Oriental appointments in curtains, cushions, and little
+tables of teak-wood the Turkish room expressed rather an adventurous
+conception of the Ottoman taste; but it was always a cozy place whether
+you found yourself in it with cigars and coffee after dinner, or with
+whatever liquid or solid appetizer you preferred in the half-hour or
+more that must pass before dinner after you had made out your menu. It
+intimated an exclusive possession in the three or four who happened
+first to find themselves together in it, and it invited the philosophic
+mind to contemplation more than any other spot in the club.
+
+Our rather limited little down-town dining club was almost a celibate
+community at most times. A few husbands and fathers joined us at lunch;
+but at dinner we were nearly always a company of bachelors, dropping in
+an hour or so before we wished to dine, and ordering from a bill of fare
+what we liked. Some dozed away the intervening time; some read the
+evening papers, or played chess; I preferred the chance society of the
+Turkish room. I could be pretty sure of finding Wanhope there in these
+sympathetic moments, and where Wanhope was there would probably be
+Rulledge, passively willing to listen and agree, and Minver ready to
+interrupt and dispute. I myself liked to look in and linger for either
+the reasoning or the bickering, as it happened, and now seeing the three
+there together, I took a provisional seat behind the painter, who made
+no sign of knowing I was present. Rulledge was eating a caviar sandwich,
+which he had brought from the afternoon tea-table near by, and he
+greedily incited Wanhope to go on, in the polite pause which the
+psychologist had let follow on my appearance, with what he was saying. I
+was not surprised to find that his talk related to a fact just then
+intensely interesting to the few, rapidly becoming the many, who were
+privy to it; though Wanhope had the air of stooping to it from a higher
+range of thinking.
+
+“I shouldn't have supposed, somehow,” he said with a knot of deprecation
+between his fine eyes, “that he would have had the pluck.”
+
+“Perhaps he hadn't,” Minver suggested.
+
+Wanhope waited for a thoughtful moment of censure eventuating in
+toleration. “You mean that she--”
+
+“I don't see why you say that, Minver,” Rulledge interposed
+chivalrously, with his mouth full of sandwich.
+
+“I didn't say it,” Minver contradicted.
+
+“You implied it; and I don't think it's fair. It's easy enough to build
+up a report of that kind on the half-knowledge of rumor which is all
+that any outsider can have in the case.”
+
+“So far,” Minver said, with unbroken tranquillity, “as any such edifice
+has been erected, you are the architect, Rulledge. I shouldn't think you
+would like to go round insinuating that sort of thing. Here is Acton,”
+ and he now acknowledged my presence with a backward twist of his head,
+“on the alert for material already. You ought to be more careful where
+Acton is, Rulledge.”
+
+“It would be great copy if it were true,” I owned.
+
+Wanhope regarded us all three, in this play of our qualities, with the
+scientific impartiality of a bacteriologist in the study of a culture
+offering some peculiar incidents. He took up a point as remote as might
+be from the personal appeal. “It is curious how little we know of such
+matters, after all the love-making and marrying in life and all the
+inquiry of the poets and novelists.” He addressed himself in this turn
+of his thought, half playful, half earnest, to me, as if I united with
+the functions of both a responsibility for their shortcomings.
+
+“Yes,” Minver said, facing about toward me. “How do you excuse yourself
+for your ignorance in matters where you're always professionally making
+such a bluff of knowledge? After all the marriages you have brought
+about in literature, can you say positively and specifically how they
+are brought about in life?”
+
+“No, I can't,” I admitted. “I might say that a writer of fiction is a
+good deal like a minister who continually marries people without knowing
+why.”
+
+“No, you couldn't, my dear fellow,” the painter retorted. “It's part of
+your swindler to assume that you _do_ know why. You ought to find out.”
+
+Wanhope interposed abstractly, or as abstractly as he could: “The
+important thing would always be to find which of the lovers the
+confession, tacit or explicit, began with.”
+
+“Acton ought to go round and collect human documents bearing on the
+question. He ought to have got together thousands of specimens from
+nature. He ought to have gone to all the married couples he knew, and
+asked them just how their passion was confessed; he ought to have sent
+out printed circulars, with tabulated questions. Why don't you do it,
+Acton?”
+
+I returned, as seriously as could have been expected: “Perhaps it would
+be thought rather intimate. People don't like to talk of such things.”
+
+“They're ashamed,” Minver declared. “The lovers don't either of them, in
+a given ease, like to let others know how much the woman had to do with
+making the offer, and how little the man.”
+
+Minver's point provoked both Wanhope and myself to begin a remark at the
+same time. We begged each other's pardon, and Wanhope insisted that I
+should go on.
+
+“Oh, merely this,” I said. “I don't think they're so much ashamed as
+that they have forgotten the different stages. You were going to say?”
+
+“Very much what you said. It's astonishing how people forget the vital
+things, and remember trifles. Or perhaps as we advance from stage to
+stage what once seemed the vital things turn to trifles. Nothing can be
+more vital in the history of a man and a woman than how they became
+husband and wife, and yet not merely the details, but the main fact,
+would seem to escape record if not recollection. The next generation
+knows nothing of it.”
+
+“That appears to let Acton out,” Minver said. “But how do _you_ know
+what you were saying, Wanhope?”
+
+“I've ventured to make some inquiries in that region at one time. Not
+directly, of course. At second and third hand. It isn't inconceivable,
+if we conceive of a life after this, that a man should forget, in its
+more important interests and occupations, just how he quitted this
+world, or at least the particulars of the article of death. Of course,
+we must suppose a good portion of eternity to have elapsed.” Wanhope
+continued, dreamily, with a deep breath almost equivalent to something
+so unscientific as a sigh: “Women are charming, and in nothing more than
+the perpetual challenge they form for us. They are born defying us to
+match ourselves with them.”
+
+“Do you mean that Miss Hazelwood--” Rulledge began, but Minver's laugh
+arrested him.
+
+“Nothing so concrete, I'm afraid,” Wanhope gently returned. “I mean, to
+match them in graciousness, in loveliness, in all the agile contests of
+spirit and plays of fancy. There's something pathetic to see them caught
+up into something more serious in that other game, which they are so
+good at.”
+
+“They seem rather to like it, though, some of them, if you mean the game
+of love,” Minver said. “Especially when they're not in earnest about
+it.”
+
+“Oh, there are plenty of spoiled women,” Wanhope admitted. “But I don't
+mean flirting. I suppose that the average unspoiled woman is rather
+frightened than otherwise when she knows that a man is in love with
+her.”
+
+“Do you suppose she always knows it first?” Rulledge asked.
+
+“You may be sure,” Minver answered for Wanhope, “that if she didn't know
+it, _he_ never would.” Then Wanhope answered for himself:
+
+“I think that generally she sees it coming. In that sort of wireless
+telegraphy, that reaching out of two natures through space towards each
+other, her more sensitive apparatus probably feels the appeal of his
+before he is conscious of having made any appeal.”
+
+“And her first impulse is to escape the appeal?” I suggested.
+
+“Yes,” Wanhope admitted after a thoughtful reluctance.
+
+“Even when she is half aware of having invited it?”
+
+“If she is not spoiled she is never aware of having invited it. Take the
+case in point; we won't mention any names. She is sailing through time,
+through youthful space, with her electrical lures, the natural equipment
+of every charming woman, all out, and suddenly, somewhere from the
+unknown, she feels the shock of a response in the gulfs of air where
+there had been no life before. But she can't be said to have knowingly
+searched the void for any presence.”
+
+“Oh, I'm not sure about that, professor,” Minver put in. “Go a little
+slower, if you expect me to follow you.”
+
+“It's all a mystery, the most beautiful mystery of life,” Wanhope
+resumed. “I don't believe I could make out the case, as I feel it to
+be.”
+
+“Braybridge's part of the case is rather plain, isn't it?” I invited
+him.
+
+“I'm not sure of that. No man's part of any case is plain, if you look
+at it carefully. The most that you can say of Braybridge is that he is
+rather a simple nature. But nothing,” the psychologist added with one of
+his deep breaths, “is so complex as a simple nature.”
+
+“Well,” Minver contended, “Braybridge is plain, if his case isn't.”
+
+“Plain? Is he plain?” Wanhope asked, as if asking himself.
+
+“My dear fellow, you agnostics doubt everything!”
+
+“I should have said picturesque. Picturesque, with the sort of
+unbeautifulness that takes the fancy of women more than Greek
+proportion. I think it would require a girl peculiarly feminine to feel
+the attraction of such a man--the fascination of his being grizzled, and
+slovenly, and rugged. She would have to be rather a wild, shy girl to do
+that, and it would have to be through her fear of him that she would
+divine his fear of her. But what I have heard is that they met under
+rather exceptional circumstances. It was at a house in the Adirondacks,
+where Braybridge was, somewhat in the quality of a bull in a china-shop.
+He was lugged in by the host, as an old friend, and was suffered by the
+hostess as a friend quite too old for her. At any rate, as I heard (and
+I don't vouch for the facts, all of them), Braybridge found himself at
+odds with the gay young people who made up the hostess's end of the
+party, and was watching for a chance to--”
+
+Wanhope cast about for the word, and Winver supplied it: “Pull out.”
+
+“Yes. But when he had found it Miss Hazelwood took it from him.”
+
+“I don't understand,” Rulledge said.
+
+“When he came in to breakfast, the third morning, prepared with an
+excuse for cutting his week down to the dimensions it had reached, he
+saw her sitting alone at the table. She had risen early as a consequence
+of having arrived late, the night before; and when Braybridge found
+himself in for it, he forgot that he meant to go away, and said
+good-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found them
+talking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, and
+introduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim at
+second hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from his
+wife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwood
+were getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because one
+was as badly frightened as the other. It was a novel experience for
+both. Ever seen her?”
+
+We others looked at each other. Minver said: “I never wanted to paint
+any one so much. It was at the spring show of the American Artists.
+There was a jam of people; but this girl--I've understood it was
+she--looked as much alone as if there were nobody else there. She might
+have been a startled doe in the North Woods suddenly coming out on a
+twenty-thousand-dollar camp, with a lot of twenty-million-dollar people
+on the veranda.”
+
+“And you wanted to do her as The Startled Doe,” I said. “Good selling
+name.”
+
+“Don't reduce it to the vulgarity of fiction. I admit it would be a
+selling name.”
+
+“Go on, Wanhope,” Rulledge puffed impatiently. “Though I don't see how
+there could be another soul in the universe as constitutionally scared
+of men as Braybridge is of women.”
+
+“In the universe nothing is wasted, I suppose. Everything has its
+complement, its response. For every bashful man, there must be a bashful
+woman,” Wanhope returned.
+
+“Or a bold one,” Minver suggested.
+
+“No; the response must be in kind, to be truly complemental. Through the
+sense of their reciprocal timidity they divine that they needn't be
+afraid.”
+
+“Oh! _That's_ the way you get out of it!”
+
+“Well?” Rulledge urged.
+
+“I'm afraid,” Wanhope modestly confessed, “that from this point I shall
+have to be largely conjectural. Welkin wasn't able to be very definite,
+except as to moments, and he had his data almost altogether from his
+wife. Braybridge had told him overnight that he thought of going, and he
+had said he mustn't think of it; but he supposed Braybridge had spoken
+of it to Mrs. Welkin, and he began by saying to his wife that he hoped
+she had refused to hear of Braybridge's going. She said she hadn't heard
+of it, but now she would refuse without hearing, and she didn't give
+Braybridge any chance to protest. If people went in the middle of their
+week, what would become of other people? She was not going to have the
+equilibrium of her party disturbed, and that was all about it. Welkin
+thought it was odd that Braybridge didn't insist; and he made a long
+story of it. But the grain of wheat in his bushel of chaff was that Miss
+Hazelwood seemed to be fascinated by Braybridge from the first. When
+Mrs. Welkin scared him into saying that he would stay his week out, the
+business practically was done. They went picnicking that day in each
+other's charge; and after Braybridge left he wrote back to her, as Mrs.
+Welkin knew from the letters that passed through her hands, and--Well,
+their engagement has come out, and--” Wanhope paused with an air that
+was at first indefinite, and then definitive.
+
+“You don't mean,” Rulledge burst out in a note of deep wrong, “that
+that's all you know about it?”
+
+“Yes, that's all I know,” Wanhope confessed, as if somewhat surprised
+himself at the fact.
+
+“Well!”
+
+Wanhope tried to offer the only reparation in his power. “I can
+conjecture--we can all conjecture--”
+
+He hesitated; then, “Well, go on with your conjecture,” Rulledge said
+forgivingly.
+
+“Why--” Wanhope began again; but at that moment a man who had been
+elected the year before, and then gone off on a long absence, put his
+head in between the dull-red hangings of the doorway. It was Halson,
+whom I did not know very well, but liked better than I knew. His eyes
+were dancing with what seemed the inextinguishable gayety of his
+temperament, rather than any present occasion, and his smile carried his
+little mustache well away from his handsome teeth. “Private?”
+
+“Come in, come in!” Minver called to him. “Thought you were in Japan?”
+
+“My dear fellow,” Halson answered, “you must brush up your contemporary
+history. It's more than a fortnight since I was in Japan.” He shook
+hands with me, and I introduced him to Rulledge and Wanhope. He said at
+once: “Well, what is it? Question of Braybridge's engagement? It's
+humiliating to a man to come back from the antipodes, and find the
+nation absorbed in a parochial problem like that. Everybody I've met
+here to-night has asked me, the first thing, if I'd heard of it, and if
+I knew how it could have happened.”
+
+“And do you?” Rulledge asked.
+
+“I can give a pretty good guess,” Halson said, running his merry eyes
+over our faces.
+
+“Anybody can give a good guess,” Rulledge said. “Wanhope is doing it
+now.”
+
+“Don't let me interrupt.” Halson turned to him politely.
+
+“Not at all. I'd rather hear your guess. If you know Braybridge better
+than I,” Wanhope said.
+
+“Well,” Halson compromised, “perhaps I've known him longer.” He asked,
+with an effect of coming to business, “Where were you?”
+
+“Tell him, Rulledge,” Minver ordered, and Rulledge apparently asked
+nothing better. He told him in detail, all we knew from any source, down
+to the moment of Wanhope's arrested conjecture.
+
+“He did leave you at an anxious point, didn't he?” Halson smiled to the
+rest of us at Rulledge's expense, and then said: “Well, I think I can
+help you out a little. Any of you know the lady?”
+
+“By sight, Minver does,” Rulledge answered for us. “Wants to paint her.”
+ “Of course,” Halson said, with intelligence. “But I doubt if he'd find
+her as paintable as she looks, at first. She's beautiful, but her charm
+is spiritual.”
+
+“Sometimes we try for that,” the painter interposed.
+
+“And sometimes you get it. But you'll allow it's difficult. That's all I
+meant. I've known her--let me see--for twelve years, at least; ever
+since I first went West. She was about eleven then, and her father was
+bringing her up on the ranche. Her aunt came along, by and by, and took
+her to Europe; mother dead before Hazelwood went out there. But the girl
+was always homesick for the ranche; she pined for it; and after they had
+kept her in Germany three or four years they let her come back, and run
+wild again; wild as a flower does, or a vine--not a domesticated
+animal.”
+
+“Go slow, Halson. This is getting too much for the romantic Rulledge.”
+
+“Rulledge can bear up against the facts, I guess, Minver,” Halson said,
+almost austerely. “Her father died two years ago, and then she _had_ to
+come East, for her aunt simply _wouldn't_ live on the ranche. She
+brought her on, here, and brought her out; I was at the coming-out tea;
+but the girl didn't take to the New York thing at all; I could see it
+from the start; she wanted to get away from it with me, and talk about
+the ranche.”
+
+“She felt that she was with the only genuine person among those
+conventional people.”
+
+Halson laughed at Minver's thrust, and went on amiably: “I don't suppose
+that till she met Braybridge she was ever quite at her ease with any man
+or woman, for that matter. I imagine, as you've done, that it was his
+fear of her that gave her courage. She met him on equal terms. Isn't
+that it?”
+
+Wanhope assented to the question referred to him with a nod.
+
+“And when they got lost from the rest of the party at that picnic--”
+
+“Lost?” Rulledge demanded.
+
+“Why, yes. Didn't you know? But I ought to go back. They said there
+never was anything prettier than the way she unconsciously went for
+Braybridge, the whole day. She wanted him, and she was a child who
+wanted things frankly, when she did want them. Then his being ten or
+fifteen years older than she was, and so large and simple, made it
+natural for a shy girl like her to assort herself with him when all the
+rest were assorting themselves, as people do at such things. The
+consensus of testimony is that she did it with the most transparent
+unconsciousness, and--”
+
+“Who are your authorities?” Minver asked; Rulledge threw himself back on
+the divan, and beat the cushions with impatience.
+
+“Is it essential to give them?”
+
+“Oh, no. I merely wondered. Go on.”
+
+“The authorities are all right. She had disappeared with him before the
+others noticed. It was a thing that happened; there was no design in it;
+that would have been out of character. They had got to the end of the
+wood-road, and into the thick of the trees where there wasn't even a
+trail, and they walked round looking for a way out, till they were
+turned completely. They decided that the only way was to keep walking,
+and by and by they heard the sound of chopping. It was some Canucks
+clearing a piece of the woods, and when she spoke to them in French,
+they gave them full directions, and Braybridge soon found the path
+again.”
+
+Halson paused, and I said, “But that isn't all?”
+
+“Oh, no.” He continued thoughtfully silent for a little while before he
+resumed. “The amazing thing is that they got lost again, and that when
+they tried going back to the Canucks, they couldn't find the way.”
+
+“Why didn't they follow the sound of the chopping?” I asked.
+
+“The Canucks had stopped, for the time being. Besides, Braybridge was
+rather ashamed, and he thought if they went straight on they would be
+sure to come out somewhere. But that was where he made a mistake. They
+couldn't go on straight; they went round and round, and came on their
+own footsteps--or hers, which he recognized from the narrow tread and
+the dint of the little heels in the damp places.”
+
+Wanhope roused himself with a kindling eye. “That is very interesting,
+the movement in a circle of people who have lost their way. It has often
+been observed, but I don't know that it has ever been explained.
+Sometimes the circle is smaller, sometimes it is larger; but I believe
+it is always a circle.”
+
+“Isn't it,” I queried, “like any other error in life? We go round and
+round; and commit the old sins over again.”
+
+“That is very interesting,” Wanhope allowed.
+
+“But do lost people really always walk in a vicious circle?” Minver
+asked.
+
+Rulledge would not let Wanhope answer. “Go on, Halson,” he said.
+
+Halson roused himself from the reverie in which he was sitting with
+glazed eyes. “Well, what made it a little more anxious was that he had
+heard of bears on that mountain, and the green afternoon light among the
+trees was perceptibly paling. He suggested shouting, but she wouldn't
+let him; she said it would be ridiculous, if the others heard them, and
+useless if they didn't. So they tramped on till--till the accident
+happened.”
+
+“The accident!” Rulledge exclaimed in the voice of our joint emotion.
+
+“He stepped on a loose stone and turned his foot,” Halson explained. “It
+wasn't a sprain, luckily, but it hurt enough. He turned so white that
+she noticed it, and asked him what was the matter. Of course that shut
+his mouth the closer, but it morally doubled his motive, and he kept
+himself from crying out till the sudden pain of the wrench was over. He
+said merely that he thought he had heard something, and he had--an awful
+ringing in his ears; but he didn't mean that, and he started on again.
+The worst was trying to walk without limping, and to talk cheerfully and
+encouragingly, with that agony tearing at him. But he managed somehow,
+and he was congratulating himself on his success, when he tumbled down
+in a dead faint.”
+
+“Oh, come, now!” Minver protested.
+
+“It _is_ like an old-fashioned story, where things are operated by
+accident instead of motive, isn't it?” Halson smiled with radiant
+recognition.
+
+“Fact will always imitate fiction, if you give her time enough,” I said.
+
+“Had they got back to the other picnickers?” Rulledge asked with a tense
+voice.
+
+“In sound, but not in sight of them. She wasn't going to bring him into
+camp in that state; besides she couldn't. She got some water out of the
+trout-brook they'd been fishing--more water than trout in it--and
+sprinkled his face, and he came to, and got on his legs, just in time to
+pull on to the others, who were organizing a search-party to go after
+them. From that point on, she dropped Braybridge like a hot coal, and as
+there was nothing of the flirt in her, she simply kept with the women,
+the older girls, and the tabbies, and left Braybridge to worry along
+with the secret of his turned ankle. He doesn't know how he ever got
+home alive; but he did somehow manage to reach the wagons that had
+brought them to the edge of the woods, and then he was all right till
+they got to the house. But still she said nothing about his accident,
+and he couldn't; and he pleaded an early start for town the next
+morning, and got off to bed, as soon as he could.”
+
+“I shouldn't have thought he could have stirred in the morning,”
+ Rulledge employed Halson's pause to say.
+
+“Well, this beaver _had_ to,” Halson said. “He was not the only early
+riser. He found Miss Hazelwood at the station before him.”
+
+“What!” Rulledge shouted. I confess the fact rather roused me, too; and
+Wanhope's eyes kindled with a scientific pleasure.
+
+“She came right towards him. 'Mr. Braybridge,' says she, 'I couldn't let
+you go without explaining my very strange behavior. I didn't choose to
+have these people laughing at the notion of _my_ having played the part
+of your preserver. It was bad enough being lost with you; I couldn't
+bring you into ridicule with them by the disproportion they'd have felt
+in my efforts for you after you turned your foot. So I simply had to
+ignore the incident. Don't you see?' Braybridge glanced at her, and he
+had never felt so big and bulky before, or seen her so slender and
+little. He said, 'It _would_ have seemed rather absurd,' and he broke
+out and laughed, while she broke down and cried, and asked him to
+forgive her, and whether it had hurt him very much; and said she knew he
+could bear to keep it from the others by the way he had kept it from her
+till he fainted. She implied that he was morally as well as physically
+gigantic, and it was as much as he could do to keep from taking her in
+his arms on the spot.”
+
+“It would have been edifying to the groom that had driven her to the
+station,” Minver cynically suggested.
+
+“Groom nothing!” Halson returned with spirit. “She paddled herself
+across the lake, and walked from the boat-landing to the station.”
+
+“Jove!” Rulledge exploded in uncontrollable enthusiasm.
+
+“She turned round as soon as she had got through with her hymn of
+praise--it made Braybridge feel awfully flat--and ran back through the
+bushes to the boat-landing, and--that was the last he saw of her till he
+met her in town this fall.”
+
+“And when--and when--did he offer himself?” Rulledge entreated
+breathlessly. “How--”
+
+“Yes, that's the point, Halson,” Minver interposed. “Your story is all
+very well, as far as it goes; but Rulledge here has been insinuating
+that it was Miss Hazelwood who made the offer, and he wants you to bear
+him out.”
+
+Rulledge winced at the outrage, but he would not stay Halson's answer
+even for the sake of righting himself.
+
+“I _have_ heard,” Minver went on, “that Braybridge insisted on paddling
+the canoe back to the other shore for her, and that it was on the way
+that he offered himself.” We others stared at Minver in astonishment.
+Halson glanced covertly toward him with his gay eyes. “Then that wasn't
+true?”
+
+“How did you hear it?” Halson asked.
+
+“Oh, never mind. Is it true?”
+
+“Well, I know there's that version,” Halson said evasively. “The
+engagement is only just out, as you know. As to the offer--the when and
+the how--I don't know that I'm exactly at liberty to say.”
+
+“I don't see why,” Minver urged. “You might stretch a point for
+Rulledge's sake.”
+
+Halson looked down, and then he glanced at Minver after a furtive
+passage of his eye over Rulledge's intense face. “There was something
+rather nice happened after--But really, now!”
+
+“Oh, go on!” Minver called out in contempt of his scruple.
+
+“I haven't the right--Well, I suppose I'm on safe ground here? It won't
+go any farther, of course; and it _was_ so pretty! After she had pushed
+off in her canoe, you know, Braybridge--he'd followed her down to the
+shore of the lake--found her handkerchief in a bush where it had caught,
+and he held it up, and called out to her. She looked round and saw it,
+and called back: 'Never mind. I can't return for it, now.' Then
+Braybridge plucked up his courage, and asked if he might keep it, and
+she said 'Yes,' over her shoulder, and then she stopped paddling, and
+said 'No, no, you mustn't, you mustn't! You can send it to me.' He asked
+where, and she said, 'In New York--in the fall--at the Walholland.'
+Braybridge never knew how he dared, but he shouted after her--she was
+paddling on again--'May I _bring_ it?' and she called over her shoulder
+again, without fully facing him, but her profile was enough, 'If you
+can't get any one to bring it for you.' The words barely reached him,
+but he'd have caught them if they'd been whispered; and he watched her
+across the lake, and into the bushes, and then broke for his train. He
+was just in time.”
+
+Halson beamed for pleasure upon us, and even Minver said, “Yes, that's
+rather nice.” After a moment he added, “Rulledge thinks she put it
+there.”
+
+“You're too bad, Minver,” Halson protested. “The charm of the whole
+thing was her perfect innocence. She isn't capable of the slightest
+finesse. I've known her from a child, and I know what I say.”
+
+“That innocence of girlhood,” Wanhope said, “is very interesting. It's
+astonishing how much experience it survives. Some women carry it into
+old age with them. It's never been scientifically studied--”
+
+“Yes,” Minver allowed. “There would be a fortune for the novelist who
+could work a type of innocence for all it was worth. Here's Acton always
+dealing with the most rancid flirtatiousness, and missing the sweetness
+and beauty of a girlhood which does the cheekiest things without knowing
+what it's about, and fetches down its game whenever it shuts its eyes
+and fires at nothing. But I don't see how all this touches the point
+that Rulledge makes, or decides which finally made the offer.”
+
+“Well, hadn't the offer already been made?”
+
+“But how?”
+
+“Oh, in the usual way.”
+
+“What is the usual way?”
+
+“I thought everybody knew _that_. Of course, it was _from_ Braybridge
+finally, but I suppose it's always six of one and half a dozen of the
+other in these cases, isn't it? I dare say he couldn't get any one to
+take her the handkerchief. My dinner?” Halson looked up at the silent
+waiter who had stolen upon us and was bowing toward him.
+
+“Look here, Halson,” Minver detained him, “how is it none of the rest of
+us have heard all those details?”
+
+“_I_ don't know where you've been, Minver. Everybody knows the main
+facts,” Halson said, escaping.
+
+Wanhope observed musingly: “I suppose he's quite right about the
+reciprocality of the offer, as we call it. There's probably, in
+ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a perfect understanding before
+there's an explanation. In many cases the offer and the acceptance must
+really be tacit.”
+
+“Yes,” I ventured, “and I don't know why we're so severe with women when
+they seem to take the initiative. It's merely, after all, the call of
+the maiden bird, and there's nothing lovelier or more endearing in
+nature than that.”
+
+“Maiden bird is good, Acton,” Minver approved. “Why don't you institute
+a class of fiction, where the love-making is all done by the maiden
+birds, as you call them--or the widow birds? It would be tremendously
+popular with both sexes. It would lift a tremendous responsibility off
+the birds who've been expected to shoulder it heretofore if it could be
+introduced into real life.”
+
+Rulledge fetched a long, simple-hearted sigh. “Well, it's a charming
+story. How well he told it!”
+
+The waiter came again, and this time signalled to Minver.
+
+“Yes,” he said, as he rose. “What a pity you can't believe a word Halson
+says.”
+
+“Do you mean--” we began simultaneously.
+
+“That he built the whole thing from the ground up, with the start that
+we had given him. Why, you poor things! Who could have told him how it
+all happened? Braybridge? Or the girl? As Wanhope began by saying,
+people don't speak of their love-making, even when they distinctly
+remember it.”
+
+“Yes, but see here, Minver!” Rulledge said with a dazed look. “If it's
+all a fake of his, how came _you_ to have heard of Braybridge paddling
+the canoe back for her?”
+
+“That was the fake that tested the fake. When he adopted it, I _knew_ he
+was lying, because I was lying myself. And then the cheapness of the
+whole thing! I wonder that didn't strike you. It's the stuff that a
+thousand summer-girl stories have been spun out of. Acton might have
+thought he was writing it!”
+
+He went away, leaving us to a blank silence, till Wanhope managed to
+say: “That inventive habit of mind is very curious. It would be
+interesting to know just how far it imposes on the inventor himself--how
+much he believes of his own fiction.”
+
+“I don't see,” Rulledge said gloomily, “why they're so long with my
+dinner.” Then he burst out, “I believe every word Halson said. If
+there's any fake in the thing, it's the fake that Minver owned to.”
+
+
+
+
+THE RUBAIYAT AND THE LINER
+
+
+ELIA W. PEATTIE
+
+
+“Chug-chug, chug-chug!”
+
+That was the liner, and it had been saying the same thing for two nights
+and two days. Therefore nobody paid any attention to it--except Chalmers
+Payne, the moodiest of the passengers, who noticed it and said to
+himself that, for his part, it did as well as any other sound, and was
+much better than most persons' conversation.
+
+It will be guessed that Mr. Chalmers Payne was in an irritable frame of
+mind. He was even retaliative, and to the liner's continued iteration of
+its innocent remark he retorted in the words of old Omar:
+
+  “Perplext no more with Human or Divine,
+  To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign,
+    And lose your fingers in the tresses of
+    The cypress-slender Minister of Wine.
+
+  “And if the wine you drink, the Lip you press,
+  End in what All begins and ends in--Yes;
+    Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
+  You were--To-morrow you shall not be less.
+
+  “So when the Angel of the Darker Drink
+  At last shall find you by the River-brink,
+    And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
+  Forth to your Lips to quaff--you shall not shrink.”
+
+To these melancholy mutterings, the liner, insouciant, and not caring a
+peg for any philosophy--save that of the open road--shouldered along
+through jewel-green waves, and remarked, “Chug-chug, chug-chug!”
+
+Mr. Payne was inclined to quarrel with the Tent-Maker on one score only.
+He did not think that he was to-day what he was yesterday.
+Yesterday--figuratively speaking--he had hope. He was conscious of his
+youth. A fine, buoyant egotism sustained him, and he believed that he
+was about to be crowned with a beautiful joy.
+
+He had sauntered up to his joy, so to speak, cocksure, hands in pockets,
+and as he smiled with easy assurance, behold the joy turned into a
+sorrow. The face of the dryad smiling through the young grape leaves was
+that of a withered hag, and the leaves of the vine were dead and flapped
+on sapless stems!
+
+Well, well, there was always a sorry fatalism to comfort one in joy's
+despite.
+
+  “Then to the rolling Heav'n itself, I cried,
+  Asking, 'What Lamp had Destiny to guide
+    Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?'”
+
+The answer was old as patience--as old as courage. But to theorize about
+it was really superfluous! Why think at all? Why not say chug-chug like
+the liner?
+
+  “We are no other than a moving row
+  Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go--”
+
+Dinner! Was it possible? The day had been a blur! Well, probably all the
+rest of life would be a blur. Anyway, one could still dine, and he
+recollected that the purée of tomatoes at last night's dinner had been
+rather to his liking. He seated himself deliberately at the board,
+congratulating himself that he would be allowed to go through the duty
+of eating without interruption. The place at his right had been vacant
+ever since they left Southampton. At his left was a gentleman of
+uncertain hearing and a bullet-proof frown.
+
+As the seat at his right had been vacant so long, he took the liberty of
+laying it his gloves, his sea-glass, a book with uncut leaves, and a
+crimson silk neck-scarf.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the waiter, “but the lady who is to sit here
+is coming, sir.”
+
+“The devil she is!” thought Payne. “Will the creature expect me to talk?
+Will she require me to look after her in the matter of pepper and salt?
+Why couldn't I have been left in peace?”
+
+He gathered up his possessions, and arose gravely with an automatic
+courtesy, and lifted eyes with a wooden expression to stare at the
+intruder.
+
+He faced the one person in the world whom it was most of pain and
+happiness to meet--the woman between whom and himself he meant to put a
+good half of the round world; and he read in her troubled gray eyes the
+confession that if there was anything or anybody from which she would
+willingly have been protected it was he--Chalmers Payne.
+
+Conscious of their neighbors, they bowed. Payne saw her comfortably
+seated. He sat down and slowly emptied his glass of ice-water. He
+preserved his wooden expression of countenance and turned towards her.
+
+“The old man on my right is deaf,” he said.
+
+“So am I,” she retorted.
+
+“Not so deaf, I hope, that you won't hear me explain that I had no more
+notion of your being on this ship than of Sappho being here!”
+
+“You refer to--the Greek Sappho, Mr. Payne?”
+
+“Assuredly. You told me--'fore Heaven, why are women so
+inconsistent?--you told me you were going anywhere rather than to
+America--that you were at the beginning of your journeyings--that you
+had an engagement with some Mahatmas on the top of the Himal--”
+
+“And you--you were going to South Africa.”
+
+“I said nothing of the sort. I--”
+
+“Well, I couldn't go about another day. No matter whether I was
+consistent or inconsistent! I was worn out and ill. I've been seeing too
+much--”
+
+“You told me you could never see enough!”
+
+“Well, never mind all that. I acted impulsively, I confess. My aunt was
+shocked. She thought I was ungrateful--particularly when I openly
+rejoiced that she was not able to find a chaperon for me.”
+
+“It's none of my business, anyway. I was stupid to show my surprise. I
+ought never to be surprised at anything you do, I know that. As for me,
+I'm tired of imitating the Wandering Jew. Besides, my father's old
+partner--mine he is now, I suppose, though I can't get used to that
+idea--wants me to come home. He says I'm needed. So I'm rolling up my
+sleeves, figuratively speaking. But I should certainly have delayed my
+journey if I had guessed you were to be on this boat.”
+
+“It's very annoying altogether,” she said, with open vexation. “It looks
+so silly! What will my aunt say?”
+
+“I don't think she'll say anything. You are on an Atlantic liner, with
+nine hundred and ninety-nine souls who are nothing to you, and one who
+is less than nothing. I believe that was the expression you used the
+other day--less than nothing?”
+
+The girl's delicate face flushed hotly.
+
+“I'm not so strong,” she murmured. “It's true that I am worn out, and my
+voyage has done nothing so far towards restoring me. On the contrary, I
+have been suffering. I fainted again and again yesterday, and it took a
+great deal of courage for me to venture out to-day. So you must be
+merciful for a little while. Your enemy is down, you see.”
+
+“My enemy!” He gave the words an accent at once bitter and humorous.
+“I'll not say another personal word,” he murmured, contritely. “Tell me
+if you feel faint at any moment, and let me help you. Please treat me as
+if I were your--your uncle!”
+
+She smiled faintly.
+
+“You are asking a great deal,” she couldn't help saying, somewhat
+coquettishly, and then he remembered how he had seen her hanging about
+her uncle's neck, and he flushed too.
+
+There was quite a long silence. She picked at her food delicately, and
+Payne suggested some claret. Her face showed that she would have
+preferred not to accept any favor from him, no matter how trifling, but
+she evidently considered it puerile to refuse.
+
+“It _is_ mighty awkward for you!” he burst out, suddenly, “my being
+here. I suppose you actually find it hard to believe that it was an
+accident--”
+
+“I haven't the least occasion to doubt your word, Mr. Payne. Have I ever
+done anything to make you suppose that I didn't respect you?”
+
+“Oh, I didn't mean that! Heavens! what a cad you must think me! I have a
+faculty for being stupid when you are around, you know. It's my
+misfortune. But--behold my generosity!--I shall have a talk with the
+purser, Miss Curtis, and get him to change my place for me. Some
+good-natured person will consent to make the alteration.”
+
+“You mean you will put some one else here in your place beside me?”
+
+“It's the least I can do, isn't it? Now, whom would you suggest? Pick
+out somebody. There's that motherly-looking German woman over there.
+She's a baroness--”
+
+“She? She'll tell me twice every meal that American girls are not
+brought up with a knowledge of cooking. She will tell me how she has met
+them at Kaffeeklatsches, and how they confessed that they didn't cook!
+No, no; you must try another one!”
+
+“Well, if you object to her, there's that quiet gentleman who is eating
+his ice with the aid of two pairs of spectacles. That gentleman is a
+specialist in bacilli. He has little steel-bound bottles in his room
+which, if you were to break them among this ship-load of passengers,
+would depopulate the ship. I think he is taking home the bacilli of the
+bubonic plague as a present to our country. Remember, if you got on the
+right side of him, that you would have a vengeance beyond the dreams of
+the Borgias at your command!”
+
+“Oh, the terrible creature! Mr. Payne, how could you mention him? What
+if he were to take me for a guinea-pig or a rabbit? No, I prefer the
+English-looking mummy over there.”
+
+“Who? Miss Hull? She's not half bad. She's a great traveller. She has
+been almost everywhere, and is now hastening to make it everywhere. She
+carries her own tea with her, and steeps it at five exactly every
+afternoon. She tells me that once, being shipwrecked, she grasped her
+tea-caddy, her alcohol-stove, and a large bottle of alcohol, and
+prepared for the worst. They drifted four days on a raft, and she made
+five-o'clock tea every day, to the great encouragement of the
+unfortunates. Miss Hull is an English spinster, who has a fortune and no
+household, and who is going about to see how other folks keep
+house--Feejee-Islanders, and Tagals, and Kafirs. She likes them all, I
+believe. Indeed, she says she likes everything--except the snug English
+village where she was brought up. She says that when she lived there she
+did exactly the same thing between sunup and sundown for eight years.
+For example, she had the curate to tea every Wednesday evening during
+that entire time, and when possible she had periwinkles.”
+
+“And nothing came of it?”
+
+“Oh yes, an enormous consumption of tea-biscuits-nothing more. Then it
+occurred to her to travel. So she went to the next shire, and liked it
+so well that she plunged off to London, then to the Hebrides. After that
+there was no stopping her. She likes the islands better than the
+continents, and is collecting hats made of sea-grass. She already has
+five hundred and forty-two varieties. Really, you would not find her
+half so bad.”
+
+Helen Curtis finished her coffee, and laid her napkin beside her plate.
+
+“Oh, if it comes to the negative virtues, you haven't been so
+disagreeable yourself to-day as you might have been. I'm under
+obligations to you. It _was_ rather nice to meet an old acquaintance.”
+
+The tone was formal, and put Payne ten thousand leagues away from her.
+“Thank you,” he said, with mock gratitude. “_I'm_ under obligations for
+your courtesy, madam.” She dropped her handkerchief as she arose, and he
+picked up the trifle and gave it to her. Their fingers met, and he
+withdrew his hand with a quick gesture.
+
+“You must allow me to see you safely to your room,” he urged. “Or else
+to your deck chair.”
+
+“Thank you. I'll go on deck, I think, and you may call the boy to go for
+my rug.”
+
+He put her on the lee side, and wrapped her in a McCallum plaid, and
+brought her some magazines from his own stateroom. Then he stood erect
+and saluted.
+
+“Madam, have I the honor to be dismissed?”
+
+She looked up and gave a friendly smile in spite of herself.
+
+“You are very good,” she said. “I am always remembering that you are
+good, and the thought annoys me.”
+
+“Oh, it needn't,” he responded, in a philosophic tone, looking off
+towards the jagged line of the horizon, where the purple waves showed
+their changing outline. “If you are wondering why it is that you dislike
+me when you find nothing of which to disapprove in my conduct, don't let
+that puzzle you any longer. Regard does not depend upon character. The
+mystery of attraction has never been solved. Now, I've seen women more
+beautiful than you; I know many who are more learned; as for a sense of
+justice and fairness, why, I don't think you understand the first
+principles. Yet you are the one woman, in the world for me. Now that
+you've taken love out of my life, this world is nothing more to me than
+a workshop. I shall get up every morning and put myself at my bench, so
+to speak, and work till nightfall. Then I shall sleep. It is dull, but
+it doesn't matter. I have been at some trouble to convince myself of the
+fact that it doesn't matter, and I value the conviction. Life isn't as
+disheartening as it would be if it lasted longer.
+
+  “'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
+  A Sultan to the realms of Death addrest;
+    The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
+  Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.”
+
+Miss Curtis sat up in her chair, and her eyes were flashing indignation.
+
+“I won't listen in silence to the profanity of that old heathen,” she
+cried.
+
+“You refer to my friend Omar?” inquired Paine, quizzically, dropping his
+earnestness as soon as she assumed it.
+
+“I consider him one of the most dangerous of men! Once you would have
+been above advancing such philosophy! The idea of your talking that
+inert fatalism! It's incredible that you should admire what is supine
+and cowardly--”
+
+Payne's eyes were twinkling. He lit his pipe with a “By your
+permission,” and between the puffs chanted:
+
+  “Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
+  To grasp this sorry scheme of Things entire
+    Would we not shatter it to bits--and then
+  Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!”
+
+“Even that is blasphemous impertinence!” the lady protested, knowing
+that she was angry, and rejoicing in the sensation.
+
+“You think so?” cried Payne, not waiting for her to finish. “Why did you
+complain, then, of taking up the burden of common things? Do you want to
+be reminded of what you told me? You said that the roving life you had
+been leading in Europe for the past two years had unsettled you. You
+said you wanted to live among the old things and the dreams of old
+things. You liked the sense of irresponsible delight, and weren't
+prepared to say that you could ever assume the dull domestic round in a
+commonplace town. You considered the love of one human creature
+altogether too small and banal a thing to make you forego your
+intellectual incursions into the lands of delight. You were of the
+opinion that you loved many thousand creatures, most of them dead, and
+to enjoy their society to the full it was necessary for you to look at
+the cathedrals they had builded, to read the books they had written, or
+gaze upon the canvases they had painted. You were in a poppy sleep on
+the mystic flowers of ancient dreams. Wasn't that it? So I, a mere
+practical, every-day fellow, who had shown an unaccountable weakness in
+staying away from home a full year longer than I had any business to,
+was to go back alone to my work and my empty house, and console myself
+with the day's work. You were to go walking along the twilight path
+where the half-gods had walked before you, and I was to trudge up a
+dusty road fringed with pusley, and ending in a summer kitchen. Isn't
+that about it?”
+
+She spread out the folds of her gown and looked down at them in a
+somewhat embarrassed manner, seemingly submerged by this flood of
+protesting eloquence.
+
+“You were afraid to look anything in the face,” he went on, not giving
+her time to recover her breath. “You thought you could live in a world
+of beauty and never have any hard work. I suppose if you had seen the
+gardener wiping the sweat off his brow you would not have picked any of
+the roses in that garden at Lucerne. I suppose not! Well, let me assure
+you of one thing-there's commonplaceness everywhere. Probably some one
+had to wash those white dresses Sappho used to wear when she sat beside
+the sea. Maybe Sappho did them up herself, eh?”
+
+He stopped and gave way to his bathos, throwing back his head and
+laughing heartily.
+
+“Well, well, I'm through with railing at you. But I left you eating
+lotus, hollow-eyed and steeped in dreams. You were listening to the surf
+on Calypso's Isle. I was hearing nothing but the sound of your voice.
+Now I've stumbled on a soporific philosophy, and am getting all I can
+out of the anaesthesia, and you are reproaching me. It's like your
+inconsistency, isn't it?”
+
+She put up one hand to stop him, but he went on, recurring once more to
+the poet:
+
+  “The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
+  Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
+    Like snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
+  Lighting a little Hour or two, is gone.”
+
+She tried to speak, but he lifted his hat and left her, and going to the
+other side of the deck, paced up and down there swiftly, and thought of
+a number of things. For one thing, he reflected how ludicrous was life!
+Here was Helen Curtis, fleeing from the recollection of him; here was
+himself, fleeing from the too-sweet actuality of her calm face and
+lambent eyes; and they were set down face to face in midocean! Such a
+preposterous trick on the part of the Three!
+
+“I suppose happiness is never anything more than a mirage,” he said to
+himself as he paced. “It is bright at times and then dim, and at
+present, for me, it is inverted. The business of the traveller, however,
+is to tramp on in the sun and the sand, with an eye to the compass and
+giving no heed to evanishing gleams of fairy lakes and plumelike palms.
+Tramping on in the sand isn't as bad as it might be, either, when one
+gets used to it. The simoon is on me now, but I'll weather it. I've
+_got_ to. I _won't be_ downed!”
+
+He put his head up and tried to think he was courageous. The gloom of
+the night was about him now, and the strange voices of the sea called
+one to the other. He tried to turn his thought to practical things. He
+would go home to the vacant old house where he had been born; he would
+make it livable, let the sunshine into it, modernize it to an extent,
+and then get some one under its roof. While there were so many homeless
+folk in the world it wasn't right to have an untenanted house. Then he'd
+get down to business, good and hard, and bring the thing up. It was a
+good business, and it had an honorable reputation. He had been too
+unappreciative of this fine legacy. Well, there were excuses. At school
+he had thought of other things--and the life of the fraternity house had
+been a gallant one! Then came his wander year--which stretched into two.
+And now, having eaten of the apples of Paradise and felt them turn to
+bitterness in his mouth, he would go back to duty.
+
+He wished he had never seen her again--after that night when she belied
+her long-continued kindness to him with her indifferent rejection of his
+devotion. He devoutly wished he had not been forced to feel again the
+subtle fascination of those deep eyes, and hear the thrilling contralto
+of that rich voice! She was unscrupulous in her cold selfishness--
+
+A sudden, inexplicable trembling of the whole great ship! A frightened
+quivering, a lurch, a crash!
+
+The chug-chug ceased. No--it couldn't! Nothing like that ever happened
+to a ship of the line on a comparatively quiet night! Of course not!
+
+Of course not--but for all of that, they were as inert as a raft, and
+the passengers were beginning to skurry about and to ask the third
+officer and the fourth officer what t' dickens it meant. The
+third officer and the fourth officer did not know, but felt
+convinced--professionally convinced--that it was nothing. The first
+engineer? He had gone below. Oh, it was nothing. The captain? Really,
+they could not say where he was.
+
+Chalmers Payne strode around the after-cabin, and then ran to the spot
+where he had left Helen Curtis. She was still there. She sat up and put
+both her hands in his.
+
+“I knew you'd be here as soon as you could, so I didn't move! I didn't
+want to put you to the trouble to look for me!”
+
+He held her hands hard.
+
+“I don't think it is much of anything,” he said. “It can't be. There's
+no smell of fire. The sea is not heavy. At the very worst--”
+
+“Be sure, won't you, that we're not separated? One of us might be put in
+one boat and one in another, you know, if it should really be--be fire
+or something. Then, if a storm came up and--”
+
+People were running with vague rumors. They called out this and that
+alarm. It was possible to feel the panic gathering.
+
+“Remember,” Helen Curtis whispered, “whatever comes, that we belong
+together.”
+
+“We do!” he acquiesced, saying the words between his teeth. “I have
+known it a long time. But you--”
+
+“Oh, so have I! But what made you so sure? What was there about your
+home and your work and yourself to make you so perfectly sure I would be
+interested in them all my life? You didn't lay out any scheme for me at
+all, or act as if you thought I had any dreams or aspirations. I was to
+come and observe you become distinguished--I was to watch what you could
+do! Oh, Chalmers, I was willing, but what made you so sure?”
+
+“Then you loved me? You loved me?” She looked white and scared, and he
+could feel her hands chill and tremble.
+
+“How ready you are to use that word! I'm afraid of it. I always said I
+wouldn't speak it till I _had_ to. It frightens me--it means so much. If
+I said it to you I could never say it to any one else, no matter how--”
+
+“Not on any account! Say it, Helen!”
+
+“I wish to explain. I--I couldn't stand the aimlessness of life after
+you left. I began to suspect that it was you who made everything so
+interesting. I wasn't so enamoured with the ancients as I thought I was;
+but I was enamoured with your contemplation of my pose. Oh, I've been
+dissecting myself! Should I really have cared so much for Lucerne and
+Nuremberg if you hadn't been with me? I concluded that I should not.
+Well, said I to myself, if he can make the Old World so fascinating, can
+he not do something for the New World, too?”
+
+An alarmist rushed by.
+
+“They are going to lower the boats!” he cried. “Better get your
+valuables together.”
+
+“There's a panic in the steerage,” another cried.
+
+“Oh, Helen! Go on. Don't let anything interrupt you.”
+
+“I won't. I realize that you ought to be told that I love you. I do. I
+love you. I'm twenty-three, and I never said the words to any one else,
+even though I'm an American girl. And I'll never speak them to any one
+but you. I'm sure of it now. But I wouldn't say it till I was quite,
+quite sure.”
+
+The captain came pacing down the deck leisurely. He lifted his hat as he
+passed Payne and Miss Curtis.
+
+“We shall be on our way in a few minutes,” he said, agreeably. “I hope
+this young lady has not suffered any alarm.”
+
+Helen showed him a face on which anything was written rather than fear.
+
+“The port shaft broke off somewhere near the truss-block at the mouth of
+the sleeve of the shaft, and the outer end of the shaft and the
+propeller dropped to the bottom of the sea. It's quite inexplicable, but
+I find in my experience that inexplicable things frequently happen.
+We shall finish our run with the starboard shaft only, and shall be
+obliged to reduce our speed to an average of three hundred and sixty
+knots daily.”
+
+He repeated this in a voice of impersonal courtesy, and went on to the
+next group. Helen Curtis settled back in her chair and smiled up at her
+lover.
+
+“We shall be at sea at least two days longer,” he said, exultantly.
+
+“Ah, what shall we do to pass the time?” she interrupted, with mocking
+coquetry.
+
+“Chug-chug, chug-chug!”
+
+It was the liner.
+
+  “Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
+  To-day of past Regret and future Fears--”
+
+This was Omar, but Miss Curtis would not listen.
+
+“I've an aversion to your eloquent old heathen,” she pleaded. “You must
+not quote him, really.”
+
+“If you insist, I'll refrain. Can't I even quote 'A book of verses
+underneath the bough--'”
+
+“Oh, not on any account! That least of all.”
+
+“You don't want me to be hackneyed? Well, I'll be perfectly original. I
+know one thing I can say which will always sound mysterious and
+marvellous!”
+
+“Say it, say it!” she commanded, imperiously, knowing quite well what it
+was.
+
+So he said it, and the two sat and looked off across the darkened water
+and at the pale, reluctant stars, beholding, for that night at least,
+the passionate inner sense of the universe. They said nothing more.
+
+But as for the liner, it continued with its emphatic reiteration.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER
+
+
+ANNIE HAMILTON DONNELL
+
+
+Mrs. Leah Bloodgood walked heavily, without the painstaking little
+springy leaps she usually adopted as an offset to her stoutness. She
+mounted Cornelia Opp's door-steps with an air of gloomy abstraction that
+sat uneasily on the plump terraces of her face as if at any moment it
+might slide off. It slid off now at sight of Cornelia Opp's serene,
+sweet face.
+
+“My gracious! Cornelia, is this your house?” laughed Mrs. Bloodgood,
+pantingly. “Here I thought I was going up Marilla Merritt's steps! You
+don't mean to tell me that I turned into Ridgway Street instead of
+Penn?”
+
+“This isn't Penn Street,” smiled Cornelia Opp. She had flung the door
+wide with a gesture of welcome.
+
+“No--mercy, no, I can't come in!” panted the woman on the steps. “I've
+got to see Marilla Merritt, right off. When I come calling on _you_,
+Cornelia, I want my mind easy so we can have a good time.”
+
+“Poor Mrs. Merritt!”
+
+“Well, Marilla ought to suffer if I do--she's on the Suffering
+Committee! Good-by, Cornelia. Don't you go and tell anybody how
+absent-minded I was. They'll say it's catching.”
+
+“It's the minister, then,” mused Cornelia in the doorway, watching the
+stout figure go down the street. “Now what has the poor man been doing
+this time?” A gentle pity grew in her beautiful gray eyes. It was so
+hard on ministers to be all alone in the world, especially certain kinds
+of ministers. No matter how long-suffering Suffering Committees might
+be, they could not make allowances _enough_. “Poor man! Well, the Lord's
+on his side,” smiled in the doorway Cornelia Opp.
+
+Marilla Merritt was not like Mrs. Leah Bloodgood. Marilla was little
+where Leah was big, and nothing daunted Marilla. She was shaking a rug
+out on her sunny piazza, and descried the toiling figure while it was
+yet afar off.
+
+“There's Leah Bloodgood coming, or my name's Sarah! _What_ is Leah
+Bloodgood out this time of day for, with the minister's dinner to get?
+Something is up.” She waved the rug gayly. “Mis' Merritt isn't at home!”
+ she called; “she's out--on the door-steps shaking rugs! Leah Bloodgood,”
+ as the figure drew near, “you look all tuckered out! Come in quick and
+sit down. Don't try to talk. You needn't tell me something's up--just
+say _what_. Has that blessed man been--”
+
+“Yes, he has!” panted the caller, vindictively. It is harder to be
+long-suffering when one is out of breath. “You listen to this. I've
+brought his letter to read to you.”
+
+“His letter!” Marilla could not have been much more astonished if the
+other had taken the minister himself out of her dangling black bag.
+
+“Yes; it came this morn--Mercy! Marilla, don't look so amazed! Didn't
+you know he'd gone away on his vacation? He forgot it was next month
+instead of this, and I found him packing his things, and hadn't the
+heart to tell him. I thought a man with a pleased look like that on his
+face better _go_,--but, mercy! didn't I send you word? It _is_ catching.
+I shall be bad as he is.”
+
+“Good as he is, do you mean? Don't worry about being that!” laughed
+little Marilla Merritt. “Well, I'm glad he's gone, dear man.”
+
+“You won't be glad long, 'dear man'! Here's his letter. Take a long
+breath before you read it. I suppose I ought to prepare you, but I want
+you see how I felt.”
+
+“I might count ten first,” deliberated smiling Marilla, fingering the
+white envelope with a certain tenderness. A certain tenderness and the
+minister went together with them all. “But, no, I'm going to sail right
+in.”
+
+“Take your own risks, of course, but my advice is to reef all your
+main--er--jibsails first,” Mrs. Leah Bloodgood wearily murmured. “You'll
+find the sea choppy.”
+
+“'Dear Sister Bloodgood,'” read Marilla, aloud, with reckless glibness,
+“'Will you be so kind as to send me my best suit? I am going to marry my
+old friend whom I have met here after twenty years. The wedding will
+take place next Wednesday morn--'
+
+“_What!_”
+
+“Read on,” groaned Mrs. Bloodgood. “He says the fishing's excellent.”
+
+“I should say so! And that's what he's caught! Leah Bloodgood, what did
+you ever let him go away for without a body-guard? That poor dear,
+innocent, kind-hearted man, to go and fall among--among _thieves_ like
+that!”
+
+“He's just absent-minded enough to go and do it himself. I don't suppose
+we ought to blame _them_. Read on.”
+
+“'Next Wednesday morning, at ten o'clock,'” moaned little Marilla,
+glibness all gone. “'It would be most embarrassing to do so in these
+clothes, as I am sure you will see, dear sister. Kindly see that my best
+white tie is included. I would not wish to be unbecomingly attired on so
+joyous an occasion. She is a widow with five chil--'”
+
+“Mercy! don't faint away! Where's your fans? Didn't I tell you there
+were breakers ahead? I don't wonder you're all broken up! Give it to me;
+I'll read the rest. M--m--m, 'joyous occasion'--'five children'--'she is
+a widow with five children, all of them most lovable little creatures.
+You know my fondness for children. I have been greatly benefited by my
+sojourn in this lovely spot. I cannot thank you too warmly for
+recommending it. I find the fish--'”
+
+“Leah Bloodgood, that will do! Don't read another word. Don't fan me,
+don't ask me how I feel now. Let me get my breath, and then we will go
+over and open the parsonage windows. That, I suppose, is the first thing
+to do. It's something to be thankful for that it's a good-sized
+parsonage.”
+
+“Be thankful, then--_I'm_ not. I'm not anything but incensed clear
+through. After I'd taken every precaution that was ever thought of, and
+some that weren't ever, to keep that man out of mischief! I thought of
+all the absent-minded things he might do, but I never thought of this,
+no, I never! And we wanted him to marry Cornelia so much, Marilla!
+Cornelia would have made him such a beautiful wife!”
+
+“Beautiful!” sighed Marilla, hopelessly. It had been the dear pet plan
+they had nursed in common with all the parish. Everybody but the
+minister and Cornelia had shared in it.
+
+“And five children! Marilla Merritt, think of five children romping over
+our parsonage, knocking all the corners off!”
+
+“I'm thinking,” mourned Marilla, gustily. She felt a dismal suspicion
+that this was going to daunt her. But her habit of facing things came to
+the front. “Wednesday's only four days off,” she said, with a fine
+assumption of briskness. “I don't suppose he said anything about a
+wedding tour, did he?”
+
+“No. But even if he took one he'd probably forget and stop off here. So
+we can't count on that. What's done has got to be done in four days.
+What _has_ got to be done, Marilla?”
+
+“Everything. We must start this minute, Leah Bloodgood! The house must
+be aired and painted and papered, and window-glass set--there's no end!
+And all in four days! We can't let our minister bring his wife and five
+children home to a shabby house. Cornelia Opp must go round and get
+money for new dining-room chairs, and there ought to be more beds with a
+family like that. Dishes, too. Cornelia ought to start at _once_. She's
+the best solicitor we have.”
+
+“There's another thing,” broke out Mrs. Bloodgood; “the minister must
+have some new shirts. He ought to have a whole trousseau. He hasn't
+boarded with me, and I done all his mending, without my knowing what he
+ought to have, now that he's going to go and get married. We can't let
+_him_ be shabby, either.”
+
+“Then, of course, there ought to be a lot of cooked food in the house,
+and supper all ready for them when they come. Oh, I guess we'll find
+plenty to do! I guess we can't stop to groan much. But, oh, how
+different we'd all feel if it was Cornelia!”
+
+“Different! I'd give 'em my dining-room chairs and my cellar stairs! I'd
+make shirts and sit up all night to cook! It's--it's wicked, Marilla,
+that's what it is.”
+
+“I know _it_ is, but he isn't,” championed Marilla. “He's just a good
+man gone wrong. It's his guardian angel that's to blame--a guardian
+angel has no business to be napping.”
+
+At best, it was pretty late in the day to overhaul a parsonage that had
+been closed so long and sinking gently into mild decay. The little
+parish woke with a dismayed start and went to work, to a woman.
+Operations were begun within an amazingly brief time; cleaners and
+repairers were hurried to the parsonage, and the women of the parish
+were told off into relays to assist them.
+
+“Somebody go to Mrs. Higginbotham Taylor's and get a high chair,”
+ directed Marilla Merritt. “I'll lend my tea-chair for the
+next-to-the-baby, anyway, till they can get something better. We don't
+want our minister's children sitting round on dictionaries and
+encyclopaedias.”
+
+The minister had come to them, a lone bachelor, with kind, absent eyes
+and the faculty of making himself beloved. For six years they had taken
+care of him and loved him--watched over his outgoings and his incomings
+and forgiven all his absent-mindednesses. They had picked out Cornelia
+Opp for him, and added it to their prayers like an earnest codicil--“O
+Lord, bring Cornelia Opp and the minister together. Amen.”
+
+Cornelia Opp herself lived on her sweet, unselfish, single life, and
+prayed, “Lord, bless the minister,” unsuspectingly. She was as much
+beloved among them all as the minister. They were proud of her slender,
+beautiful figure and her serene face, and of her many capabilities. What
+the minister lacked, Cornelia had; Cornelia lacked nothing.
+
+Marilla Merritt and Cornelia Opp were appointed receiving committee, to
+be at the parsonage when the minister and his wife and five children
+arrived. A bountiful supper was to be in readiness, prepared by all the
+good women impartially. The duty of the receiving committee was merely,
+as Mrs. Leah Bloodgood said, “to smile, and tell pleasant little
+lies--'Such a delightful surprise,--so glad to welcome, etc.'
+
+“Cornelia and Marilla Merritt are just the ones,” she said, succinctly.
+“_I_ should say: 'You awful man, you! Can't we trust you out of our
+sights?' And I suppose that wouldn't be the best way to welcome 'em.”
+
+The minister had sent a brief notice of his expected arrival home on
+Wednesday evening, and, unless he forgot and went somewhere else, there
+was good reason to expect him then. Everything was hurried into
+readiness. At the last moment some one sent in a doll to make the
+minister's children feel more at home. Cornelia laughed and set the
+little thing on the sofa, stiffly erect and endlessly smiling.
+
+“Looks nice, doesn't it?” sighed tired little Marilla, returning from a
+last round of the tidy rooms. “I don't see anything else left to do,
+unless--Is that dust?”
+
+“No, it's bloom,” hastened Cornelia, covertly wiping it off. “You poor,
+tired thing, don't look at anything else! Just go home and rest a little
+bit before you change your dress. Mine's all changed, and I can stay
+here and mount guard. I can be practising my lies!”
+
+“I've got mine by heart,” laughed Marilla, “I could say 'so delighted'
+if he brought two wives and ten children!”
+
+“Don't!” Cornelia's sweet voice sounded a little severe. “We've said
+enough about the poor man. It's four o'clock. If you're going--”
+
+“I am. Cornelia Opp, turn that child back to! She makes me nervous
+sitting there on that sofa staring at me! Will you see her!”
+
+“She does look a little out of place,” Cornelia admitted, but she left
+the stiff little figure undisturbed. After the other woman had gone she
+sat down beside it on the sofa, and smoothed absently its gaudy little
+dress. Cornelia's face was gently pensive, she could scarcely have told
+why. Not the minister, but the trimly appointed house with its
+indefinable atmosphere of a home with little children in it was what she
+was thinking of without conscious effort of her own. The smiling doll
+beside her, the high chair that she could see through an inner door, and
+the foolish little gilt mug that some one had donated to the minister's
+babyest one--they all contributed to the gentle pensiveness on
+Cornelia's sweet face. She was but a step by thirty, and a woman at
+thirty has not settled down resignedly into a lonely old age. Let a
+little child come tilting by, or a little child's foolish belongings
+intrude themselves upon her vision, and old, odd longings creep out of
+secret crannies and haunt her, willy-nilly. It is the latent motherhood
+within her that has been denied its own. It was the secret of the soft
+wistfulness in Cornelia's eyes. So she sat until the minister came home.
+It was the sound of his big step on the walk that roused her and sent
+the color into her face and made it perilously beautiful.
+
+Cornelia was frightened. Where was Marilla Merritt? Why had they come so
+soon? Must she meet them alone? She hurried to the door, her perturbed
+mind groping blindly for the “lies” she had misplaced while she sat and
+dreamed.
+
+The minister was striding up the walk alone! He did not even look back
+at the village hack that was turning away with his wife and five
+children! He looked instead at the beautiful vision that stood in the
+parsonage doorway, glimpses of home behind it, welcome and comfort in
+it. The minister was in need of welcome and comfort. His loneliness had
+been accentuated cruelly by the bit of happiness he had caught a brief
+glimpse of and left behind him. Perhaps the loneliness was in his face.
+
+“Welcome home,” Cornelia said, in the doorway. She put aside her
+astonishment at his coming alone, and answered the need in his face. Her
+hands were out in a gracious greeting. To the minister how good it was!
+
+“They told me to come right here,” he said, “or I should have gone to
+Mrs. Bloodgood's as usual. I don't quite understand--”
+
+“Never mind understanding,” Cornelia smiled, leading the way into the
+pretty parlor, “anyway, till you get into a comfortable rocker. It's so
+much easier to understand in a rocking-chair! I--well, I think I need
+one, too! You see, we expected--we _didn't_ expect you alone.”
+
+“No?” his puzzled gaze taking in all the kind little appointments of the
+room, and coming to a stop at the smiling doll. The two of them sat and
+stared at each other.
+
+“We thought you would bring--we got all ready for your wife and the
+children,” Cornelia was saying. The doll stared on, but the minister
+looked up.
+
+“My wife and the children?” he repeated after her. “I don't think I know
+what you mean, Miss Cornelia. I must be dreaming--No, wait; please don't
+tell me what it all means just yet! Give me a little time to enjoy the
+dream.” But Cornelia went on.
+
+“You wrote Mrs. Bloodgood about your marriage,” she said. Sweet voices
+can be severe. “It hurried us a little, but we have tried to get
+everything in readiness. If there is another bed needed for the chil--”
+
+“I wrote Mrs. Bloodgood about my marriage?” he said, slowly; then as
+understanding dawned upon him the puzzled lines in his face loosened
+into laughter that would out. He leaned back in his rocker and gave
+himself up to it helplessly. As helplessly Cornelia joined in. The doll
+on the sofa smiled on--no more, no less.
+
+“Will you ex--excuse me?” he laughed.
+
+“No,” laughed she.
+
+“But I can't help it, and you're l-laughing yourself.”
+
+“No!”
+
+He got to his feet and caught her hands.
+
+“Let's keep on,” he pleaded, unministerially. “I'm having a beautiful
+time. Aren't you? I wish you'd say yes, Miss Cornelia!”
+
+“Yes,” she smiled, “but we can't sit here laughing all the rest of the
+afternoon. Marilla Merritt will be here--”
+
+“Oh, Marilla Merritt--” He sighed. The minister was young, too.
+
+“And she will want to know--things,” hinted Cornelia, mildly. She drew
+the smiling doll into her lap and smoothed its dress absently. The
+minister retreated to his rocker again.
+
+“I think I would rather tell you,” he said, quietly. “I did marry my old
+friend this morning, but I married her to another man. It was a
+mistake--all a mistake.”
+
+“Then you ought not to have married her, ought you?” commented Cornelia,
+demurely. Over the doll's little foolish head her eyes were dancing.
+Marilla Merritt might not see that it was funny, Mrs. Bloodgood
+mightn't, but it was. Unless--unless it was pathetic. Suddenly Cornelia
+felt that it was.
+
+The minister was no longer laughing. He sat in the rocker strangely
+quiet. Perhaps he did not realize that his eyes were on Cornelia's
+beautiful face; perhaps he thought he was looking at the doll. He knew
+what he was thinking of. The utter loneliness behind him and ahead of
+him appalled him in its contrast to this. This woman sitting opposite
+him with the face of the woman that a man would like always near him,
+this little home with the two of them in it alone--the minister knew
+what it was he wanted. He wanted it to go right on--never to end. He
+knew that he had always wanted it. All the soul of the man rose up to
+claim it. And because there was need of hurry, because Marilla Merritt
+was coming, he held out his hands to Cornelia and the foolish,
+unastonished doll.
+
+“Come,” he said, pleadingly, and of course the doll could not have gone
+alone. He dropped it gently back into its place on the sofa.
+
+Marilla Merritt had been unwarrantably delayed. She came in flushed and
+panting, but indomitably smiling. Her sharp glance sought for a wife and
+five children.
+
+“Such a delightful surprise!” she panted, holding out her hand to the
+minister. “We are so glad to welcome--Why!--have you shown them to their
+rooms, Cornelia?”
+
+“They--they didn't come,” murmured Cornelia, retreating to her unfailing
+ally on the sofa. In the stress of the moment--for Cornelia was not
+ready for Marilla Merritt--it had seemed to her that the time for “lies”
+ had come. She had even beckoned to the nearest one. But the ghosts of
+ministers' wives that had been and that were to be had risen in a
+warning cloud about her and saved her.
+
+“Didn't come!” shrilled Marilla Merritt in her astonishment. “His wife
+and children didn't come! Do you know what you are saying, Cornelia? You
+don't mean--Then I don't wonder you look flustered--” She caught herself
+up hurriedly, but her thoughts ran on unchecked. Of all things that
+ever! Could absent-mindedness go further than this--to marry a wife and
+forget to bring her home with him?--and _five children!_
+
+Marilla Merritt turned sharply upon the minister.
+
+“Where is your wife?” she demanded, the frayed ends of her patience
+trailing from her tone. The minister crossed the room to Cornelia and
+the doll. He laid his big white hand gently on Cornelia's small white
+one. There was protective tenderness in the gesture and the touch.
+
+“I found her here waiting for me,” the minister said.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Quaint Courtships, by Various
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